jQuery get .text() but not the text in span

This is my jQuery part that makes my menu for my pages.

function fetchmenus() {
    $.getJSON('sys/classes/fetch.php?proccess=1', function(status) {
        // get line status
        $.each(status, function(i, item) {
            if (item.id == "1") {
                active = "class='active'";
                lastpageid = item.href;
            }
            else {
                active = "class='nonactive'";
            }
            $('<li id="' + item.href + '" ' + active + '><a href="#' + item.href + '">' + item.menuTitle + '<span class="menuspan" id="' + item.href + '"></span></a></li>').appendTo('#menuarea ul#mainmenu');

        });
    });
}

What I want to do is get the item.menuTitle in the <a but before the <span>.

Currently I do it on this way:

$('ul#mainmenu li').live('click', function(event) {
    //alert(this.id);
    $("li#" + lastpageid).removeClass();
    fetchpage(this.id);

    $("#largemenutop").html($(this).text());

    $("li#" + this.id).addClass("active");
    lastpageid = this.id;
});;

Is there a better way to do this?

Yes, you can select only the text contents of the element, like this:

 var text = '';
 $('a').contents().each(function(){
    if(this.nodeType === 3){
     text += this.wholeText;
    }
 });
 $("#largemenutop").html(text);