Food...Fabulous...Food?

 "I never eat sushi...I have trouble eating things that are merely unconscious..." -- George Carlin

Trouble a-brewin' in Sodom-on-Hudson?

As stated previously on this page, the Overlord is something of a food "snob". That is to say, he will not eat anything that is packed in a can, a box, or must be poured from a plastic bag, if it can be avoided.

This is not, I assure you, because I'm some sort of high-falutin' douchebag: it is a result of being raised Italian. The only thing that ever came out of a box in our house was pre-made pasta, and that was only because Grandma didn't have time to make the stuff from scratch.

But my real, food-based pet peeve is reserved for vegetables and fruits. I will refuse to eat them if they aren't fresh.

I may have to rethink this proposition, given the evidence of the past few days.

The Overlord goes to the supermarket about every two to three days, mostly to obtain fresh fruit and veggies. I won't eat them if they've been laying around my refrigerator longer, and when it comes to the canned or frozen stuff, the taste and quality is hardly ever up to snuff, in my opinion.

I want to see the stuff I'll be eating. I want to judge it's quality with my own eyes, nose and hands, and if you hold a melon to the side of your head and shake it, ears.

Same with meat.

So, it has been something of a major disappointment these last few weeks -- even given the difficulties of getting really fresh stuff in the colder months -- that the local supermarkets are essentially bereft of anything I would consider fresh, and even, on occasion edible.

It would appear to these eyes that the Supply Chain Problem is beginning to hit home here in Gotham.

Most of the stuff looks as if it sat somewhere for a spell before it even made it to the market.

Potatoes bearing scabs.

Bell Peppers sporting brown rashes.

Spinach with the beginnings of a fine, white mold on it.

Carrots that might be made of Play-Doh, for the lack of crispiness and firmness in them.

And, of course, when you do manage to find something that passes muster, the price is about a third higher than what it would usually be, even for winter.

I find this distressing.

This is why I've started taking a crash course on how to pickle or otherwise preserve my own fruit and veggies. YouTube is a godsend here.

It's also why I've started watching an interesting YouTube series of videos entitled "Great Depression Cooking" which has some marvelous tips on extending your food dollar, as well as some recipes using substitute ingredients that, honestly, never occurred to me before. I highly recommend it.

I have new-found respect for the resourcefulness and ingenuity of the Depression-era cook.

So, this never-ending quest to obtain fresh perishables on a daily basis has led me into some strange places. 

I have checked out stores I normally wouldn't have walked into, once-upon-a-time; little Chinese vegetable stands; the Bodegas of various Latin origin, but I was directed to one of the strangest places I've even been to by Mrs. Overlord's aunt, who hearing about my travails, recommended I go to...

Trader Joes.

I have never, until this morning, been inside a Trader Joes. I've passed by a bunch of 'em, but never set foot into one. Primarily, this is because the sort of person who "swears by" Trader Joes is typically the sort of person I want to smack with a sledgehammer, massive misanthrope that I am.

I have always associated Trader Joes with what I privately call "Fag Food".

Allow me to clarify that for those who are easily offended, because asshole.

I do not mean to use the word as a vilification of the homosexual community, although, come to think of it, a lot of the people who have recommended Trader Joes in the past have been...go figure...homosexual. As I will state, for the 2,387,904th time on this page, the Overlord doesn't care if anyone is gay.

I have my own problems, thank you.

What I mean is to identify a sort of silly, pretentious, smug, fart-sniffing, effete personality, like the surgically-preserved, chemically-animated suburban hausfrau who stocks up on "box wine" there because the excuse of "but...it came from the fancy store" somehow soothes the raging guilt she feels for being a daytime alcoholic.

Or, the newly-upwardly-mobile shitkicker from Dogpatch who finally moved to "the Big City" and stupidly assumes that this either changes or obscures the facts of their origins, or gives them an aura of cosmopolitanism.

Get real: you're a hayseed. You're now just a hayseed with a Manhattan address. You still smell of pigshit and are confused by fireboxes, crosswalks, and the Subway.

Or, worst human beings EVAH!, the dumbfuck, shit-for-brains, parrot who goes around screaming "ORGANIC IS BETTER FOR YOU!" all day long, because if they didn't ascribe to food snobbery, there would be absolutely nothing interesting about them, and you'd probably eventually end up feeding them piece-by-piece to stray cats.

If organic really WAS better for you, Asshole, then why was it that for centuries prior to the 20th people barely lived into their 40's? All they had was organic...everything...and apparently their health wasn't so great compared to today. These days, thanks in part to genetically-modified, heavily-chemically-fertilized and pesticide-drenched food, we're all living to be grossly obese octogenarians.

But, I digress...

So, I walk into the local Trader Joes this morning, there being one not far from the New, Fully-operational Death Star, and was dumbstruck.

First by the smell of the unwashed Salvadorans stocking the shelves (not Mexicans: you can tell from the dialect of Spanish they're screaming at one another), then by the snooty, showy dress of the already-buying-wine-in-bulk-in-order-to-wash-down-the-anti-depressants nouveau riche (nominally-)female half of a mated pair of Staten Island douchebags.

That is to say, the wife of a "City Worker" who probably earns his union-extorted fortune in the sewers or scraping chewing gum off park benches, bedecked in enough gold to make a pharaoh jealous, and all of it ostentatious and lacking in both class and taste, wrapped up against the cold in a "pillow" coat by some second-rate designer she got for half-off at Target or Burlington Coat Factory (wait until I get started on them!), but only because Sears and K-Mart went out of business.

But, finally, we come to what sits upon the shelves, and this is where things start to get weird, at least for me.

Because while you can hardly get good, fresh bananas at the local Shop-Rite, you can get fresh, imported dates here.

While finding decent celery has become something of a futile quest, you can find something that's-not-quite-celery-but-looks-like-it here, so long as you don't mind washing what appears to be feces off it (I'm guessing: I don't know if it is feces, and if it is, who's it might be. Organic, you know) and pay three to four times what you would elsewhere.

Iceberg lettuce? So passe. Here we only sell Romaine (which is fine by me) and Arugula, which is Italian for "feed that to an animal", Raddicchio (Italian for "what? no dandelions?), Endive, which is why Belgium never became a superpower, and, of all things, Chrysanthemum greens (which are potentially poisonous in large quantities).

So, apparently being an overblown food prig means eating stuff that few people really like and which can potentially kill you as a means of transmitting social status.

And even some of this stuff looked as if it was still here because even the racoons turned their noses up at it.

But the store was still full. Somehow. To judge by all the Lexus and BMW Rolling Daycare Centers of Death parked in the lot and presumably driven by the by-virtue-of-liposuction 98-pound, 4' 8", silicone-injected blondes inside buying wine by the vineyard.

As an aside, I was distracted for a few minutes by one of these said blondes buying uppity rabbit food, who was absolutely poured into her skin-tight jeans this morning. These jeans left little to the imagination: she had the shapeliest caboose I've seen for some time, and the pants more-than-adequately accentuated her very shapely legs. Her hefty bosom was peeking out of her faux-fur Donna Karan coat, and I was thinking that for a woman in her late 40's, this was one prime work of art.

And then you realize the jeans also more-than-adequately revealed the seemingly 6" gap between her thighs and were riding up her vagina in the front and the illusion was shattered.

Even the Salvadorans remarked upon it.

But that's not Trader Joe's fault. I'm sure if you like buying and eating what I would turn my nose up at, that's your business, and it's your wallet. If Walnuts and Jarlsberg, Bok Choi and  Goats Milk at fifteen times the regular price is your thing, then go for it.

Great thing about America is that we all have the freedom to choose to be stupid and phony (and no, it isn't "a lack of sophistication" on my part. Before you met Tony the Garbageman, or moved from Mayberry to Marine Park, Elly Mae, you were a high school dropout who was thisclose to having to ride a stripper pole for your daily bread, so climb down off your high horse, Bitch)

I'm digressing, again...

Lately, we're finding a lot of the things we would normally never have an issue obtaining in the local supermarkets are becoming harder to find than an honest democrat or a unicorn.

In the last few weeks, I've had trouble buying the following things (or, they are available, but not looking very fresh or the price skyrocketed):

Gravy Master
Brown Sugar
Corn flour
Assorted spices (however, you can get all the Adobo you want, which is cool)
(non-boxed) Taco shells/tortillas
Green beans
Bell Peppers
Mushrooms
Canola Oil (available, but at twice the price, at least)
Spanish onions
Fingerling Potatoes
Grapes (the ones from Argentina are still available, but price is hefty now)
Olives
Fresh Fish (the farmed stuff is available at ridiculous prices, and cod is the only really plentiful fish)
Red Cabbage
Dried Lentils
Dried Split peas

In addition, the supermarkets have empty spaces where there used to be products to buy.

COSTCO has been something of a godsend, particularly for meat. COSTCO gets a bad rap for it's meats, but this is unfair, sez me. They  have some really good meat, but I'm noticing that even the COSTCO meat is being put on sale with stickers that indicate the expiration date is only three or four days away.

Normally, we don't have this problem in New York City. But, it appears as if "the supply chain problem" is hitting the food supply, if not with overwhelming force, with enough scarcity to be noticeable. My one-stop-shopping has now become three-or-four-stop-shopping, and the price of gasoline (I paid $3.59 per gallon yesterday, filled up and still somehow used a quarter tank in an afternoon) is making the stops more-expensive, too.

This afternoon, I will be baking bread. I have to dust my baking skills off.

Because I paid $4.59 for a loaf of white bread JUST THIS MORNING.

Joemala need to be frogmarched outta the White House, pronto.