All done for you
Last night we watched the 70s episode of that programme, whose name I temporarily forget, in which a family lives in a set up of a recent decade in history. You get a little bit of social history and a quite a bit of cooking. Well food is essential and a good sign of the times, as we all know. It coincided with the latest issue of Coles Magazine in which I was mildly appalled to see the ad below.
I think I have mentioned before that on my two almost recent trips back to England I was completely appalled at how much of the fresh fruit and vegetables in the supermarkets - well virtually all of it - was prepackaged. And how many pre-cooked meals there were. Meal deals I think they call them. And I have noticed here that there has been a bit of a move that way with things like prepackaged rocket and baby spinach leaves. Which is sort of fine, although not really necessary, and you can still get it loose in the market.
The advantage of loose is that you can be really picky - like the French if you like - and pick out each individual leaf, but more importantly you can buy as much or as little as you need, not just the amount that Coles, or anyone else, has decided that you need. And it is really fresh. Cheaper too because they don't have to include the cost of all that packaging and the machinery to put the stuff in the package. Incidentally I do sometimes, like the French, pick out individual green beans when I am buying them, and I certainly choose most of my fresh fruit and vegetables individually. However, now that I think about it I do often buy carrots in a packet and sometimes a few other things too - a fresh herb that I don't have in my garden when it's not a week for going to the market. Oranges, strawberries - we never buy strawberries loose, though you can go and pick your own.
What is extra appalling about the above though, is that each of those packets (apart from the cos lettuce) is a mix of different ingredients. And I reckon that when you have a mix like that they always sneak in more of the least expensive ingredient than the best. It's also a mix of things that you might not have chosen yourself - which could be a good thing of course, in that it might make you try something new, but if the package always includes the same things then the food will always taste the same. I just hope it's not an indication of a trend to packaging everything in the fresh food department.
And the other thing is that all of these vegetables have been chopped or cut and no matter how good the packaging the edges will end up mangy and so you will have to cut off the ends of the stalks, or the edge of a slice of some of them anyway. Well I would. And if I did that I would also be throwing away large amounts of stuff that I have overpaid for anyway.
And even worse than the top line of packages which is vegetables designed for stir fries are the the three below - one a microwavable potato and cheese mash, and the other two just a few veggies for steaming. Really - why can't you do these yourself? And just think of all that unnecessary plastic that is polluting our environment.
I do however, completely understand why Coles (and all the other supermarkets of course) would be doing this and also why some people would use such products. Which brings me back to the 70s programme last night. It seems that it was really in the 70s that women started to go out to work and also that freezers came in as well as a whole lot of new pre-packaged things - the most awful of which was tinned salads - well as demonstrated in this program. I was horrified at the idea of tinned salads, but I see they are still available - here are three you can currently buy:
No greens of course. You can take the tins a step up in your local supermarket and also buy various salads in the deli section - or next to it - where it comes in tubs. Again no green salad of course, and the husband in the TV program did remark upon that.
The thesis of the TV program was that women were out at work and had no time to cook and so they turned to frozen food - the dreaded TV dinner. And, of course, this still goes on. And it's certainly true that through the decades the quality of such prepackaged and precooked meals has certainly improved - there are oodles of different options from marinaded meat to completely cooked and chilled or frozen meals, but really does one have to resort to them?
My mother worked from the late fifties on I think. And even so she would cook something in the evening when she got back. Yes it would be simple and more like what we called high tea than a proper meal (we had school lunches remember), but nevertheless she did cook something. I too was working for some six years before we had children and even so, every evening I cooked something for my husband and I. I even tried to cook something new all the time - helped by the simple recipes of Elizabeth David, Robert Carrier, Jane Grigson and women's magazines.
And of course, way back, even though women might not have gone out to work officially, they (a) had more children and therefore much more to do at home anyway without modern day appliances, and (b) they frequently did, in fact, work - but at home - sewing, washing for others, manufacturing things like matchboxes. Laborious piece work. And they had none of these precooked or prepackaged things to help them. And yet they did cook a meal. And lunch for their men - like the Cornish pasties for the tin miners.
These days you have the likes of Jamie Oliver, Delia Smith, Donna Hay, Maggie Beer and all the foodie magazines and programs encouraging you to cook from fresh but quickly and easily. These are the 'it' words of today - fresh, fast, easy, healthy. They don't mention expensive. And Woolworths after all calls itself 'the fresh food people'.
Coles too has a foot in both camps. For also in the magazine is a whole feature on MasterChef, which is at the opposite end of the spectrum it seems to me. Not that I have watched it - I hate all the false pauses before announcing winners, and all the stuff in between - but from a very superficial glance it would seem to me that it is mostly concentrating on high-end, fancy food. Not stuff for your everyday cook, and not for a lazy beginner.
The picture at the top of the page is the recipe that Coles chose to feature using their new products. The only 'fresh' ingredients are chicken, vegetable oil, coriander and lime - the latter two for decoration purposes only. The rest is all from various Coles packets. It does look quite tempting, but really you could do the same yourself. The only complicated thing being the sauce - in this case out of a packet. But you could easily throw together your own sauce - just buy the sauce.
Perhaps I shouldn't be so snobby though. Maybe lots of people find it all just too daunting so packets with things done for you are very tempting. And I suppose they are sort of fresh. Personally I think that there should be mandatory cooking classes in schools. In that TV program the dad and the teenage son prepared dinner one night and the son was quite chuffed at having prepared some schnitzels more or less on his own. And I know my little granddaughters cook a few things. One of them has even developed her own specialities - bruschetta and falafel. Now there's a demonstration of how times have changed. Had never heard of either when I was her age. She does use tinned chick peas for the falafel though!
