The Truffler: Borough Market, Wakefield Festival of Rhubarb, Herefordshire, Fairtrade Mark food

London's cooks and food fanatics are always banging on about Borough Market. Must be a bore if you live in Boroughbridge or Basingstoke. If it's the former, sorry, we still can't help you. But Basingstoke now has its own mini-me Borough Market. The new Festival Place shopping centre incorporates a permanent fresh food market – thought to be the first in a just-built retail and leisure development. The covered market originally opened last year only on Wednesdays and proved so popular it's now there from 9am to 6pm from Wednesday to Saturday. The half-dozen regular stalls are familiar from Borough: Jan McCourt of Northfield Farm, whose rare-breeds meat is a winner, was also one of the market's instigators; he (not always in person) is joined by Flour Power's bread stall, Turnips' veg and the Handpicked Shellfish Company's seafood. On Saturdays there are more stalls and the market extends outside.

London's cooks and food fanatics are always banging on about Borough Market. Must be a bore if you live in Boroughbridge or Basingstoke. If it's the former, sorry, we still can't help you. But Basingstoke now has its own mini-me Borough Market. The new Festival Place shopping centre incorporates a permanent fresh food market – thought to be the first in a just-built retail and leisure development. The covered market originally opened last year only on Wednesdays and proved so popular it's now there from 9am to 6pm from Wednesday to Saturday. The half-dozen regular stalls are familiar from Borough: Jan McCourt of Northfield Farm, whose rare-breeds meat is a winner, was also one of the market's instigators; he (not always in person) is joined by Flour Power's bread stall, Turnips' veg and the Handpicked Shellfish Company's seafood. On Saturdays there are more stalls and the market extends outside.

* Wakefield Council has done such a grand job of celebrating the annual emergence of forced rhubarb (appears earlier, prettier and less sour and stringy than the outdoor variety), and promoting it as a delicacy that the once reviled purgative stalks have been rehabilitated as a desirable dessert. Wakefield is the southern apex of the Yorkshire rhubarb triangle – the area where most of it grows and which, 100 years ago, used to send a daily consignment to London on the Rhubarb Express. The Wakefield Festival of Rhubarb ends this weekend with a Rhubarb Farmers' Market in the City Centre Precinct until 4pm. Local produce and more of the pink stalks than you can shake a stick at includes rhubarb jams and rhubarb cheese – like Wensleydale with a vein of pink running through it. Bookings for candlelit tours of the warm, damp, dark sheds where the pink stalks are grown are being taken for next year.

* Another one to arrange well ahead. My fellow Independent columnist Brian Viner would have us believe that Herefordshire is where it's at. Food-wise, many would agree with him. Ceci Paolo, the "cook's emporium" in Ledbury, has a lively programme of events, some of which get booked up way in advance. There's still the chance to join Sri Owen, who is cooking South-east Asian starters, Indonesian sushi and Khmer chicken from her book New Wave Asian, on 12 March, Ursula Ferrigno in April, and Anna del Conte in May. Baker and Slow Food mover and shaker Dan Lepard's hands-on bread-making workshop on 19 March is sold out, but they're taking down names for the charismatic Australian bread-head's next visit to Herefordshire in the summer. You have to move fast in the country. Call Ceci Paolo on 01531 632976.

* The Fairtrade movement is gathering momentum and picking up more fruit on the way. Sales of Fairtrade Mark food have more than doubled in the past three years. Now pineapples join the teas, coffees, chocolates, bananas, and (for some of the year) mangoes, that give third world farmers a fair deal -- and the Co-op a good name. All the Co-op's pineapples come from an association of 40 growers in Costa Rica and carry the Oké Fairtrade label; the store's own chocolate bars use fairly traded Ghanaian cocoa; its instant coffee, fruit juices, teas and coffees, and two Chilean wines are also fairly traded. Incidentally, Oxfam sells fairly traded teas, coffees and Divine chocolate, but is discontinuing its own brand to concentrate on names like Traidcraft and Cafédirect. I'll miss Oxfam's delicious muscovado sugary milk chocolate but Divine's 100g bar of hazelnut milk chocolate is irresistible, too.

* Home truth time. Our wok wielders have been putting Ken Hom's new £62 wok from the Sensai range through its paces. A handsome beast, it's made of cast aluminium with a non-stick coating, and a handle that doesn't heat up. It's the right size for most uses, but it's fairly heavy, and seemingly designed more for slower cooking with a lid on – the wok didn't get hot enough to sizzle. Maybe that's what the shallower, flatter-bottomed and £10 cheaper stir fry pan is for. But who has space for both? The five Sensai pans 'inspired' by Ken Hom come with a 52-page book of his recipes, only five of which – one per pan – are in English, from Lakeland Limited (015394 88200) and larger department stores.