Fresh, Ripe and Firm Produce YAY!!

I am not going to beat around this bush as we say. The local supermarket that is one of a chain has not been able to service the local rural population with an appropriately reasonable standard of fresh fruit and vegetables. That is crucial really and when customers have no opportunity to access an alternative source of produce that is varied and zings to the palate in a way we find in metropolitan centres with a measure of ingenuity and determination, eventually these customers forget (speaking from my own experience) what real food is. They also die is another complexion if they do not have their own spread and community of people with whom they barter best quality produce. People's need for it that is so basic does get squashed somehow because it is simply painful to live without good food or opportunity to access it.

I have been met with mixed comment when I have queried the status of this issue. Some people do choose to say nothing. A small rural community is a vulnerable entity when one supermarket takes over the culture of its community. The issue is of course employment. Employed people who work in a supermarket are relatively fit and include a number who have parents who do for them and have wheels etc. Empathy closes down when we get a little more and a little more if we do not strive to remember what it is like to not get what we want need. Few people in a township want to sense there is a real threat to the survival of their one supermarket. A critic might be that.

Today when I went on one of those eventful missions when I stop writing chasing the dream and go out chasing something else and that leading from one remarkable adventure to another and another (it was one of those days), from a distance on my way home I saw the marquee set up and stall of a fruit and vegetables sellers I was told about last week. The day already before this view showed very fortunate and unexpected turns in it. Some great fortune.

As well it was raining (that was lovely) and I got very wet because I had gone out without wet weather gear (no matter). If only you could have seen me take off my rubber purple Crocs eventually that get so dangerously slippery worn on an oil slick road and walk some of the distance to the stall in a daggy pair of too-big woolen socks - and other clothes, of course and the jeans particularly daggy because I had not intended to be out doing a cross country and forget my belt so my denim jeans were dragging in the puddles and acquiring sand and mud off the edges of pavements. The people watched me with some amusement undertaking the last few arduous steps to them. They were so rational and sensible and loving and matter of fact. They didn't think I was odd at all (I think!) I was in a sort of heaven when I got to their stall and saw the quality of the fruit and the vegetables. I was welcomed in behind the counter as all customers were out of the rain, this felt like paradise. When I eventually got home with my haul, I ate as if I had not eaten in twenty years through plums, succulent peaches, red grapes and green grapes, resisting the urge to cut open and eat the rock melon and cut up onions and make myself a beautiful onion dish as well. I have never seen red onions like these. The brown onions are the sort when you want to make a special cuisine for a party you choose the best quality large onions and cry profusely for the love of them as you prepare your ingredients. I have never eaten peaches like these blushing beauties. The plums were perfectly ripened and their texture as a plum off a tree should be. A bag of delicious brilliant red tomatoes that are perfectly formed smallish red balls of tomato flesh are in a bag in the refrigerator (I did forget to photograph them). Those shine with a fresh lustre. I know the rock melon will be a divinity.

There is a fruit and vegetable business in the town but if the people came with the marquee more than once a week on circuit I doubt if it could survive.

bitznblipz I have exchanged a few words with about this predicament of living with a shortage of supply of good food for natural eating and cooking ...she will be so pleased to hear about this at long last... and, of course, my other blipper friends.