Vegetables: rant

I think I can get pretty good meat and fish around here. I can get them fresh or in those rather horrible packages already marinated, i.e. the situation is good and variety abounds. But the situation for vegetables is horrible. We used to have one or two shops where I could get honest vegetables. But, trying to make a simple chinese wok dish yesterday, I found out that we don't have even one shop anymore that would sell good, honest and unspoofulated vegetables. Instead they all look like they're made of plastic and worse still is that they all taste like they're made of plastic. I understand that up here in the north it is impossible to grow anything, but is this the only reason our veggies are so awful? If so, how come we used to get fair veggies in a couple shops all year round? Or do veggies need to please the eye more than the tastebuds, hence their plasticity? After last night's wok-dish I'm ready to drop veggies altogether and become a carnivore.

-O-

[Robin Garr]

we don't have even one shop anymore that would sell good, honest and unspoofulated vegetables. Instead they all look like they're made of plastic and worse still is that they all taste like they're made of plastic.

Otto, I'm horrified to hear that this is the case anywhere in Europe. It's been a real issue in the U.S. for years, an agribusiness thing in which it's apparently more efficient to ship food from California all over the country, and to breed vegetables designed for easy shipping (artificially ripened tomatoes with skins of plastic, rock-hard peaches, that kind of thing) than for quality. It's scary that it's happening in (Northern?) Europe now ... fruits of globalization, I guess.

Now, over here there is at last a considerable backlash, and a growing (if still minor) economy that supports either buying quality, old-fashioned "honest" vegetables at high prices from specialty stores, or perhaps at lower prices from seasonal produce markets and other special arrangements that link local farmers directly with the public. Maybe this will happen eventually in Finland? Or possibly, perhaps it already does, but isn't so widely advertised and you haven't found it yet?

As a male carnivore, I suppose I could go without vegetables for a while. But I kind of like them for the variety ...