Real bread and an illicit stash of gravadlax

Yesterday was my favourite local farmers market at Abbey Leys so it was a great chance to stock up some lovely food.  On top of this, I braved the icy cold with the other stall holders to promote a website I’ve set up to promote local, seasonal food in my community.  It was so blinking cold in the barn, and although I was so pleased with my display of seasonal vegetables and old-fashioned seed packets on stick, a number of people did mistake me for a grower.  Oh well.

But enough of that and back to the real bread.  For a while now, a fantastic bread lady (officially known at Jane’s Handmade Bread) has been coming to the market.  She makes heavenly real bread.  My favourite is her Miracle Bread which is stuffed full of all kinds of seeds and has a lovely golden brown colour to it.  She never arrives before 10.30am, having been up since 3am baking, but everyone waits and queues for ages just to get their hands on some of her beautiful breads.

I just felt compelled to share a picture of my sandwich from yesterday, that I made with two slices of Jane’s Handmade Bread – this was a white loaf.  The texture of this bread is out-of-this-world tasty – it’s moist but not doughy, its light and springy but fills your mouth, and not with air like supermarket bread.  I’m pretty sure I could have munched on this loaf, plain and simple, all afternoon.  This is bread how bread should be.

I also have a confession.  If you follow the blog, you might know we are currently on a meat-free month (this Wednesday is our last day).  As well as not eating meat or fish this past month, we also haven’t been buying it either to freeze for future consumption.  However, the farmers market and our impending final day of meat-free was our downfall.

From the fantastic Gazegill Organics we bought a packet of streaky bacon, a few slices we are planning will be consumed on Thursday morning for breakfast as the meal that breaks our meat-free month.  We also bought some homemade gravadlax from Gazegill, which was just irresistable looking.  The plan is to eat that somehow on Friday night, Ian from Gazegill recommended making a dill mustard sauce so we might look into that.

It feels a bit terrible to be buying meat and fish during our meat-free month, and maybe even worse to be dreaming and planning our first meat and fish meals.  But I never wanted this month to feel like a bind, or a punishment, and our farmers market only comes once a month.  I hope you’ll all forgive me!