I just got back from a little shopping and something isn't right. I was wandering the Woolworths store here (Woolworths in NZ means supermarket rather than cheap and cheerful gubbins shop. In the States the same name belongs to another kind of shop altogether. I think they're still all owned by the same group, but as my internet costs have quadrupled and I'm being extremely tight-fisted with online time at the moment I'll have to get back to you on this one) looking for, I believe my mental list was "cheapo own-brand bread, cheapo own-brand pasta, cheapo own-brand tuna in bland cheap flavourless nothing juice, and two servings of meat so cheap it's begun a second life" but I was distracted almost immediately by some discounted peppers.
Now first off, the price of bell peppers - or capsicums as the rest of the world but the British would have them - is both outrageous and disgraceful, and if it wasn't for the fact they're so damn useful and tasty I would boycott them and possibly picket the odd supermarket to boot, and secondly I would love to know where all the properly sized ones go to; you know, the ones actual chefs use on TV and in cookbooks. I'll be buggered if I'm gonna believe the meagre little offerings in the supermarket veggie section are the best that capsicum growers the world over can manage, because when Delia stuffs a pepper just to pick each one up she's gotta use both hands, and they disappear to the elbows when she spoons in the filling.
Thirdly you may have noticed that my theme tune for the day was something like `Those old cheap-time rags-for-trousers blues` because I am, of course, bleeding money from a deep gash in my common sense.
So I did my shopping and inevitably became a little distracted again and again, and bought a few extra things, notably as I passed the gypsy-special-no-point-stealing-'em-it's-so'cheap tuna, I spotted the anchovies and remembered Piedmont peppers. I happened to have picked up red ones earlier in the store, and with anchovies as well all you really need are some tomatoes, oil and garlic, and I already had the last two.
Tomatoes tomatoes tomatoes.... they have to be small (very small, to fit into these peppers) and indeed there were only packs of 6 available in the right size, which is to say a size more closely resembling cherry tomatoes rather than the regular salad variety. Anyway I got to the till and paid. Or at least, I got to the till and there it all went a bit weird. You see, I was vaguely hoping to be able to pay cash, simply because I had a $20 note left and didn't especially want to spend more than that. With only three items left my total stood at a couple of bucks under twenty, and I hoped it would just scrape in - a half-kilogram of pasta I knew to be only 97 cents, which I remembered because that is less than 40 British pence and frankly I was impressed. There was a chance it would be okay, but with the final two tallied I was looking at the wrong side of thirty sodding dollars - a total of $30.36c, in fact.
Those bloody tomatoes had cost $5 and the peppers, which I suppose I should never have trusted in the first place the sneaky devils, were costing me more than $5.50, so even with some cheap own-brand bread I was unwittingly forced to part with half as much again as I wanted to. But this isn't the point: the point is that I also got two servings of meat that was not only well within its useable date but was also exceptionally cheap. A quarter of a kilo of lean pork for only $2.65 and 400g - the best part of a half-kilo - of BBQ marinated rump steak for just $3.88.
That's enough steak, at a push, to feed three people, admittedly with a bit of salad or potatoes or something, but the main part of a meal for three for £1.50 - and steak, too.
So what are people to think about nutrition and proper eating when they cannot buy half a dozen very small tomatoes for less than five dollars, but they can get a Big Mac for exactly 30cents less than that? That fresh meat is so cheap is worthy of applause but that it costs twice as much for some tomatoes which could maybe just about constitute one serving of food for one person, as it does for enough steak to feed three?
Most vegetables in NZ do seem rather expensive, it has to be said. But I suppose against a backdrop of meat so cheap it would frankly be rude to be vegetarian, and staples like pasta or rice that can feed families for a whole week for a couple of dollars, it almost seems like there is little room for honest-to-goodness veggies at the kiwi table, and I think that is a bit of a shame.
