I've been getting my hands extremely dirty today, but fear not, I haven't been claiming expenses for 'duck islands', toilet seats or mock tudor beams - we have perfectly capable elected representatives for that. Literal dirt rather than political dirt was the order of the day, as I went up to Stoke Newington's weekly farmer's market this morning with my better half.

Inspired by Joanna Blythman's superb book 'Shopped' (review to follow soon) and an extreme hatred of shuffling around a zombie-infested Tesco, I decided to check out alternative ways of purchasing the weekly shop.

For far too long now, UK consumers have been accepting poor quality, unripe fruit and vegetables from supermarkets that are shafting UK suppliers on price. Yet we continue to flock there in our masses, under the illusion - and a false one at that - that supermarket vegetables are cheaper.

Apart from proving an infinitely more pleasurable experience, the visit to the farmer's market yielded some positive results. We managed to buy a selection of cheap, organic produce from the farmers that had harvested them only literally the day before - no sitting in supermarket depots for these vegetables!

As you can see from the picture above, these vegetables look ten times more appealing than supermarket produce and in fact, collectively, cost less - don't believe supermarket lies! From now on, I'm going to try and make a concerted effort to buy the majority of my fruit and veg from the farmer's market.