small business saturday … do you care enough?

It’s not long until the weekend, and as I pointed out in my last post, not long until Christmas either.  Even the most minimalist of families need food, and most of us like to be able to celebrate with something a little bit special at Christmas.  Curried tripe is all very well (and pretty much the only way I can eat it) but it is not what I would like to see on our Christmas table.  We are fortunate enough to be able to chose what we eat, to have plenty of it and to be able to enjoy a celebratory meal.  This post isn’t about how much to spend but how you spend it.

This Saturday is Small Business Saturday.  Where are you planning on buying your groceries?  Will it be online with Tesco or with the local greengrocer?  Some people are fortunate enough to have this around the corner six days a week.

Beautiful isn’t it?

Here is a bit more.

And a bit more.

This is Padua.  Even the best British markets and Farmers’ markets cannot compete with this and while envy is not an emotion I encourage I do have some difficulty keeping the little  green eyed monster at bay when I see pictures like this.  I was brought up in Notting Hill Gate and my mother now lives in Notting Hill (and yes they ARE different!).  She has the Portabello Road on her doostep, if anything were to persuade me to live in London again that might be it.

But I don’t live in London, nor Padua.  On the other hand I can shop at

• Monty the Butcher, with the loudest voice in the north east and the biggest smile.
• Durham Indoor Market with a fish counter, cheese and game counter, bakers, greengrocers and old fashioned sweetie shop.
• Abundant Earth,  a workers’ coperative growing  vegetables  under the permaculture method
• Robinsons the greengrocers, who have everything I could ever need and go out of their way to find even the wierdest vegetables
• The Golden Pearl, the best stocked chinese and thai supermarket outside Chinatown and a lovely onsite cafe too.
•  Humphrey’ family run bakers, you can see them rolling and kneading through the back.
• A good number of farm shops with their own butcheries

There are plenty more and as one of the founders of The Durham Local Food Network I would point you in the direction of our directory if you would like to source produce local to our county.

Yes, it IS easier to book it all online  but what are you doing with the time instead?  Going to the gym?  Running the children to some extra curricular activity?  Why not walk down your high street with them.  Why not take some exercise, educate your children on where their food comes from, interest them in choosing what you buy and how you cook it, share the cooking with them.  Shop local.  If you don’t now you won’t have the choice tomorrow.