I knew of 6 places around York to buy food from that I categorised as ‘interesting’, in that I considered the shopping experience to be worthwhile regardless of whether or not I actually bought anything.

Yesterday I had the satisfaction of increasing it to 7 after tripping over the new organic co-op on George Hudson Street, Out of This World. You don’t see many true co-ops these days, so I wish them the best of luck, even though I doubt it’ll have the volume of trade to last more than a year or two.

It’s realised that a good way to bring people into the shop is with a cafe area as well as the usual shelves of retail, but unlike other similar shops it looks like you might be able to get away with doing the majority of your shopping there, if you could afford the premium. They certainly had a good selection of products, including some relatively hard to come by japanese ingredients and some of their frozen mediterranean vegetable bite things made particularly good raiding food, with a drop of my home made plum chutney.

Still, it’s in a slightly out of the way location in the middle of York, so apart from when I happen to be passing by, I won’t be shopping there again in the near future. If only because their dried fruit salad is just too darned addictive and sends me ricocheting round the house on a sugar high.

I’ve recently been subjecting myself to an awful lot of cooking related inspiration, Rick Stein’s Food Heroes DVD is particularly good to watch on the laptop whilst raiding on the main computer, the Hairy Bikers’ Cook Book makes for good bedtime reading and it’s getting dangerously close to the start of this year’s growing season. Which got me thinking that there’s an awful lot in the process of Eating And Drink Stuff that you can derive interest and enjoyment from, which for an essential, routine activity can’t be bad. Some people have to really go out of their way to do stuff they consider fun.

Lazy? Me? Maybe, but I’m rarely bored.