On Thursday, it was time for my bi-weekly food shopping excursion – a very exciting event, especially when you consider the fact two weeks of breakfasts, lunches, suppers, and snacks left me with little more than a jar of pasta sauce, ketchup, and some crackers.

However, while I do enjoy restocking my shelves and refrigerator, the thought of heading to a grocery chain after work (or any time, for that matter) doesn’t do all that much to put me in a good mood. The bright, fluorescent lights, shelves and shelves of the same product with different names, long line-ups at the cash, and – my favourite – those self-serve checkouts with their computerized-voices giving you instructions that remove all human contact from the experience, really don’t do much to make grocery shopping all that pleasant.

Saturday, however, was a different story: hoping to find some flowers for my balcony garden and pick up some supplies for a small barbecue that evening, I headed to the Atwater market. What a wonderful and colourful breath of fresh air! The parking lot was lined with merchant selling every possible type of annual and perennial; vendors displayed their fresh fruits and vegetables to get people’s mouths watering; inside, the smell of fresh bread wafted through the air, and the butchers and fish mongers were hard at work helping shoppers choose the best cuts.

In the past few years, market shopping has quickly become a favourite activity of mine. While I don’t live in the West Island anymore, stopping off at the Marché de l’Ouest always brings back good memories – whether it’s pumpkin shopping for Halloween, or picking up strawberries, blueberries, and corn fresher than anything you’ll ever find in a grocery store. The smaller farmers markets in cities like Pointe Claire, Ste. Anne de Bellevue and Dorval are also great places to pick up fresh, locally grown food on your way home from work or while on a leisurely weekend walk or bike ride down Lakeshore.

If the option is there, I try to choose farmers markets over grocery stores for a number of reasons. First of all, everyone has been talking about “going green,” and market shopping is just one way of doing that. Buying locally means your food travels less of a distance from the farm to your kitchen. This results in less fuel used for transportation and less pollution sent into the atmosphere. Also, items bought at a farmers market tend to use up less packaging than many grocery store products, meaning less styrofoam, plastic wrap, and other packing materials will end up in landfills. You can even take that extra step and bring your own reusable shopping bag instead of taking your goodies home in plastic bags.

Walking through a farmers market has always been a much more pleasant experience compared to trekking through a grocery store, for me, anyway. The atmosphere at the market most likely has a lot to do with that. People at markets – both the shoppers and the vendors – always seem to be in a great mood. It’s a much more leisurely and fun experience. Every weekend, I see countless friends, families and couples young and old head down for some time at the market to shop and simply just enjoy the day. And mingling with the vendors as they boast about the products they have to offer can be quite entertaining as well. An added bonus is that shopping locally helps support farmers from right here at home and keeps your neighbours in business.

And there is just something about cooking with and eating fresh food. Food from a farmers market does not generally spend days traveling in a container or on a store shelf, and has not gone through very much processing. Not only is that better for your health, but the colours and flavours of your cooking will also be more robust and enjoyable. Now that’s something to say cheers to – with a glass from the Eastern Townships wine route, of course.