With soup for 30 to cook, and a church morning tea to create, and boys at home in bed, Random Lunch Challenge was almost let go of.

But we sort of need lunch.

And I sort of like finding random “within budget” goodies, so I kept my eye out.
Then I thought of this place that sells any 4 deli items for $10 from a huge range.
It was just at another market on a detour home.
We parked the car and troddled off to the market and enthusiastically peroused the delights, with the stall holder enjoying our decision making process so much, she gave us an extra slab of some Spanish jamon (already having grabbed one packet). Other items were purchased for the soup and morning tea dips, so all up for a total of $20 we bagged:
a 400g of preserved lemons, a jar of grilled red capsicum, a tub of spinach dip, olive tapenade, Spanish white anchovies, Red costello cheese wedge, 2 x 300g pkts jamon, and a tub of mixed marinated olives. A loaf of crusty sour dough was thrown in free!
Whoo hoo. What a bargain! And this is what 5 of us had from that trove for lunch:

Essentially $10 worth.
We happily trotted back to the car with our goodies…
and then I saw it.
A little piece of paper stuck to our wind screen.
A $70 parking fine piece of paper. We had parked not seeing the miniscule sign that the car spot we took was in a ticketed area, not the free 1 hr signed spots right next to us that we thought we were in.
The change of mood was palpable.

It was a delicious, albeit ending up gold plated, lunch.