The Market

I go to the market once a week or so. It is about a 20 minutes walk, and has around 8 stalls inside a small shed with a tin roof. Each of the stalls sells slightly different produce - one is mostly Dominican root vegetables such as yam, yucca, pumpkins, sweet potato and a vegetable called yautia, which is either white, yellow or one they call yautia coco. I have absolutely no idea what the English equivalent is, although I suppose they are a bit like parsnip or swede but unfortunately do not have the same taste as parsnip.

The stall I tend to go to most is next to the chicken seller. The chickens, turkeys and guinea fowl are weighed and then they will kill and pluck them for you for a small extra fee.

I made the mistake of buying a turkey once for Christmas.  It weighed in at 14 lbs, but by the time it had been plucked and cleaned it can't have weighed more than 4 or 5lbs - like a chicken really, and was the toughest bird I have ever eaten in my life!

Inside you can buy all the vegetables which are really fresh. Here you can see tomatoes, peppers, aubergine, cucumber, cabbage, carrots and  the bananas hanging up.

Here is on the other side, jars of cashew nuts on the top shelf, which are grown locally, and pumpkins, potatoes, yautia behind the potatoes. When I took this picture last week she had leeks which you can see in the foreground.

The customer service is excellent, you just have to wait for the owner of the stall to finish on her mobile phone, which often takes a while!