food rant
I've just got back from the local farmer's market. Except for cucumbers, everything was very expensive. I guess the veggies are very sensitive to the Euro/Romanian currency leu report, the price of gas and the real estate situation. The potatoes are stressed about the new Labor Code. The peas have gone green of worry for the new administrative reform. This demands a bigger price! Anyway, all the tomato and cucumber stands have a sign "Romanian tomatoes", given the E-colli worry these days. But that's a lie. Most of the tomatoes are in fact imported. The people selling them are not actual farmers, how it's supposed to be, but mere merchants. Even when the tomatoes are in season, the little local farmers have already discovered "the magic" of chemicals that ripen the fruit over night and make it bigger. I was talking to one of them, and she said that the chemical tomatoes are good, they all eat them in the family. In order to get a bigger production, they have abandoned the traditional sorts and bought seeds from Holland, Italy, etc. Nobody tests these seeds. The resulting tomatoes don't taste the same. They don't taste must, actually, even if they look very pretty. Also, I remember the yellow tomatoes that were available on the market when I was a kid. Those were delicious. Where have they gone? My grandfather managed to get a yellow tomato last year and I got the seeds - I am keeping my fingers crossed so we manage to produce it this year. Where? In the little vegetable garden we have at the firm. Funny place, isn't it? But where else could I do it? In the little balcony? In the bathroom?
Sadly, the food we buy from the local farmers' market is not organic. Farmers use chemicals without anybody teaching them how to do it and without anybody controlling them. But even if I have doubts about the authenticity and quality of the tomatoes I still buy them from the local market. I convince myself it's still better than from the supermarket. And I can recommend the cheeses and cream the local dairy farmers make. I guess these haven't been spoiled yet. Even if by present day's standards making them the traditional way may be considered insanitary. Do we really have to industrialize everything under the pretext that this way it's more safe? The practice has proven this theory COMPLETELY WRONG. Not only that infestations have often propagated in these huge processing factories, but considering the scale of the business, the effects have been widely spread.
*makes tomato salad and hopes everything will be alright*
Sadly, the food we buy from the local farmers' market is not organic. Farmers use chemicals without anybody teaching them how to do it and without anybody controlling them. But even if I have doubts about the authenticity and quality of the tomatoes I still buy them from the local market. I convince myself it's still better than from the supermarket. And I can recommend the cheeses and cream the local dairy farmers make. I guess these haven't been spoiled yet. Even if by present day's standards making them the traditional way may be considered insanitary. Do we really have to industrialize everything under the pretext that this way it's more safe? The practice has proven this theory COMPLETELY WRONG. Not only that infestations have often propagated in these huge processing factories, but considering the scale of the business, the effects have been widely spread.
*makes tomato salad and hopes everything will be alright*