Supermarket Sleuths: Supermarket switch that could save you over $20 a week

My friend Mirijana goes to her local farmer's market Sun's Fresh Farm at Horsley Park in Sydney, NSW, every week, and raves about how amazing it is. It is only fruit and vegetables, nothing else.

So for this week's Supermarket Sleuths I decided to join her to see how much we could save.

I have visited my local farmer's market in the past, but it is pointedly called a "farmer's and fine food market."

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That means the money you save on fresh fruit and vegetables will likely be spent on over-priced items you don't need.

Next to my cucumbers and radish bunches I have, in the past, added salted caramel fudge, artisan sourdough bread and handmade bagels to my trolley.

Many times I've blown the weekly grocery budget in my excitement to sample these treats.

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Of late, however, I have been a much more disciplined shopper out of necessity. Grocery prices aren't going down any time soon and we are all adjusting to this new normal by saving where we can.

What I'm not happy about is having to compromise on quality to achieve this.

At your local farmer's market there are savings to be had, but I have also found that a lot of it involves bulk purchases and I just wasn't using it up, so Mirijana and I split a lot of what we bought which really helped.

What we bought at the farmer's market:

Bag of flat mushrooms, 500 grams for $6

Bunch of kale for $1.50

Bag of cherry tomatoes, 1kg for $6

Watermelon $1.50 per kilo

Pumpkin $1.50 per kilo $7

TOTAL: $37.49

So we split these and it cost us $19 each.

When compared to prices at my local major supermarket, the savings are clear.

Local supermarket prices

Flat mushrooms, $13.00 per kilo - $6.50

Bunch of kale, $4.50

Cherry tomatoes, $14.00 per kilo

Watermelon $2.50 per kilo - $28

Pumpkin, $2.90 per kilo - $6.75

TOTAL: $59.75

We saved $22.26 by shopping at our local farmers market instead of our local supermarket.

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It's not just the fact the prices are better at farmer's markets – the qualityis amazing.

My partner Shamus was meant to be taking photos for me for this article but disappeared, and I later found him with a box of fruits and vegetables including red grapes and artichokes, some spinach and green beans.

When we got home I started cooking the artichokes and washed the grapes. I ate a few of the grapes and the taste was insanely good.

I asked Shamus: "Is there something wrong with these grapes, or is this what red grapes really taste like?"

"I think this is what they really taste like," he said.

The artichokes were also flavour bombs and fresh! They took hardly any time to cook. They are my son Philip's favourite and he noticed the difference too.

We cooked kale in oil, garlic salt and a little water to wilt it and added it to most of our meals the rest of the week.

You can find your local farmer's market via the Farmer's Market website or by checking in on your local council website. They are all across Australia and are well worth the trip.

When shopping at your local farmer's market, there are some things to keep in mind to ensure you don't spend your savings on items you don't need and to stretch your grocery budget even further.

They are:

• See what is in season and plan your meals around them.

• Go with a friend or family member to split the costs of bulk offers.
• Make a plan for what you buy so nothing goes to waste, cut, prep, par boil and freeze, soups, salads.
• Avoid the more expensive offerings many farmer's markets now have such as artisan breads and confectionary.
• Visit fortnightly, what you buy will last you that long and plenty of time to use it all up.

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