New here? If you'd like to be notified the next time I write something, simply subscribe to my RSS feed or sign up for email alerts. Thanks for visiting!
Sometimes, if I see them, I’ll buy kiwi fruit. Actually, only about a dozen times in my entire life and once only since I’ve been in the UK, only because they were selling ‘em cheap on the market. I don’t obsess over them, I don’t have to buy them every time I go out and I don’t specifically ask for or need them.
Yesterday, mother did some shopping (she’d asked me if she should get some kiwis and I’d said that only if she sees them, like there’s no specific need, don’t search for them, etc.) So she comes home, announces that they didn’t have any kiwi fruit (like the world was ending, or somehow I’d die without them) and, then produces a bag, saying "… so I brought you pears instead."
Only she knows - and she has remembered it when I was with her in a shop recently - that I don’t like pears. I detest them.
So I have pears I don’t like, or no fruit.
And she only bought two and won’t be shopping again until Monday. Two fruits for two people, for four days, ain’t exactly five-a-day, is it?
Having been used to having amazing fresh wholemeal bread delivered daily in Tenerife, I’m "spoilt" and finding that the cheap, sliced crap that my mother usually buys is, well, I’d rather eat wet paper. Actually, wet paper probably has more nutritional value.
Her belief is that her chemical-laden (you could taste it), manufactured muck is "healthy". Well, it’s brown, init? Could be died brown, I guess.
Anyway, finally, last week she deigned to purchase a fair to middling quality granary baguette. Now, I won’t say I was in raptures over it, but it was clearly the best one is going to find around here, so I enthusiastically indicated my approval. Yesterday, she was supposedly picking up something of that ilk again. What does she get? More horrible paper-maché sliced bread.
So I have bread I don’t like, or no bread.
She didn’t buy anything that I can put on or between it, mind you.
Despite the labels, the price and the colour of the carton all being different, she also managed to come back with the wrong soya milk too.
And I have to put up with it, or go without.
It really takes some doing to get it all wrong.
The price of juice went up, so she bought some manufactured cordial type thing that tasted like, well, exactly what it was: sugar with flavourings.
Still, it "complimented" the ghastly plastic-boil-in-the-bag fish dinner.
For Sunday dinner, we have ONE (count it) small chicken breast between us.
And not a fresh vegetable of any type in the house at all. Not even one.
Such small things, I know, but I have nothing else; no treats, no pleasures, cannot go out anywhere, cannot change them, cannot buy alternatives. So I’m faced with vomit inducing flavours I cannot hide, because there is nothing else in the house to hide them with, or I can just be even more hungry.
This really was the final straw, on top of everything else … So I came to my room and cried and cried and cried, because I just couldn’t stop crying. Being menopausal doesn’t help, being depressed (with reason, I think), doesn’t either. Nevertheless, I tried to cry quietly, but she won’t even let me have any privacy in this room either, so, when she discovered me crying (I haven’t told her why), she just said I’d better stop it or - this was said as a threat - she’ll "get a doctor" to me, who, according to her, will lock me up.
Well, I look forward to the improvement in the menu and living standards!
Only somewhat tongue in cheek, I’m certainly not getting the …
"Right to adequate food is a human right, inherent in all people, to have regular, permanent and unrestricted access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of people to which the consumer belongs, and which ensures a physical and mental, individual and collective fulfilling and dignified life free of fear."
The cultural traditions to which this consumer (me) belongs, are ones where food is made from genuine edible, unadulterated things. Any hope?
Written by Pamela Heywood - Visit Website | Leave a tip | Buy me something
