lunedì, giugno 30, 2014

Green eating

The F-word cares more about organic food than I do because he grew up in Shepparton, a cancer/asthma hole due to the fucking disgusting farming practices there. These things tend to vary from country to country in a way that I suspect made organic produce low-ish on my personal list of knee-jerk priorities. The fact is, disgusting vermin like warm weather, Australia is a warm place, and it's fucking awash in bugs, rats and mice, and hence in pesticides. Whereas Canada, Europe, New Zealand, etc., sort things out with the help of the weather - frosts and things. As much as I enjoy insulting Australians, I daresay it's not just stupidity that makes the farmers here such avid consumers of dangerous pesticides relative to the rest of the developed world.

Also, I daresay it's not just the Australian necessity to monetarily screw your neighbour as roughly as possible that makes organic food here so fucking expensive. When a country is overrun with vermin, growing organic isn't going to be as easy as renaming yourself Harvest, having sex in a field on the solstice and hoping for the best. I understand that. But I also understand that before 2007, buying organic food here was cheaper than buying normal food in Europe, and that the exact opposite is true now.

Anyways, we're grinning and bearing it and as of a month or so getting weekly boxes of local seasonal organic produce delivered to the door. It's not too expensive, though I'm a little pissed off by how much less expensive it is in Belgium, where I got the organic deliveries to the office, and in Toronto, and in NRW (yes, I've already checked). And it saves me a buttload of time no longer spent grocery shopping, and a buttload of money as the presence of all these perishables in the fridge guilts me out of just buying pizza. And, of course, it's tastier than standard fruit and veg. Sadly, the only way to get tasty produce here - as it was in Belgium, I now recall - is buying local organic. In Belgium the reason was that so much cultivation was hothouse or transported long distances. Here I have no fucking idea what the excuse is.

Most of all, though, what I'm enjoying is the challenge. It's winter here which means winter vegetables, which I've always hated. Broccoli, cauliflower, kale, other bitter greens - have always despised them, never bought them willingly. Now we have to make friends, because I don't have the time or money to go pick out only the things I like from an organic store. I have to look up recipes, I have to think, I have to plan and strategize - ferment, blanch, saute, dice - and it's working. All of this cruciform crap is actually becoming delicious to me. I guess it was about time I grew up and ate my greens.