As a ‘foreigner’, I’m not particularly accustomed to the idea of ‘farmers markets’.  At home we have a big weekly market in Belfast (St. Georges market), but here in the US, it’s a common occurrence to have a local farmers market.

When I went to visit Amber last year, she took me to a local farmers market, stalls and stalls of fresh produce for reasonable prices, foot long fresh loaves of various types of bread, seasonings, spices, sauces and any number of crafts.  It was great! I came away with bags of stuff and didn’t spend an extortionate amount of money either.

Imagine my excitement when I discovered that Sugar Land has it’s own year-round farmers market, the Imperial farmers market.  I decided that this was the weekend to give it a shot, I was there for opening, just after 9am and most of the vendors were set up and selling.

It was smaller than I expected it to be, there wasn’t a whole big selection of stalls, but I picked up a few things to try out here at home.

Firstly, I hit up Round Rock Honey, where I picked up a couple mini bear-shaped bottles of honey for $2 a piece (gifts for people).  It was the sample sized bear-shaped bottles that sold it for me over the other honey producer there at the market.

Plus they were friendly, the guy serving was explaining to a couple of women how to ‘fix’ honey, if it’s gone funky.  FYI put it in the top rack of your dishwasher on a hot wash, it’ll fix your honey right up!

Next up I went to Cin Chili, they have any number of bottled sauces available, varying from mildly spicy, to pretty darn spicy.  Since I’m on Slimming World, I’m not overly sure of sauce syn-values, so I decided to go with some of the seasoning that they had out (they’d done pretzels coated in the seasoning that were yummy).

I went home with a little tub of seasoning – which I put straight to the test, some in mine and Col’s omlette and some in Rowan’s panini – we all thought it tasted lovely, and it’s a place I’ll most definitely go back to when I run out!

Finally, I hit up Ohh La La candles, where I picked up a few of their candle warmer blocks.  I could have done with one of every flavour – they smelled lovely, and the girl behind the counter was very friendly and accommodating.  I’ll definitely be a repeat customer here!

As I walked through the market, I was struck by just how strong the ‘hard-sell’ is here in Texas, maybe cause the place had just opened and there wasn’t much footfall, but everyone was thrusting samples under my nose, and they seemed genuinely miffed if I didn’t try their wares, or, worse still if I did try them and didn’t want to buy them.

The prices also weren’t great, at least in Iowa the prices were very comparable (or better) to store prices and you got a lot of (good-sized) produce for your dime.  However, $5 for a small basket of potatoes or the same price for a small punnet of pears, $6 for a small loaf of garlic rosemary bread or $3 for a single croissant, $5 for 4 mini-cupcakes?

It’s all a little ‘steep’ for me.  I mean, I get that they are independent business people, I get that they are trying to make a living, but if the product is priced ‘right’, chances are I’m not only going to buy it, but I’m going to become a repeat-customer.

I mean those ‘Ohh La La’ wax bars for my candle warmer, they were the same price as a Scentsy bar, however, I bought the ‘ugly’/discount bars and I got them cheaper than the own brand Walmart blocks and, as such,  like I said, I’ll definitely be back to their stall!

This week’s task will be to research some of the Houston city farmers markets and pick my next one to visit next weekend!