Welcome to my website and my blog. This is the first post. For those of you that don’t know, I am living in a small beachside town in the South of Morocco. I am lucky enough to be able to walk 100 metres to a local market where I do my weekly fruit and veg shop. Today is Wednesday which means market day. I was greeted cheerfully upon entrance by the parking guy, and then the lads that are running the fruit and veg stand. It was early so they were still eating breakfast. It is not uncommon for me to have 3 breakfasts a day. The first in the kitchen, the second at the market, and the third with the baker or butcher. My second breakfast today was the usual souk breakfast. Bread dipped in dark green olive oil, poured from a 2 litre plastic coke bottle. The olive oil here is divine. It was competing with the aroma from the tea being poured by he guy next to me. I asked him what was in the tea and he pointed to the bundles of herbs on display. It had 3 varieties of mint, oregano, a lot of sugar and tea leaves. Man, it was good. However the highlight of my day came later, when I ventured into the village to buy bread. I walked past the row of butchers, trying not to be distracted by the decapitated goats heads and rotting corpses proudly being displayed out the front of each shop until something caught my eye. There was a guy next to the guy selling eggs with a massive pile of glorious looking parsnips. I could actually smell them and they were covered in beautifull soil. This man was clearly from the nearby mountains as he was only selling one thing, parsnips, and im guessing that maybe these guys that aren’t actually in the market can’t afford the fees to sell in the market or something. Anyways I bought 2 kilos of the stuff and I can’t wait to cook them. Im thinking of roasting them or I might make a soup. This is what is so inspiring about shopping at a market. There could be one guy only selling peas, or tomatoes or parsnips and it makes you appreciate vegetables. So, my advice… go to your local farmers market and appreciate and support locally grown produce that is in season. Until my next post… Have a good one.