Nuts

There is a stall in Sheffield's covered Moor Market called "The Nut Bar". Perhaps you are thinking it's a regular bar but for nuts like Bruce Taylor, Bob Slatten,  Meike Riley and JayCee Manx to meet up for beer and chat - but sadly, it is not that kind of bar.

No. It is just a regular market stall that happens to specialise in nuts. There are all manner of nuts there - all carefully packaged by Jack Schofield the market trader who has been selling nuts for the past forty six years. Actually, there's a team of seven staff members.

This is The Nut Bar's message to the world, "We stock every kind of nut from peanuts, cashews and macadamia nuts to wasabi or yoghurt-coated nuts, as well as fruits, dried cranberries and goji berries. Our nuts, fruits and seeds come from around the world. If we don’t have what you want, we will do our best to source it for you."

This may sound nuts but when I visited the stall on Tuesday of this week, I was not after nuts. I wanted dried apricots, dried cranberries and banana chips. It was so much cheaper to buy these items there than in a regular supermarket or health store.

I wanted these natural products  to snack upon occasionally during this phase of my life when I am trying to shed two or three stones with the assistance of weight loss medication. No more potato crisps, cheese and biscuits or late night sandwiches. Instead, bring on the cranberries and the dried apricots if you would be so kind.

But now I get to the real reason I decided to write this nutty blogpost. Each of the three packages I bought was labelled up showing the countries of origin. My apricots came from Turkey, the banana chips from The Philippines and the cranberries from the USA.

I find that a little crazy and further evidence that we do indeed live in a mad world. I get the same feeling when I see mange tout from Kenya or  strawberries from Spain or rice from Thailand in our supermarkets. All those air miles! All that fossil fuel! It was not like this when I was a boy. Most of what you ate was seasonal or it came from our own island - not from some faraway place. 

To add to the nuttiness and hypocrisy, this evening I  booked a little holiday in Egypt. A seven day Nile river cruise from Luxor to Aswan and back. We will be seeing some of  what remains of Ancient Egypt and perhaps also  fields of green beans being harvested by Tesco, Sainsburys and Aldi. That's 95 days away in early March. Something to look forward to as we emerge from  the bitter depths of winter.