The Cottage Smallholder

when my parents owned the fruit and veg shop, we only ever used paper bags.  and any large orders were delivered to the persons house in a cardboard fruit box.  every thing was loose.  and any slightly on the turn or anything bruised were sold quick smart at a bargain basement price for soup.  Quality is what brings the customers back, I can here my dad telling me again and again.

Not a bit of plastic in sight.  and because it was loose, you could look through the boxes before you accepted them.

None of those lurker potatoes that are damaged or even worse green in a plastic bag. sweating and growing eyes.

Good times past.  I used to sit out the back whilst my dad would cash that shop up and drink hot bovril or an oxo cube dissolved in hot water.

Then the supermarkets came.  We had to shut the green grocers, the 2 newsagents and the little deli which was the light of my mothers life.  her eye glisten when she talks about that shop.  When I go home, even now, people ask me how my mother would use such and such in a recipe.  She beat the supermarkets like sainsburys with their recipe cards.  She had a big book of recipes, some written in English, some not.  it sat on a lecturn at the end of the coffee bar.  And people would come with a piece of paper or a scrap of envelope and copy recipes. And buy the items for the recipe...Although I am sure she used to give out tasters of things and left one of the ingredient out from the recipe, that gave it the just so taste. It made people come back.

My sister now has that book.  I have no clue where it is, if she doesnt.

Good times, good times.

So nothing to recycle from there.  so the real answer is to grow as much as you can yourself.  Buy from the butcher, taking a tupperware box for the meat you collect.  and have the milk man deliver.

Try not to buy other things and stop consuming things I dont really need.  I am trying.  And just by typing this is pointing out all the obvious things I hadnt thought about before.... 

English, Ukrainian, Russian, Italian.  I think that is about it.  The Italian was from a lady who worked for my parents , she was a grafter.  I think she liked it alot there, and she got to take home food that was near its date end for free.  A big condemned food item lover.

Another thing people dont do now, my parents had a local artist, come to the shop and paint the windows with christmas scenes.  now peoples newsagents are covered in red coca cola adverts.  Think Arkwrights store in open all hours, but without the till!  LOL  one was opposite a school.  I will never forget, my mum telling me one of the boys in my class (whose mother is Polish), used to buy ladies small tights, use the shop toilet and make her son wear them under his grey trousers...  I dont think anyone ever knew that.

It was also my job to make the lollipop lady a warm drink and take it out to her.