Francois Casier working at Les Ormeaux.
Christmas seems to be a time of the long shelf life product. Mince pies, chutney, well matured cheeses, along with a plethora of enticing foods that have passed via tradition into our daily eating habits in the cold months.
Fresh food was a rarer commodity in bygone days, and the gathering of the harvest saw a hive of activity to preserve and conserve for the sparse months of winter.
Today it is an entirely different matter: Pop along to your local supermarket and pretty much anything you want is there on offer. I bought some celery yesterday that resembled a small shrub, and my husband was trying to convince me to buy some imported asparagus, which I resisted.
Still though, the evidence of the traditional foods were very much in evidence which by my reckoning is not far short of six weeks of unbroken advertising to get into the culinary Christmas swing.
Frankly , I am tired of it.
I don’t want another turkey sandwich, or another mince-pie. I want something fresh and different. You can have too much of a good thing you know, and for me that time has come.
I am counting the days until the Thouars market on Friday when I can get stuck into some serious in season veg shopping.
We have a local organic producing couple just a mile from the house called Anne and Francois Casier, and it is their stall I shall be heading to as soon as I get out of the car. They are passionate about the bio movement here in France, and their produce is both reasonable and of a high standard. Indeed they supply the fruit and veg for a monthly organic meal at my nephew’s school in their endeavours to spread the good word.
I seriously doubt that they will have any asparagus on sale, but I know there will be Jerusalem artichokes the size of a fist and several varieties of carrot, greens and potato. I daresay that all the veg, given their recent relationship with the ground they have just been pulled from will ensure that I get them at maximum freshness.
So by Friday evening, I hope to have used at least some of my purchases for a New Year’s Eve supper.
I look forward to it.
Helen Aurelius Haddock - A Writer's Blog. 
A fresh start to the New Year and a nice way to restore flagging energy from the Christmas fayre. There is a good farmers’ market in the centre of Bristol on a Wednesday, with lots of local produce and organic vegetables.