To Market, To Market

To Borough Market that is. It's an absolutely huge farmer's market that's within walking distance of our current flat, and we decided to give it a go today.

Stuff White People Like - Farmers' markets. Photo by Mike Peel.

It was pretty awesome. I haven't come across anything comparable in the States, and walking around and sampling everything was a ton of fun. Things that J sampled: many, many cheeses, mushroom pate, granola, and chocolate brownies. Unfortunately, we had just had breakfast, so I wasn't quite hungry enough to try any of the delicacies that were put out for sampling.

Photo by Jeremy Keith.

Judging from what I saw, the English are big fans of pork products and cheese. We also saw venison, rabbit, and spring lamb at a lot of butchers' stalls. But for the health conscious, there's an alley labeled "Organic" that houses stalls with organic and/or healthier options. J decided he had some room for an ostrich burger, and we queued up behind 20 people. While we were waiting, I spotted a sign "Warning: High Pickpocketing Risk Area." Apparently, Gavroche and his fellow street urchins also lurk in Borough Market.

Fortunately, the lined moved quickly, and J got to have his ostrich burger with cranberry sauce, grainy mustard, cheese, salad and onions. The verdict: yum. We noticed a sign saying that they used the entire ostrich. As proof, we saw giant ostrich eggs laying about, surrounded by feather dusters made from ostrich feathers. Um, okay, we believe you. Seriously, I'm scared they're going to have wallets made from tanned ostrich gizzards or something like that the next time.

Beef, it's what's for dinner. Leave me the f* alone.

By the way, they also had kangaroo burgers - can they do that? Kangaroos are way too cute for eating, they wear punching gloves and bounce around. No one talks about wanting to eat Manny Pacquiao.

But I'm delicious like lumpia. Photo by Mike Gonzalez.

It only stopped being fun when a huge deluge of people arrived, and it became a little difficult to navigate. We got stuck in a crowd right as we came across a very stinky cheese stall that was smelly enough to topple an elephant over. The wind started to kick up, so we decided to leave with our purchases of beer, raspberries, wild boar pie, and COFFEE!