So where to get everyday food items?…..
This weekend I (Naomi) had a fun time sourcing pasta, fruit and veggies, bread, pulses, seeds, breakfast cereal, peppercorns, cheese, tea infuser, brown rice and other sundry items. So where did I go?
Living in Heaton I started with the Honey Tree, where I had my first plastic free lettuce (organic too – extra brownie points!), and at the Grocery lots of fruit and veg, with paper bags supplied – hooray! Next I went to the purveyors of all dried goods, many of which I had resigned myself to not being able to buy – The Food Weighhouse on Shields Road. What a place; I could get pasta, pulses, various mixes for cakes (I love a bit of lazy baking!), seeds, nuts, breakfast cereal, washing powder (although I now get my refills at the Honeytree), soup mixes and a lot of sweets. On into town, I went to the Grainger Market. Not only could I get snacks plastic free, and extras in the Fruit and Nut Company, but also all the other veggies and fruit I couldn’t get in Heaton (I had to supply my own paper bags at some stalls but everyone was very nice), the folk at Matthew’s Cheese are my new best friends who obligingly just pop their fine array of cheeses into a paper bag without the plastic sheet when they heard what we were up to, and it turns out that many other people who get their bread from the French Bakery also prefer it in a paper bag, but because apparently it keeps better. For my olive oil I made a stop at mmm where they refill bottles for you. My final stop was to Pumphreys to buy a tea infuser as I keep borrowing Duncan’s and Aurelie’s, so I thought I’d better get my own! All in all everyone was super, and I can’t speak highly enough of the Grainger Market folk who have always been very helpful and supply such a great range of things.
Unfortunately to power me on throughout all of this I went to Greggs to get a doughnut, having asked for no plastic and for the lady just to put it in the paper bag, I opened up the bag only to find she had wrapped it in a plastic sheet. But on the upside, I got hungry again, and had a very nice, plastic free, pizza slice, from the pizza man (Slice) in Grainger Market…. mmmmmmmm!
Going Plastic Free 