Thursday, September 01, 2005

Do You Eat These?

While grocery shopping today I had to hide my amusement as the young man behind the counter had to ask me what most of my fresh fruits and vegetables were.
"Cabbage or lettuce? Oranges or tangerines?"
He handled the food as if it were dangerous. Poor guy.

Anyway, he reminded me of something that happened several years ago.
I was buying fresh beets. I often grow them, but not every year. So I bought some -- nothing yummier than fresh beets, and my homemade pickled beets are good, too. But I digress.
I got to the cashier and he picked up the bunch of beets (three bundled together) and asked, "What are these?"
"They're beets."
"Oh. I've never seen them other than in cans. Do you eat these?"

Oh. My.

And I won't get into that he tried to charge me $15 dollars for three beets. ("It said $5 each. I didn't know that meant each bundle. I thought it was for each beet," he told his manager when I questioned the price and he called her over.)

Anyway, all this pointless blathering just to say it seems sad that so many folks these days can't figure out what food is if it doesn't come from a fast food joint, or get dumped out of a box.

As for me, I bought fresh lemons to make lemon curd, no preservatives or additives. I'm going to grind some grain, bake some scones, fix some cucumber sandwiches, and have a cuppa tea.

Here's to real food, fixed fresh, not out of a box.

1 Comments:

At 03 September, 2005, Blogger Amy Butler said...

Lor, this reminds me of a (terrible) chapel we had to sit through last year where a Menninite couple presented various case studies on what Menninite people of our age (college) think faith should be and what attitudes people should hold, etc. Anyway, so they were reading one about a person who wished that people would become more aware of their natural surroundings and recycling and something about growing food and then there was a comment about returning to people knowing where their food came from. Disgruntled both with the chapel and that this person would insult my intelligence by saying that I didn't know where my food came from, I said a little loudly, "From the grocery store, of course!" In the large auditorium, it wasn't loud enough for any more than the people around me to hear, but a few of them chuckled.
How sad, though, that there are some people like the grocery store cashiers.
Ooh, and PS. I have the biggest brown thumb! My sister once brought home a cactus growing kit for me from Arizona. I couldn't grow a cactus! Maybe I waited too long and the seed dried out (I didn't wait quite a while) or maybe I drowned it, but that just kinda proved to me my ultimate failure at gardening.
Cheers, Lor!
Amy

 

Post a Comment

<< Home