Broadway Market

Spirits are high today at Broadway Market, London has seen the storm clouds finally part to reveal a light steel blue sky only slightly tinged with the dull grey that has been part of our lives for the past six months. The sun is making every effort to shine and is intermittently succeeding, flooding the concrete with a glow that makes people fall in love with London. Happy faces all around, people whistling and singing, everyone wanting to know how you are, wishing you a nice day. Everything is better when the sun shines.

Today I'm on the hunt for proper pasture-raised beef fed and eggs from chickens free to roam green fields where they can nibble bugs and worms. Yum. 

And this is exactly what you can find at Wild Beef. Having only ever been to Broadway Market later in the day, I've never seen this stall in all its glory. Today they are fully stocked with vacuum packed cuts of beef, chicken, veal and pigeon. Free range organic eggs are on sale here as well as free range organic butter and cream. Today the gentleman behind the stall, Richard Vines, is giving away huge chunks of beef suet too, which I nab along with some eggs. It's great to be able to speak to directly to the producers and Richard advises me upon questioning that I can indeed render the suet down to tallow, use it in baking or feed it to the birds.

I go on strolling through the relatively quiet market praising myself for managing to get here so early, it seems like the perfect arrival time is around 10.30am when things are just gearing up. Today I find raw milk on sale, which send me into overexcitement as I've been scouring the internet for it for three weeks. The stall-holder tells me they usually run out by the afternoon but today they are well stocked. In my excitement I forget to photograph the stall but get the name: Downland Produce.

It isn't all food though, the market sees an array of organic stall-holders alternating attendance. I'm drawn in by the floral scent emanating from a Shea butter cosmetics stall. At Shea Alchemy there is a small range of skincare, cosmetics and toiletries with product testimonials from Marie Claire. 

The intense hand cream comes in five scents: English rose, French lavender, Orient, Geranium and Organic lemon & bergamot. On first try my thirsty hands soak up the cream quickly without leaving any greasiness behind. And the geranium scent is refreshingly long lasting.

And no trip would be complete without having a sweet treat, so I head over to The London Marshmallow Company. Their display of beautifully pastel coloured cubes sucks me in and they have tasters available. Bonus.

Just look at those! Who could resist?! I'm taken by the standout colours of the Elderflower and Blackcurrant and to go with that I choose a Cherry and Almond along with a marshmallowy take on Strawberries and Cream.

What a perfect finish to the sunny morning!

Coco Wood Kitchenware

Rather than the usual 1pm rude awakening when the world becomes unbearably noisy and you have no choice but to open your bleary eyes, rise from your not-really-sleep-because-I-passed-out-fully-clothed-when-I-got-home and immediately brush your furry teeth, it's sometimes pleasant to jump out of bed on a Sunday morning bounding like a gazelle and ready for the day. Only sometimes.
On occasions such as this, it's an East London rite of passage that you must be out of the house by 10am because you have to attempt to avoid the crowds at Columbia Road flower market, though they inevitably still beat you there every single time.
Perusing the endless flower stalls isn't really what it's about. More soaking up the atmosphere of irate boisterous middle aged women trying to get to antique wooden cargo boxes through 500 miles of relentlessly thick clods of tourists. Once you get past how busy it is, it's actually a lovely way to spend a morning. The street is lined with antique jewellery shops, second hand books, handmade cake stalls, independent stationers and even a wine shop with seats inside where you can enjoy an early morning glass of champagne, should you need it.
Along the wider end of the road where the flower stalls peter out, is home-ware shop Nom Living. Distinctive with its tables of unusual wooden utensils outside, inside the shop you can find an array of unique coconut wood kitchenware, colourful lacquer bowls and trays, spoons made from shell and horn and rustic uneven ceramic crockery.
I picked up this coconut wood pestle and mortar:

With the wood being so smooth, the inside bowl is designed with circular indentations to help grind herbs and spices.

The coconut wood has dark flecks running along the grain, so when cut across the grain these show as dots or when cut with the grain, as long lines. Using the wood to carve a shape with rounded areas adds to the striking effect.

The collection was getting a lot of attention in store. It was like a bartender had just announced free shots for the first 50 customers, the area around the collection was three-deep.

Not only does the pestle and mortar look pretty sitting on the work surface but having never seen kitchenware like it, anything from the coconut wood pieces would make unique gifts too. 

You can get them online here but for the real experience, get there on a Sunday morning to fight your way through the hoards. It's worth it.