Abundance

Amongst all the places I’ve lived, one of my all-time favorite activities is to visit the local farmer’s market. I have many happy memories visiting the weekend markets in Fremantle, Holland and Bloomington. Fremantle is famous for its market and I surely have some old snapshots of it somewhere. To save money, I used to visit the market later in the day on Saturday right before closing so that I could buy fresh food for pennies. I bought mangoes for next to nothing. In Bloomington, I bought food in season and saved heaps of money.

I discovered the Lower Hutt Saturday market a few months ago. It is now a part of my regular Saturday morning schedule. I am still trying to figure out how to combine Saturday morning Pilates in Wellington (the teacher is fantastic!), the market, running and piano lessons at 10 am. I am going to try going to her 8.15 am Reformer Pilates class on Saturdays to see how that works out. I had to quit going to her class a few months ago, but need to start up again to gain my upper-body strength back.

In any case, I love going to the markets just to absorb the energy and visual displays. I could spend an hour walking around. I love exploring local foods and trying new recipes. What I love about the Lower Hutt market is that I can buy foods like citrus not available (at least fresh) in most places (other than Fremantle) where I’ve lived before.

I’ve started preserving again over the past few weeks. I brought as many Mason jars and lids that I could bring with me. Over our Christmas trip, I purchased additional lids. However, it was clear that I needed to find a local preserving option for when I ran out of Ball lids.

My research took me to Agee jars and Perfit lids. Agee jars are no longer made in NZ because of the drop-off in the number of people who preserve at home. Used jars, though, are widely available on Trademe. I bought some jam jars last weekend from a guy who lives north of here in the bush in the hills (I got lost trying to find the place, but eventually made it there).

I was thrilled to discover that the supermarkets still sell Perfit lids and rings. They are a bit more expensive than a similar product in the US, but I prefer using the local brand on the Agee jars. My research indicates that old Agee and Mason jars are interchangeable, but not sure if I want to chance that yet.

I’m looking forward to making lemon marmalade soon. My Ball recipe book has a recipe for Kiwi jam, which might be interesting, as I can buy fresh Kiwi right from the vine. I made 10 jam jars of strawberry jam a few weeks ago, but we are rapidly going through it. We discovered that the jam works well as an ice cream sauce, too!

I am going to cut back on sweets for awhile, but it is fun to walk around the market and envision so many recipe possibilities. I still want to make roast pineapple at some point. In any case, there is something about a farmer’s market that just starts the weekend off right!

PS How could I forget the Walthamstow Markets every week? Another memory.