I have just returned from a stay with my family in France, one of the highlights of which is visiting the local markets. I love the atmosphere, variety and sense of occasion of the French market; the experience of shopping for food is transformed from the mundane into an adventure. My children also adore the experience, and took a handful of euros and bought themselves tiny forest strawberries, juicy peaches, crisp lettuce and bundles of broad beans from a wizened old-timer who had cycled down to market with just two boxes of beans from his garden.

Shopping at the local market is the happy antithesis of supermarket shopping; swap clinical lights and air-con for sunshine and fresh air, swap product-brainwashing for seasonal variety, swap fatty, salty unhealthy food for fresh healthy produce, swap wingeing frustrated children for interested ones, and swap the charmless and bored cashier for genuine social interaction, possibly with the person who grew the produce. Ok so maybe I wax lyrical about these things, but I am passionate about shopping and food, and the market gives a more fundamental link to the produce, its source, and the people who grew it. Food is central to our health and wellbeing, and shopping should be enjoyable and sociable; choosing new things, seeing a broad variety of foods laid out underneath the sunshine, touching and smelling things before you buy them, meeting interesting people who can give recipe ideas, or explain how they raise their livestock, and bumping into friends. I am so glad that the continental market experience has rubbed off on us, with Farmers Markets gaining popularity everywhere.

Using your local Farmers market has many benefits; it is a more fulfilling life experience, kinder to the environment, supportive of the local economy, and better for your health. Locally produced, freshly gathered seasonal produce is likely to be higher in beneficial nutrients than your average supermarket produce, and some of the things will even have been gathered that morning. Even local produce in the supermarket will have been driven to a distribution centre before being driven back to the local area, and much produce is driven and flown half way across the world, stored in refrigerated warehouses and generally treated in ways that diminish its nutritional benefits and its life. Using your Farmers Market will help reduce global warming caused by lorry and plane food miles. If you take your own basket and bags you will help cut down on the environmental havoc caused by excessive supermarket packaging. After making the effort to save the planet, your health and the local economy, go continental; sit down with your well-stocked basket, sip a coffee and watch the world go by!

To find your local market in the UK log onto www.farmersmarkets.net and for more markets, farm shops, and Pick-Your-Own try www.farma.org.uk

If you live in the US then try www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/map.htm to find markets in your state, and for Canada http://marketplace.chef2chef.net/farmer-markets/canada.htm

For more information on local food, supporting farmers, and buying organic, visit www.soilassociation.org

Next week, 3 seasonal vegetables you will find in your farmers market, and what to do with them.

Au revoir,

Vikki