John and I go to the Dandenong market every week to do our shopping.
We do it because we love it there! Great produce, and delicious food and gorgeous people. We use our reusable produce bags and our big cotton shopping bags to reduce the plastic waste flooding into our house.
S&G Fresh. Photo credit: Dandenong market
The butchers know us now, and wait for us to hand over our cooler bags for our meat. I love that the meat doesn't come in wrapped and packaged in polystyrene trays. We come home and put our veges away still in their cotton produce bags, and they stay much fresher that way.
There is an Afghan baker who produces yummy flat bread that is about three quarters of a meter long, and covered with a fragrant herb mixture or fresh chilli, we love taking this home and eating it toasted for afternoon tea.
Bron at Dandenong Market
It is also a joy to taste all the different delicious cultural foods on offer there, so we usually stay for lunch. On Saturday we had yummy Indian Samosas, and as usual, it took about half an hour to decide what we were going to eat because the choices there are endless.
This week we went to the market, and I was waiting for John outside his favourite grocer. The lady who was serving him (she is from Afghanistan) gave me a cheeky grin and signalled to me that John has a huge moustache, I signalled back that it was time he shaved it off, and she laughed. It was so nice to share a moment with someone from another place, and another culture, but just the same as me.
Lirim's Market Fresh. Photo credit: Dandenong market
Sometimes I am brave and ask the person in front of me in the queue how they are going to cook the interesting mystery vegetable they have under their arm. The replies are always friendly and generous, and I get a recipe involving lots of garlic!
Photo credit: Dandenong market
Now when I go into the big shopping centres they seem dead places, and people look bored and frustrated. When I look around the market people are having fun shopping in a noisy multi-cultural market, full of interesting food and delicious smells, and they are laughing.
I absolutely love living in Melbourne where there are so many different cultures and languages and ways of doing. We are blessed here aren't we.
