I rarely get angry and I try not to rant too much… but I’m still annoyed so I figure I’ll just keyboard rage a bit. Plus it’s a good way to finally get my “vegetable empathy” thoughts out and to get a post in February lest I get caught up in life and stop posting again (my dream diary is already failing).
Basically, when I was in Adelaide, I was in food heaven. Every other person was a foodie and all the people at farmers markets were curious and bought/sold all these “osbscure” food. Plus the quality was amazing (the baby watermelons I bought were so good, I don’t actually eat watermelons in Perth because they’re just not tasty enough, and I still regret not having bought a rockmelon when the Adelaide farmer said that his rockmelons don’t taste anything like supermarket ones; I tried buying one from a Perth farmers market and didn’t like it).
I don’t see any sorrel, meyer lemons, large varieties of potatoes, davidson plums, large varieties of figs or cherries anymore. It makes me sad. At least I can get purple cauliflower, purple broccolini, heirloom carrots, watermelon radish, pink beetroot, heirloom tomatoes, purple kale and purple brussels sprouts here!
Anyway, so there was a whole chain of events leading up to this. First of all, at the farmers markets, a random passer by commented on me inspecting every tomato and putting most of them back, and only picking a few. He couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t think much of it, but then while I was lining up, he saw my artichoke stems sticking out from a bag and proceeded to say they looked a bit sad and old. I explained to him that they all look like that because the only edible bit of the artichoke is the heart, a tiny little bit of the whole thing. To that, he commented that artichokes seemed like diet food – as if you only ate it because you were trying to lose weight because of how small it was?!
Then, another time, I was buying my usual stuff (see above list of interesting things I like), when these two ladies near me were buying carrots and one said to the other, “no, don’t buy the rainbow ones, they’re too *fancy*”. And there I was with a bunch in my hand. They probably weren’t judging me in any way, but I certainly felt mildly self conscious and offended, mainly because I don’t even consider them to be fancy. To me, they were just carrots. And they were a different colour. So what. Maybe I like seeing colour on my plate and appreciate that each colour tastes different (purples have a strong carrot flavour and stains everything and has a cool yellow/white core, white carrots also have strong carrot flavour while yellows, guavas and orange are less “carroty”), and I knew these carrots could be super sweet at times.
Just before Christmas, I was at a different set of farmers markets (my local was closed) and I spotted some purple broccolini. They were really nice looking, very vivid florets, so I took a bunch. Now I may have tried to smell them or put them close to my face, and then some guy came up next to me and said how the lavender looked really good. Um, sorry man, you’re looking at broccolini – it’s obvious it isn’t lavender. They don’t smell, they don’t share the same physiology, the flowers look completely different….
And then the last straw was yesterday, not at the farmers market but instead a cheap asian grocer. I had just mentally judged an old asian lady for throwing back mushrooms, and proceeded to pick ones for myself, when this guy comes up next to me and asks me what’s wrong with the mushrooms. I took one look at him and he didn’t even have a hint of foodie hipster, so I immediately mentally set to ignore whatever it was he was going to say. Plus it didn’t actually register in my head what he was actually asking (since why wouldn’t you inspect the food you are going to eat…), so he had to ask again, this time asking me why I was putting so many mushrooms back after looking at them. I really didn’t have the energy to explain to someone who wouldn’t care what I said anyway, so I gave a simple explanation of “my parents never took the ones that had exposed frills, so I do the same.” I figured “cause parents” was as simple as I could be bothered saying. He then proceeded to just grab entire handfuls of mushrooms and put them in his bag. My real reason? Well, in addition to the above (which is true), it’s also because a lot of mushrooms were bruised (soft, dark patches), old (the stem is brown and drier than others), or have fingernail wounds (when people pick them up carelessly and end up cutting the mushroom with their fingernails). If food’s dying, I ain’t eating it.
Yes, I am a food snob. I’m well aware of it. I take only the best and as a result, I am continually disappointed by subpar stuff that doesn’t actually have anything wrong with it; that it’s just not the full potential of the food. But I am what I eat, and there’s a reason I have a nigh invincible immune system and don’t fatigue during the day (think about people who hate mornings, need coffee (I don’t actually need coffee :P), want a nap, have an afternoon crash etc), and can sleep off a fever in a night. Funnily enough, I still get poisoned by food pretty easily, but who cares about that when what I ate is delicious. I am also very conscious of not only my nutrient to calorie ratio, but also nutrient to dollar ratio. So I pay a bit more for my food. But I also get more out of it.
Which leads me to talk about vegetable empathy. Right after seeing the guy stuff mushrooms handful by handful into a bag, I was having a hard time picking potatoes. Some were beginning to sprout, others were so scrubbed that they were missing half their skin, and there were plenty with holes and even one mouldy potato. And from the corner of my eye I saw someone’s hand just grabbing handfuls of these potatoes. Makes me wonder if they just end up eating all that too. Admittedly, once cooked, it’s probably harmless. But it was just painful for me to see.
I realised that I am developing what I call vegetable empathy. It was last year that I realised just how processed washed potatoes are. In Adelaide I was buying freshly picked potatoes, complete with dirt all over them. Here, I was seeing washed potatoes and for the first time, I saw how scrubbed they were. The skins were all frayed, there were so many with dried, exposed flesh. It’s as if they went through a poor quality car wash with the most abrasive bristles. People are so concerned about paint scratches on their car, but don’t pay heed to how their food is treated. Same for carrots.
Speaking of carrots, I realised that with the size and quantity of carrots out there, that these were being mass produced. The average farmer isn’t growing vegetables, they’re growing money. I once read an article about someone visiting an “organic tomato farm” – and tomatoes were the only thing being grown in some greenhouse type thing. The visitor was appalled, because sure they were organic, but there were no nutrients due to improper soil care and lack of crop rotation. Which made me realise most food in supermarkets is this way. Sure, you think you’re doing a good thing by going vegetarian or you’re following some lofty vegan philosphy and oppose animal cruelty (which I actually totally respect), but what are you actually eating? A watery, mass produced product where the person growing it doesn’t care about its welfare. They’re just pumping them out cause the masses need feeding. Take that in contrast to your farmer who takes care, uses biodynamic practises and cycles the correct vegetables through the soil and seasons to maximise nutrients and soil health. You get a much happier, tastier (by tastier I mean “real” tasting) and nutritious vegetable. It’s the same with animals. Sure they still die, but that’s part of the life cycle and humans are omnivorous for a reason. I require my vegetables and meat to both be raised with the same ethics. You can’t say that you don’t want animals to suffer when you happily allow your vegetables to be brought up in substandard conditions, so talk to me when you understand this. Tip: the most powerful name of a dish I have ever heard of, is one called “142 days on earth”. It’s about the cabbage on your plate (Ben Shewry, Attica), because that’s all the life it gets. Less than half a year, and then it’s gone. Think about it.
And that’s why I have no money. lol.
