Fresh vegetables

[Aractus]

Okay, so I was making some pumpkin soup earlier when I remembered what someone once told me. In America pumpkin comes in a tin. That's the most disgusting thing I'd ever heard (well the next digesting after tinned meat/SPAM, also invented in America), even if it were available - who the hell would buy tinned veggies anyway?? And why? Why would you buy tinned stuff instead of fresh?

So I went down to Woolies earlier (the supermarket) and checked. They sell all kinds of tinned shit, but certainly not tinned pumpkin. Same with Coles. I was happy, however, to see that the aisle space given to tinned vegetables was not a lot. About one quarter of the length of one side of the aisle. Then there's various forms of pre-packed soups (given close to twice the space of the tinned vegetables), and then all the condiments (bar the spices) that woolies sells. Of course I'm assuming in America you can get tinned broccoli, tinned coliflour, tinned lettuce, and tinned celery as well.

Now I can imagine only one possible purpose for these foods: so that men can show they can't be trusted by their wives to do the shopping. "Didn't you get any of the vegetables I asked for?" "I got them all! Here they are, 20 tins of chopped veggies ready to cook! I got everything you could want, green beans, asparagus, baby carrots, potato, and of course tomatoes."

This reminded me of a time a couple of years ago when I used to work with an islander colleague who used to eat take-away seven times a day. For breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon smokeo, evening snack, and finally dinner. But occasionally he'd make his own food, "hey do you like corned-beef" he asked? I said "yes I love it" and he said "oh well you'll have to try some" - little did I know that his idea of corned beef was scooping it out of a tin and spreading it on white bread. "Uh no that's OK" I said. "This is the real corned beef" he said, insisting that the cured meat you might buy in the supermarket, or the home curing you might do to create it is not real corned beef. The next day his morning tea was SPAM sandwiches.

[Chad32]

Canned foods are nonperishable, and thus will last a lot longer. Fresh veggies don't last very long.

[thesummerqueen]

Hello, snob, I think your organic, poor-hating commune misses you.

[Aractus]

Canned foods are nonperishable, and thus will last a lot longer. Fresh veggies don't last very long.

Wait, so what you're telling me is that you believe taking a fresh vegetable and keeping it in a tin will somehow keep it "fresh"?

[Chad32]

It will keep it edible. You can buy it in bulk, and put it in a shelf somewhere, and it will still be good a month or more from now. A giant bag of potatoes sitting in the pantry isn't going to fare as well.

[Minimalist]

When my dog was on the green bean diet I gave him a can every day.  He didn't seem to mind and better him than me.

[vorlon13]

When I was a kid, we had a garden and mom would put up cucumbers (as pickles), green beans, and tomato sauce. We would freeze the sweet corn, and the neighbors up the road would give us tins of honey from their bees. We would get frozen sour cherries from a local orchard, those were fantastic.

All fun items to share during the crappy winters here. Opening a mason jar of green beans from our garden was a nice way to recapitulate summer.

I'm not a big fan of tinned vegies, but I get frozen mushrooms, beans, corn, and occasionally lima beans frequently.

[Aractus]

Hello, snob, I think your organic, poor-hating commune misses you.

Tinned food isn't cheaper. If you're on a tight budget you're better off buying the cheap veggies likes carrot that can be had for $1-2/kg year-round, and of course rice. Pumpkin can be readily had for around $2.50/kg for much of the year as well (as it is right now as it happens):



If it did come in a tin it'd be very unlikely to be cheaper than (or even the same as) the fresh price.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

No one would ever call me a vegetarian, or any sort of organic food fanatic. But I love to go to Farmers' Markets; most towns I've lived in have them, and I find small, local stores which offer fresh, local produce.

I love vegetables, especially cooked/steamed lightly, or as ingredients in foods I cook. I'm also a big fan of high-antioxidant dark fruits (e.g. blueberries) and dark greens. I've recently taken to eschewing sandwich bread for Romaine lettuce wraps from the deli... I'm still trying to wean myself of my processed meats habit.

[Bard A Madsen]

Catching Hell over eating fresh stuff, that is a new one, what is the matter with you !  LOL   Where are you by the way?