Good produce is getting harder and harder to scource.

[peter]

Gosh how my heart goes out to the young generation. They will [it seems to me] never know the pleasure of bitting into a peach so soft and juicy that a wave of liquid runs down your chin and a sugar hit so intense hits you that it feels like you have bitten into one of the very fruits of heaven itself. Or a tomato so red in color [a fine indicator of flavour] and intense in flavour that one could almost imagine one has accidentally consumed the platonic form, the jungian archetype, to which all lesser examplars attempt to emulate. Instead they have peaches, plums, nectarines and the like, sold as 'ripen at home' products, that instead, never ripen at all, but remain hard as apples untill their withered skin resembles nothing less than an old mans, who has spent his life under the scorching african sun. The tomatoes they purchase have all the flavour and texture of a paper mache pap and are so anaemic in color, so hard in the hand that one wonders if they are products of any natural process at all.

All this is, of course in the pursuit of keeping the fruit and veg 'fresh' for the maximum time possible to increase its viable shelf life. Products that have been honed over centuries by selective breeding and crossing, to reach the acme of taste, texture and visual presentation are cast aside like so much chaff by the producers in their attempts to satisfy the 'bottom line demands' of the big purchasing supermarket chains. Instead the afore mentioned qualities are sacrificed on the alter of product shelf life - and the suppliers are aware that a time will come when there is no-one left who actually remembers what a real peach, a real tomato actually tastes like - or can taste like in the hands of a producer who cares.

Nutritionally the forced and hammered products we see on the shelves fall way below the mark. Pressed and rushed and bullied as they are, they no longer have time to absorb the nutrients we need in order to survive, from the soil in which they are grown. It is a shocking fact that you can buy a good mixed diet from the supermarket shelves and still fall short of essential nutritional requirements purely as a result of the defficiencies of the very products themselves. In years gone by such a situation would have been unthinkable.

And meat; trust me, you cannot but a good piece of meat from a supermarket. I buy fillet steak so soft that it sits in the hand almost 'jelly like' in it's heft. When cooked [even rare] it is so tender that the bluntest knife will cut it and it could be eaten without problem by a man with only three teeth left in his head. But I know one and only one butcher who can supply meat of this quality - and I've tried scores. Pork of old had beautifull flavour and skin that would 'crackle' at the drop of a hat; Now you are hard pressed to find a leg of pork that is not rank with 'boar taint' or so flavourless that one might as well be eating chipboard. Nevr do you buy a piece that crackles on the meat itself, but has to be taken off and further cooked when the joint is finnished [belly pork is the exeption here - by skillfull tecnique you can achieve a good result with this].

So I mourne the loss of good quality produce big time; the richness of the lives of those too young to remember what non-intensively produced food really tasted like are much reduced - but thankfully they do not have the experience to be aware of it.

[edit; ...and don't even talk to me about strawberries!]

[SoulBiter]

I grow my own and use 'heirloom' varieties. That is one of the few ways to get what you are looking for in veggies. I agree with you, the stuff in the stores is practically tasteless.

[peter]

A route I fully intend to go down if I ever get to the point of retirement [looking increasingly unlikely in todays market!].

While we're here - I've been waging a war on poor battenburg cakes sold in the supermarkets etc. A battenburg cake should have four pink and yellow squares [2 of each], sepparated by a thin layer of apricot jam and surrounded by a soft marzipan coat. The last 3 I have bought have all without exeption been ok on the cake and jam front, but have had a hard brittle marzipan that fragments when you break the cake apart and has a hard 'mouth feel' that spoils what should be a soft, sweet jammy experience. I've e-mailed the producers and told them my feelings but to date only Tesco's have responded. The reply said they were saddened that my marzipan was a 'disaster' [my words] and realised how upsetting it must have been. They assured me the appropriate dept would be made aware of my complaint so I imagine we shall see a marked improvement in the near future.