- I hate what corporatism is doing to nations and peoples.
- I despise marketing, which maintains the above.
- I will not buy junk, and so most shops (supermarkets and retailers generally) do not acknowledge me as they have nothing worthwhile on offer.
- I despair at the cult of the lowest common denominator.
- I refuse to buy imported produce. Having grown up in England, I appreciate Australia as a primary producer par excellence, and it is criminal to eschew home-grown food for something laden with food miles.
- My tastebuds are still very much intact.
- As a full-time student in the midst of a career change, I have a risibly tight food budget. That story on News Ltd's website about sticking to a $35 weekly food budget? Luxury!
I shop opportunistically. I trawl the Vic Market close to closing time at the weekends, and I make good use of the slightly tired (but perfect for my purposes) half-price produce at places like Wholefoods. In spite of monetary constraints, I manage to eat a fair bit of organic produce.
I shop seasonally. Boxes of mangos, trays of tomatoes in the summer. Bags of apples, magnificent heads of cabbage in the winter.
I have a fridge full of pickles from when I got proper gherkins for $2. My mother's larder has the jam I made with the last of the summer apricots.
Today yielded quinces for $1 a kilo, to be slowly roasted with wattle seed as an accompaniment to homemade bread, coconut yogurt, muesli.
Best of all, a bag of pine mushrooms for a hysterically trifling $2. To be devoured, by me, in an act of greed justified by the grim weather and my last hurrah before I am off to the back of beyond to finish my rural GP placement (in a town surrounded by farms, but with no greengrocer, and where pickup trucks line up every night outside the fast food outlets - proof this country has a completely warped attitude towards food).
