borough market

Next week, if it's nice, I'll go back and take pictures... but for now, I'll just say three things:

- While I thought we lived in a nice place, I now realize that we should have located ourselves south of the river to shorten our commute to this freaking amazing food market;

- My noble self-restraint in the cheese department has been broken... I did restrain myself to only 4 types of cheese, but I won't tell you how much I spent for them.  And while for the past two and a half weeks we managed to buy barely any alcohol at all - seriously, aside from the requisite pint at the occasional pub, nothing! - that noble chain has now been broken, too.  but the wine shop in Borough has refillable bottles, and you come back each week and fill them straight out of the barrels, and it's eco-friendly, and it's cheap, and it's so cool!

anyway, we just had crisp white wine with some margherita pizzas - yes, I managed to make pizzas with a marginally-functional stove and no measuring cups or spoons; my second-greatest achievement of the day* - featuring amazing fresh mozzarella and I have NO REGRETS.

Furthermore, I think I displayed equally admirable self-control when I didn't buy ANY wild mushrooms.  Not any!  And there were endless basketfuls;

- and finally, I am generally firmly behind the local foods movement.  Very firmly!  Local foods are amazing and you should most definitely support your local farmers.  And there is an impressive amount of British-grown produce available here, and I buy it!  I do!  

But if you are thinking that a trip to the Borough market carries the moral weight of a trip to the local farmer's market, I must caution you that you will find yourself falling in love with olives and oils from "our small organic farm on Sparta" (said in a charming Greek accent) and cheese shipped in massive wheels from the south of France, and a thousand different bottles and cans of ingredients from a hundred countries and every populated continent.  And when you try to persuade yourself that Spain is 'practically local," just stop.  Because you're not there for virtue, you're there for cheese, herbs, kangaroo burgers and Turkish candy.

oh man, maybe I'll go back tomorrow...

*My greatest achievement today was solving this puzzle:



I was stuck on it for two whole days.  Drove me crazy.  But I got it!