In 1987, a columnist whose name the archives have lost wrote a short, unsentimental guide to shopping a market in its final hour. The vegetables are tired, she admitted, but so are the prices. The stallholders are out of patience and full of stories.
Her advice holds up remarkably well: arrive after the crowd, ask what the stallholder is taking home, and never buy anything you do not intend to cook that night.
We have reprinted her column in full, lightly annotated, because the best advice about food rarely goes out of season.