I love the farmers’ market. This is a photo of one of my favourite veggie stalls, Secretts. My favourite thing they sell is these purple, yellow and orange carrots, but they also do a really good pick and mix leaf salad as well. Purple carrots are cool, but to be honest, when you peel them, a lot of the purple skin comes off. It’s only purple on the surface! And, when you cook them, the purple gets a little muddy. Multicoloured carrots are pretty – but weirdly, carrots weren’t commonly orange until they were bred that way by the Dutch in the 17th century – orange for the House of Orange, you see. It’s probably cooler if you’re a 17th century Dutchman, I guess…

Secretts also sell red spring onions, which are a favourite around here, and I also spotted some really pretty radishes. Multicoloured veggies are so beautiful and appetising when they’re raw – can you imagine using these beauties in a bento box, for example?

I wish I was the kind of person who could walk around a market and carefully pick one amazing piece of produce, then come home and lovingly create a gorgeous dish centring around it, so I can enjoy it at its absolute best and congratulate myself on being a fantastic person all round. Instead, I’m the kind of person who buys everything in sight and hordes vegetables in the fridge, and only uses them when they’re wilted and nearly ready to die a death in the bin.

So, I promised to tell you all about Isle of Wight garlic. This is some phenomenal stuff, I tell you. It’s grown on The Garlic Farm, which also has its own online shop, bricks and mortar shop, cafe, and even its own festival. You can buy seed garlic from them, as well as regular garlic bulbs (actually, enormous monsters), elephant garlic (even bigger!), purple garlic, and my favourite, smoked garlic.

As well as all this, they also make a range of pickles, chutneys and relishes, which I highly recommend and have also won a few Gold Taste Awards in their time. My favourite is Vampire’s Revenge, a hot chilli and plum combo which is fantastic with cheese or ham. Sadly, I’m the only one around here who eats pickles and chutneys, so I can’t buy it often, but when I do, it’s heaven. Maybe come Christmas, eh?

As you can see, the purple garlic is a true thing of beauty… Ah, mother nature. So stylish and good at matching colours, you are. Just like me, in fact! (Snark.)

Another one of my favourite sellers is The Tomato Stall…

One of their specialities is oak-roasted tomatoes, smokey, oily little nuggets of sun-ripened sweetness in a tub. These are also bloody fantastic with cheese, and have to be bought in strictly limited quantities to prevent me turning into a heifer and being dragged off to market myself. The Tomato Stall has a blog with a post all about how these beauties are made, and what to eat them with, so check it out if your taste buds fancy a good old teasing.

It’s physically impossible for me to look at tomatoes too long without wanting to eat them, so it’s not surprising I was a sucker for these golden cherries – must be tried? Then please, my good man, fill up this bag with them so I may feast!

That’s exactly what I did, and I took them home and ate them with my fancy fleur de sel de Guerande (best sea salt in the world, don’tcha know?). Tomatoes and sea salt are delicious. I don’t care about hypertension. (Might I also add, the old salt and tomatoes trick was taught to me by the same dear old nan who used to put sugar in my coca cola to ‘get rid of the bubbles’? We’re all about health around here.)

All that and I still haven’t covered all the neat stuff at the farmers’ market? Hmm…