Shopping

I always knew that the shopping was going to be the most difficult part of this challenge, not least because I hate shopping.  I have been known to make a meal out of absolutely nothing in the store cupboard, taking a long time in the process, rather than get in the car and head to the shops down the road.  My first stop was Heath's farm shop at Woodhouses, which was closed on Tuesdays - so far so bad, then went to Diana's kitchen on Melbourne common, which had some local veg (although I only knew it was Melbourne veg by reading their website, so I hope it was correct), and bought carrots, swede and parsnips.  I then headed to Scaddows farm shop where the fun began, reading labels and trying to decide where each item was from, and whether its ingredients were from the same place as the company on the label.  I knew that I would have to keep things simple, but even straightforward ingredients such as flour were difficult.  The mill in a local(ish) Leicestershire mill,  Claybrooke Mill, but each different flour had a different origin (the plain flour said it was from the UK), but no region of origin of the wheat - I think I need to do a big more googling.  The stilton was from the Vale of Belvoir which is relatively local, as far as cheese goes, but when I got it home it said it was packaged by a company in Kent - does that mean packaged in Kent?  This is obviously going to be a bit more difficult than I thought.  Even the veg in Scaddows wasn't straightforward.  The lady said that they get it from the wholesale market in Birmingham and that the Melbourne growers send their veg there, but I don't want my veg to take a trip to Brum before it ends up on my table.  I know it's a bit early for a lot of stuff and they were advertising for asparagus pickers so they do grow their own (and fruit too) but I'm going to have to watch out and not fall into any traps of thinking that farm shops sell only "local" produce.