Monday, January 24, 2011

On "expensive" food

my old blog somehow disappeared, the former posts are visible on my facebook page. That was unfortunate, but I press on with a blog of a similar name. I begin this new one with a humorous take on food. I hope that you enjoy.

We live in an age in which saving is a subterfuge for spending. No doubt you sincerely beleive that there is margarine in your refrigerator because it is more economical than butter. But you are wrong. Look in your bread drawer. How many boxes of cute snack crackers are there? How many packages of commercial cookies reeking of imitation vanilla badly masked with oil of coconut? How many presweetened breakfast cereals? Tell me now that you bought the margarine because you couldn't afford the butter. You see- you can't. You bought the bread drawer goodies because you were conned into them; and you omitted the butter because you were conned out of it. The world has slipped you culinary diagrams instead of food. It counts on your palate being not only wooden, but buried under ten coast of synthetic varnish as well. Therefore, the next time you go to check out the supermarket, simply put back one box of crackers, circle round the dairy case again, swap your margarine for a pound of butter and walk up to the checker with your head held high, like the last of the big spenders. This is no time for cost-counters: It is a time to be very rich or very poor- or both at once.- Robert Farrar Capon