Hard to believe after Friday's gorgeous day, but I woke up this morning to snow. The view above is from my front door, looking toward the vineyard. A good day to be inside stitching. I am almost finished the border on the bears so will have a picture for you soon.
In the meantime, here's the Appalling Food Stuff of the week. My grocery order arrived (it gets sent over on the ferry) with a substitution - a sweet potato instead of the jewel yams I had ordered. This one might be organic, but it comes wrapped in paranoia. Why oh why would someone decide that shrink wrapping a potato would make it more appealing to consumers? It's already been triple washed for god's sake. And, as can be seen by the bad spots showing through the plastic, the wrapping serves as more of an incubation chamber than any kind of protection. I puzzled over the ready-to-eat statement too. Was it pre-cooked? No, just an ordinary raw vegetable. The small print gives preparation instructions: Microwave for 5-7 minutes. Then it issues a warning to beware, the cooked potato may be hot! Not only does it give the consumer no credit for being able to cook, it implies they may be complete idiots as well. Why bother spelling it out? The intended customer probably can't read.
If this is indeed the organic food of the future, count me out. I'll stick to growing my own.
P.S. I wrote a letter to the grocery store complaining about this item and asking them not to stock overpackaged produce. For more on the company Tomorrow's Organics, check the comment by Anonymous (my friend Jean-Pierre) in the comments below. Thanks for your research J.-P.!
Enjoy today's stitching Heather.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that you have to order your food and have it delivered.
be well and safe this holiday season and may you continue with your amazing creative projects in the new year.
Beautiful photo of the vineyard. I thought at first the potato was a HAM! What nonsense, wasteful and down right annoying. Of course it will spoil more quickly that way, I think. And anyway, take an organic potato and wrap it in who knows what kind of plastic to leech into it. My word....
ReplyDeleteI am totally gobsmacked. Shrink-wrapped organic yam? With directions included. Yikes. Yes, I've seen some fruits and veggies in the stores wrapped to keep them from shriveling or to keep several small items together but this overkill to a ridiculous level. Hope it's not an expanding trend. Difficult to avoid getting the wrong thing though when you can't pick your own, huh?
ReplyDeleteaaaarrrrgggghhhhh, that potato makes me cross. Why on earth?! Definitely an incubator of the most unsavory kind. But the weaving underneath is very nice ;>]]
ReplyDeleteI, too, am curious about a grocery order sent on a ferry...is there no *local* organic food to be purchased on home turf???
People are curious about the grocery delivery. There are no stores on Lasqueti, although there are market gardeners who supply lovely fresh organic produce during most of the year. But things like yams and oranges don't grow here, and even though I try to eat local as much as possible, now and then stuff must be ordered from the "other side", ie. Parksville. I place an online order with Quality Foods and they do the shopping and deliver it to the ferry for a $10 fee. Usually the shoppers do a great job, but in the case of the nasty sweet potato I wish they had called and checked.
ReplyDeleteThat sweet potato comes to you courtesy of Tomorrow's Organics, which is one of the 74 companies under the umbrella of C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc. According to the the info I found, most of the companies are related to transportation logistics and farming. Welcome to corporate farming. Well, most of our food these days come from offshoots of major corporations. It's all very Margaret Atwood, don't you think?
ReplyDeleteRecently I bought some mini-tomatoes in a supermarket in Japan. They had been shipped over from the U.S. They were in the bargain bin (close to expiration) and half price so I thought I'd give them a go. They didn't taste very good to be honest but they kept in my vegetable crisper for a couple of weeks without any sign of spoiling. Remarkable endurance. It makes me wonder what genes have been spliced into that particular variety of tomato. I think I'll stick to the local tomatoes from now on.
oh good grief! I haven't seen that level of pkg. yet in my local supermarket. But...it looks very Japanese, fruits and veggies beautifully, individually wrapped in all manner of plastic and costing a small fortune. I love that you actually follow through and let the supplier know what you think.
ReplyDelete