FOOD MUTTERS

Damnit I’m pissed off with the quality of our food locally these days.

SA produces some of the finest fresh produce in the world, and we peasants back home get to eat the scrap. And it’s not about price and choice – there is no choice.

Not suitable for local consumption

Fruit is tasteless and hasn’t been ripened properly (in the sun on the tree) It is now 18 YEARS since I had an orange worth eating, and those I had to buy at the co-op packing plant in Kirkwood in the Eastern Cape, and they were what some of you oldsters may remember as ‘Outspan’ or ‘Uitspan’ Oranges. Recently I had half a bag of so called oranges (I don’t know where it came from), tried to eat one – chucked it. The rest I tried to turn into juice – less than half a glass from half a bag. Fuck that.

Every now and again I used to buy two pieces of fruit, be it apples, peaches, or such. Tried to eat one, and really had to force myself to finish as I really hate wasting. Gave the others away. I haven’t bothered for over a year now; there’s better things to waste money on. Tomatoes (love fresh tomatoes with that sharp, tart nourish flavour); these days tomatoes have no flavour at all

Vegetables: Potatoes; damaged by the harvesting machine and culled out from the real stuff going to places like Europe, invariably infected with one or another strain of potato virus, or otherwise unpleasant. Green beans – spend ten minute sorting through the green-grocers stock to find 200g worth buying. Fresh green peas (a favourite) haven’t had since the last time I grew my own 17 years back – only frozen peas now – fresh cannot be found apart from occasionally those ‘baby things’ that haven’t grown enough yet. The list could go on and on.

We used to feed rubbish like that to pigs, so we could eat the (fat) pigs…

Has it got to the point where if we want top grade fresh produce in South Africa, we have to repatriate it BACK to SA from overseas?

Lean underdeveloped meat

Meat: Farm livestock has my deepest sympathy. The poor things are evidently made to work extremely hard on minimal rations. WHERES THE BLOODY FAT?. I haven’t bought a piece of steak for at least 3 years. Delicious rump with 2cm layer of fat and marbling throughout the meat – doesn’t exist. The poor cows are being deprived of nutrition (perhaps it’s all the media’s effort to get humans to eat cow food – fibre, cereals, and other indigestible things). Mutton; what’s mutton? Lamb, lamb, lamb is all there is. A few years back I was looking for ‘vetstert’ or mutton fat-tail to julle uitlanders. Oh please, one butcher didn’t even know what vetstert was!!!! I actually spent two entire days visiting every butcher shop I could find in the greater Johannesburg Metropolitan area, as far afield as Krugersdorp and Springs.
On the third day I went to the City Deep Abattoir. Guess what, NO Fat Mutton. No fucking mutton at all, Just lamb, lamb, more lamb. That was around August, and I had a lot of venison and every boertjie knows the best fat to add to make droe-wors is from vetstert. At the end of the year I travelled back from PE through the Karoo, home of the mutton farm – Do you think I could find fat mutton? Right, No Way!

Sometimes I absolutely CRAVE red meat fat – My body screaming it needs it!

I’m a restaurateurs’ nightmare. I have on occasion sent a steak back three times. Eventually the chef comes out to ask what the trouble is… RARE means RARE, not well done, not medium well done, nor medium. Bleue!!! And where’s the bloody fat?

I’m paying for it, if it’s not what I want it’s going back to the kitchen, If it’s not what I want, I am not going to buy it, from shop, supermarket or anywhere else!!!

But anyway, I very seldom dine at restaurants. I just happen to prefer to eat food I have prepared and cooked myself. (And grown, hunted, culled, slaughtered, or caught as it may be, myself, too, if at all possible)

Turkey. Don’t tell me nobody in South Africa farms turkeys. But the only birds in the shops are those disgusting ‘self-basting’ things from South America, injected with all who knows what carcinogenous chemicals. I am quite capable of basting a turkey myself, thank you.