A farmers' market odyssey begins

Three weeks into my new London life, I am still finding my feet.

I have managed to avoid starvation and also shopping in the big supermarkets. So far the mainstays of my food shopping have been the ethnic grocery stores which are all around my bit of South London, and also a couple of street veg stalls in Camden. I have bought more of those £1 bowls of bananas/ peppers/ tomatoes/ aubergines/ anything else you can think of than I have previously bought in a lifetime. (Often these bowls are brilliant value, though perhaps less so with things like onions which don't cost that much at the best of times. I rather like the certainty of knowing how much I am going to spend - I guess other people do too, which is why they are popular.)

Many of these ethnic stores have a wide range of fruit and vegetables, usually in decent condition and at reasonable prices. My only quibble is that rarely does it say where the produce is from (this applies to most of the street stalls I have come across too). Now I would prefer not to buy more imported produce than I need to. At this time of year there should be plenty of English courgettes, tomatoes, cucumbers and many other things, but I have no idea where my shopping is from.

So I am going to try out the farmers' markets of London in an attempt to get a bit more traceability, if nothing else. I have an ambition to visit every farmers' market in the capital. I have no idea whether it will be the best thing I have ever done or a way of spending a lot of money on not much.

I will report back here on how I get on.