The Truffler: Farmers' markets, Food Lovers' Fair at Dunorlan Park, Curiosities of Food

Expect a stampede of squeaky-clean wicker shopping trolleys trundling off to the new farmers' markets in west London this month. Coinciding with this being farmers' markets month, and with activities at existing markets (www.farmersmarkets.net for details), new markets are setting out their stalls. There's now one in Hammersmith every Thursday (at St Paul's Green), Putney on Friday (at St Mary's Church on the bridge), Parsons Green on Saturday, and Kensington on Tuesday (in the car park of the Odeon cinema, opposite the Commonwealth Institute) and Friday in Lancers Square off Church Street. They're being organised by Tim Diamond-Brown, the man responsible for setting up the farmers' market in Barnes two years ago. He picked areas of London that he was pretty confident would let out a well-enunciated whoop of joy at the arrival of fine produce. There are Aberdeen Angus steaks, organic apple juice, ostrich, rare-breed meats and heaps of autumnal fruit and veg at this new crop of markets to fill shoppers' baskets with.

The Food Lovers' Fair at Dunorlan Park, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent this weekend fields 100 speciality food and drink producers who have had to meet the high standards of Henrietta Green and her sniffer dog, Violet, to get a stall. Those that have made it past quality control include L'Atelier du Chocolat, supplier of sublimely dark and silky chocolate in flavours lemon-and-thyme, verbena, passion fruit and tobacco; Herdwick lamb from Cumbria; rare-breed meats; Kentish cobnuts and Medown Cedaridge Dairy's goats' and ewes' milk cheeses. TV chef Brian Turner, Caroline Waldegrave, Clarissa Dickson Wright and the author of Henrietta Green's Farmers' Markets Cookbook will all give cookery demonstrations. Admission is £5 today and tomorrow on the gate, 10am to 5.30pm. Visit the website www.foodloversfairs.com for details, and for a picture of Henrietta and Violet.

Talk about eating anything from anywhere: Curiosities of Food by Peter Lund Simmonds has been republished in a facsimile of the 1859 edition by Ten Speed Press. It is a singular work. Of the common opossum, eaten in some states of America, he says with typical elegance and absence of squeam: "their flesh is, however, white and well-tasted; but their ugly tail puts one out of conceit with the fare." There is, alas, no alphabetical index from which one may turn rapidly to a particular species, although the chapters headed quadrumana, birds, reptilia and so on are broken down into a taxonomy of anecdotes and first-hand experience of eating them. I cannot recommend it to vegetarians. Concluding with a call for animal welfare and the preservation of species, it takes gastronomic relativism too far for most tastes. "Now, while we are prone to ridicule others for their choice of food delicacies, we should look at home. Our epicures are extremely fond of woodcocks cooked ungutted, and the standard dishes of Scotland, the haggis, sheep's-head, tripe and black puddings, are not palatable to every one." Nor might Curiosities of Food itself be. But if Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall does not already own an original copy, I expect his friends will be spending £14.99 to give him this edition.

Do you suffer from dining dilemmas, culinary crises or drink problems that Truffler and my styful of experts and connoisseurs can help you with? Where to go for that hilltop anniversary dinner, the best tool for the job, the chef's wrinkle for the worried cook, the appropriate bottle of wine or the mail-order goldmine. We are asked for our advice often enough; now it's official and, though we can't promise overnight solutions, we'll make a concerted effort to come up with answers that will help our readers, and print them here. E-mail Truffler@ independent.co.uk or write to Dear Truffler, The Independent, 191 Marsh Wall, London E14 9RS, and the pig will try to please.