Stop looking, start seeing: Farmer's Market Madness!!!!!!!!

I used to buy all of my food from Tesco when I first came to Exeter. Now 8 months later, I hardly buy anything there. Things I regularly buy at Tesco are muesli, flour, cheese, and cans of tomato/beans.

Now I buy milk from the Real Food Shop (RFS) because it's locally produced.

I buy vegetables from the farmer's market on Thursday afternoons. They are organic and locally produced so low carbon footprints. If I run out of veg or want something specific during the week, I go to the RFS. Like last week, I needed mushrooms because I wanted to make mushroom and onion cream spaghetti. (I had double cream left over from when I made chocolate raspberry cheesecake for a birthday party. ) So I went to the RFS and got 4 small mushrooms. That dish was really tasty.

What I love about the farmer's market is that they have seasonal vegetables that Tesco will never have.

Purple Sprout Broccoli

Red Curly Kale

Carnival(?) Squash

I bought these this week to put in my Cornish pasties (only, mine aren't called "Cornish" but rather, "Shane-ish.")
Also because Tesco had cheese for a reduced price (3 for 2), I bought the following. If you don't get good cheese, there isn't any point in living in the UK, right?!

So today is a Friday. And what do I do on a Friday? I cook.

I had prepared pastry for my pasty yesterday. And today, when my class finished at 1pm, I run back to the kitchen and started the process.
I rolled out the pastry that I kept in my cupboard. I was concerned that I would be a bit too soft but that wasn't the case at all. It was in ideal condition to roll out. I was glad I didn't keep in the fridge because that would have probably made it too hard.

Pastry:
450g plain flour
140g unsalted butter (mix with fingers to make it crumby)

About 120ml water (add slowly to the crumb and assemble into a ball)

This ended up making 6 sheets of round pastry and a bit which I used to make an "S" shape to prove that I really made it.
BTW, as I don't have a rolling pin, I used the roll of plastic wrap. It works just as well.

After I rolled out the pastry, I filled it with vegetables that I had cut up. The veg were, of course, all bought from yesterday's farmer's market. My 6 pasties contain the random combination of the following: potato, onion, beetroot, kale, sprout broccoli and ricotta cheese. Also, I stole just a little bit of thyme from the Community Garden which is in the university.

I seasoned with salt and pepper but I should have put the salt in my hand and poured it and not poured directly on to the pasty so that I know I'm adding the right amount. The one I ate today was under-seasoned and I ended up putting ketchup on it.