Midland Farmers' Market

In case you're wondering what am I doing on a Monday morning blogging away while I'm supposed to be working, I have the day off. (Surgeon is away, no list for the entire day.) I've just returned home from my car servicing which is 500 km overdue. It's actually quite hard to estimate when I'll hit the 20000 km mark with unscheduled pick ups & drop offs. Even harder when I can only book in on a day off. It always feels so amazing driving the car that had just been serviced. It handles better, the car is more responsive & as a bonus, it gets a complimentary wash & vacuum. If I'm excited about the wash & vacuum, it can only mean how severely the hygiene part of the car has been neglected. Lol. 

So. My colleague was telling me about her weekly trips to the farmers' market in Stirling, where she lives. It piqued my interest enough to try to find 1 near me which I did. Midland Farmers' Market opens every Sunday from 7 am to 2 pm. Ordinarily, I would have preferred to go early in the morning to avoid the crowd & to avoid the midday sun. But I had yoga & I didn't want to wait another week (coz next weekend's already packed to the brim again). By the time we got there at 11.50 am, most of the crowd if any, were gone. We were able to get a parking lot easily & we didn't have to elbow throngs of people out of the way (just kidding, I don't elbow people). 

1st, we walked through to the end of the market for a quick browse. I quickly identified the stall that received good reviews for its Dark Chocolate Salted Caramel Cake on FB. We got to chatting with the stall owner, Paul & he mentioned that it was hard to get right as the different ingredients cook at different times. So the honey would be burnt by the time the rest of the cake is ready. It took him a while to perfect the recipe & he now supplies various cafes & restaurants in Perth. I got 1 slice of the cake while hubs got a slice of banana bread for $9. Even hubs agreed that the cake's pretty decent. It was a little bit too sweet for me but probably will do very well with a nice cup of tea. Here's a picture of Paul with his award winning cake, photo courtesy of MFM's FB page. 

Next, we stopped at John's artisan bread stall. That late in the day, the popular choices, namely his White Sourdough & Pumpkin Loaf were all sold out. But we did get the Potato Loaf which according to my palate is just amazing. We haven't cut into the 2nd loaf which is the Olive Sourdough but I can just imagine it lightly toasted & well buttered. Yum. The breads were going for $6 a loaf but he sold the 2 loaves to us for $10 being that late into the day. 

There were many stalls selling fruits & vegetables. Some of the stalls are big, have huge varieties & have large trucks used to transport the produce parked right behind. But 1 make shift stall caught my eye. 2 elderly men were sitting on their empty crates watching everybody pass them by. They aren't the cheapest & they had about only 5 types of produce but we both felt we should buy from them. So we got a kilo of fresh broad beans, 3 onions & 3 garlic bulbs from them. The man who served us was a bit hunched over & he wasn't walking super well as he moved about weighing our selection. They were definitely more expensive but in life, there are more important things than money. I felt great buying from them & hats off to hardworking, independent seniors.

I turned 1 onion, 3 garlic cloves & the entire batch of broad beans into a beef curry, served with sliced potato bread for dinner. That was how we spent our Sunday. Hope you've all had an enjoyable weekend too! ;)

Our loot from the MFM. Total damage: $35 including the cake & banana bread.

De-podded fresh broad beans.

Beef curry with broad beans & potato bread.