This week's food: Farmer's Market, local shops and quick grocery store trip

Saturday is my favourite day of the week. Steve and I have a weekly date morning where we go to the Farmer's Market and then out to the best cafe in...well - maybe in the whole world. :) We also do short errands on Saturday mornings if we have them, such as going to the thrift store or other quick stops.

Today, we went to the market, out for coffee and then to the natural food store and my favourite baking supply shop. Later on, we dropped by the grocery store.

Here is our haul from the Farmer's Market:

• a large bag of gala apples
• a large bag of pears
• organic broccoli (This isn't local, but sometimes in the winter we are desperate. I like that this is actually a local farm which supplements their income in the winter by bringing in a bit of high-quality organic produce.)
• an organic avocado (ditto to above)
• 1/2 lb black forest ham
• some honey-garlic sausages
• 3 kg. pail of delicious raw honey

Our next stop was the natural foods store:

• 3 containers of half & half cream for coffee - I like this kind because the ingredients are: (get ready, now...) cream, milk. (Here are the ingredients in the cream we used to get from the grocery store: milk, cream, sodium citrate, sodium phosphate, carrageenan)
• 1 container of sour cream - Guess what's in this? Just cream, bacterial culture. It is actually real cultured sour cream, not something that has been chemically 'soured'.
• a nice big bottle of cod liver oil capsules - this is the only supplement we take on any regular basis. I particularly like it in the winter when we are indoors a lot and aren't eating as wide a variety of foods as we are in the summer. I like it because it is a food supplement, not a faked up one.

Then, we stopped by my favourite baking supply store. It was a somewhat unsuccessful trip, as I was in need of some wheat berries and they didn't have any large bags. I need to remember to call ahead next time. I did put some on order, though.

• large package of yeast
• unsulfured banana chips
• unsulfured and unsweetened dried pineapple
• unsulfured dried cranberries
• brown sugar

Lastly, we dropped by the grocery store that has cheap butter. We go through a lot of butter in our family. I don't mind grocery store butter too much, though I would prefer if they didn't colour it and if the cows were treated better. Nevertheless, with the amount our family uses, I can't be spending $8/lb on organic butter. At least in Canada rBGH is banned. Because I stock up, I always get strange looks and usually someone asks me if I am doing a lot of baking. "Well, yes, actually...I always do a lot of baking."

• 10 lbs butter
• I possibly bought some chocolate easter eggs, too, but I can't take a picture of them because someone ate them on the way home.