Wednesday
Market day for Dutch farmers' cheese in Woerden and Edam and for Basque cheese in Ordizia, and a dairy-free day in Orthodox fasting.
Wednesday is a market day for cheese. In the Netherlands, Woerden's working farmers' cheese market has met on Wednesday mornings for more than a century, and Edam's summer market is a Wednesday affair. In the Basque Country, Ordizia's Wednesday market has run for centuries. In the Orthodox churches, by contrast, Wednesday is a weekly fast day when dairy is set aside.
The Dutch Wednesday markets
Woerden's cheese market is a real trading session, not a show: every Wednesday morning, farmers who make boerenkaas, farmhouse Gouda from raw milk, meet buyers and the market master to set prices. Edam's market, on Wednesday mornings in July and August, is a reenactment of the old trade, with porters, weighing and handjeklap, the clapping of hands that seals a deal. Both keep alive the weigh-house trade of the seventeenth century.
Ordizia and the Basque Wednesday
Ordizia, in Gipuzkoa, holds a weekly market on Wednesdays where farmers sell vegetables, fruit and Idiazabal cheese made from latxa sheep's milk. The prices set there were long a reference for the region. On the Wednesday of its Basque Festival in September, the town judges and auctions the year's best Idiazabal.
An Orthodox fast day
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, most Wednesdays and Fridays of the year are fast days without meat, and strictly without dairy, eggs, fish, wine or oil. Observant households cook beans, vegetables and grains on those days, and cheese returns on Thursday.
Traditions
- Woerden cheese market: A working Wednesday market for farmers' cheese.
- Edam cheese market: Wednesday mornings in July and August.
- Ordizia market: A Basque Wednesday market of farm produce and cheese.
- Orthodox Wednesday fast: A weekly day without meat or dairy.
The cheeses
Sources and further reading
Written by the EveryCheese desk with AI assistance. Customs differ by community and family, and are described here as tradition, not instruction. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Friesian Clove: Takeaway, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Edam: Yvwv, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Idiazabal: Xavigivax, CC BY-SA 3.0, source