Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[notabitail]

My family does steamed frozen veg a lot. It does not have the taste that unfrozen has. The veggies also taste steamed.

Mmm, packaged junk is so good though. Hard to resist.

 

[MaryJanet]

I've become increasingly dissatisfied with the food I buy in the supermarkets, particularly when it comes to packaged fruit and veg. I don't want, or need, or can use up before it goes off, a family pack of something. I don't want the packaging and find it irritating that I can't properly check the contents. There used to be greengrocers. You know, shops that only sold fruit and veg.

It's the same where I live. V disappointing fresh food. The greengrocers are not much better, but at least there are 2 to choose from. The farmers' market is pretty good, but it's only once a week and such a long drive.

 

[Ladies-Eight]

Ex Batts good evening one and all!

Tea is ready.

Temperature is in the 90s with expected rain and sunny.

Have a great day!

 

[Molpet]

much to my surprise they were about the bast peaches I've eaten in the UK.

Hard to find good peaches around here too.
I use a lot of frozen veggies and fruits. Frozen peaches have been some good most not.

 

[Perris]

The food industry has been selecting varieties of fruit and veg that suit it - consistency of size, shape, colour, ability to withstand drenching with pesticides and herbicides, mechanical harvesting, sorting, and cleaning, and above all long storage and transportation etc - for decades. The eating quality, and the nutritional value, were not considered, so now we have industrial quantities of bland, tough fresh fruit and veg and the same crap everywhere. UPFs try to compensate by pulverising the toughness out and injecting lots of chemical flavour.

 

[BDutch]

In my town there are still 2 dedicated fruit/veggie shops. And 2 organic shops that sell unpacked veggies and fruits of the season. But these are so expensive, that I don’t buy there very often.

The supermarkets sell about half of fruits/veggies in plastic. Sometimes there is a choice for packed/ unpacked. Some is only packed available. I understand packed for fragile fruits like strawberries and grapes. But it annoys me the cucumber and eggplants come sealed in plastic too nowadays.

As for green beans and peas I often buy frozen organic. I buy tinned beans too, the ones that take hours to cook or still have a good taste, like black beans, kidney beans , edamame beans, corn and chick peas. I don’t buy the processed beans were they put all kind off undefined extras in and lots of salt and sugar.

On the other hand I often buy the wannabe meat packages they sell as replacement for meat. These are often too salt and ultra processed. Easy to prepare for (semi) vegetarians, but not as healthy a self prepared veggie meal from good ingredients.

Hard to find good peaches around here too.

Of course, its not the right season! And peaches don’t grow in greenhouses.

 

[Perris]

My nearest International store, there are a few within a mile radius, sells fruit and veg

There's one I use in Swansea that has an amazing range of fruits and veggies that I don't recognize and have to look up to find out what they are and what they're good for. Obviously, they're not local but exotic, so they're being flown in to satisfy the tastes of people who come from those parts of the world, now live here, and miss fresh home seasonal foods. And unless I dig a lot deeper, I don't know how they're produced where they come from; I just know they're not part of our industrialized food system.

But I wonder if, despite being flown in, their carbon footprint is actually bigger than that of home grown industrial fruit or veg, and I suspect it isn't by the time you factor in all the seed manipulation, fertilization, spraying, storage, packaging and transport that goes into supposedly 'local' foodstuffs. A worrying large number of people don't even know which foods could, never mind do, actually grow here, and which couldn't and aren't.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7116398/

 

[MaryJanet]

There's one I use in Swansea that has an amazing range of fruits and veggies that I don't recognize and have to look up to find out what they are and what they're good for. Obviously, they're not local but exotic, so they're being flown in to satisfy the tastes of people who come from those parts of the world, now live here, and miss fresh home seasonal foods. And unless I dig a lot deeper, I don't know how they're produced where they come from; I just know they're not part of our industrialized food system.

But I wonder if, despite being flown in, their carbon footprint is actually bigger than that of home grown industrial fruit or veg, and I suspect it isn't by the time you factor in all the seed manipulation, fertilization, spraying, storage, packaging and transport that goes into supposedly 'local' foodstuffs. A worrying large number of people don't even know which foods could, never mind are, actually grow here, and which couldn't and aren't.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7116398/

I once met someone at the farmers market who wanted to buy bananas. Trying to be helpful I pointed out she might have to go to a supermarket because bananas don't grow in our climate (and therefore can't be purchased at the farmers market). She was very surprised at making that connection between climate on the one hand and the availability of fruit and veg on the other.

 

[Perris]

ManueB told a story somewhere of French schoolchildren having lessons about where their food comes from, seeing and tasting them where they grow/are landed etc. It is such a basic thing every child should learn, yet few apparently do now.

 

[LaurenRitz]

I have had people surprised that they could actually grow garlic, or fruit, or seasonings. One neighbor thought almonds were an exotic and needed lots of water. She told me my almond tree would die because it was a tropical.

Although it was a revelation to me a few years ago when I learned of a pistachio grove a few miles north of where I was living. Desert zone 4, I believe.