Celebrating Fair Food Week at the Jiggety-Jig Farmers Market in #Ballarat

I trotted off jiggety-jig to market, this morning. 

No, I didn't buy the fat pig of the nursery rhyme. 

Being vegetarian, I steered clear of the meat that was available

and focussed on bread and veges. 

 The Jiggety-Jig farmers market was on this morning. 

 Local producers. 

 It costs a little more to purchase the food available at good farmers' markets 

but it is worthwhile to spend a just a little extra 

to purchase local food of good quality 

which has not travelled far from the farm; 

where you can be absolutely guaranteed that free range eggs 

are actually free range.

It is also wise to remember that
if we don't support our local producers and makers
then, one day in the not too far away,
we will lose them.
If we lose them and make ourselves slaves
to imports and cheap foreign government subsidised food,
with these people will go the skills that
ensure that we can feed ourselves.
So purchasing from the locals
is like making a down-payment on
a sort of food insurance policy.

Below is an album of my purchases. 

Some good eating is contained therein 

Deluxe and desperate dessert - yoghurt, pears, and chocolate hazelnut sauce

 

Picture from here 

Last night was a cold bleak July night in Ballarat.  I had been out for most of the day and it was too late to do the Apple Crumble I had planned for dessert. This should happen to-night.  So it was time to think outside the square or there would be no dessert at all ... and there is someone in the house who asks for it.

I have taken to the pear this winter since I substituted one night pears for apples in the Butternut, Apple & Cinnamon Soup.

What I rustled up - perhaps even invented - was a stunning close-yoour-eyes-in-rapture delight!

I had two pears and I fried them in a mixture of butter (yes, real butter!) and brown sugar. I sliced and chopped the pears into small pieces.  The butter and brown sugar melted together so I was effectively cooking the small pieces of pear in the butter & sugar mix to make a sauce.  I used Nestle's Ski Divine Vanilla Creme Yoghurt and spooned it over individual dessert bowls.  Onto this I spooned the pear, butter & sugar sauce.  Now this alone would have made a sufficient taste sensation - but there is nothing like luxury in one's desserts. 

I had in the store cupboard a bottle of Alice Langon's Chocolate Hazelnut Sauce.  It had been there for years unused.  I think I had purchased it at Simon Johnson's in Toorak.  I poured this around the circle of pear sauce.

Scrumptious! More-ish!  And the left-over of the dessert was wonderful for a Sunday morning breakfast as well.