Bill and I went ‘OUT’ yesterday. In . . . the . . . car. We drove south for about half an hour. Remaining in the car, we looked out over a couple of his old surfing haunts. Still in the car, we drove around a new housing development which will include a marina.
And then we parked, and we went to . . . the supermarket. Bill only takes me on the best outings 🙂
This was one of the big two which dominate Australia’s grocery trade. It was new, clean, spacious, with wide aisles and not many customers. We usually shop at Aldi, which has the oddest things for sale – lawnmower, anyone? – but in terms of groceries, it sticks pretty much to the basics, which is all we need. Our local Aldi has four aisles. This store had about thirty.
As I wandered around, I was struck by how much on sale was not actually food. It may have once been food, but is now so processed it is . . . something else. Which made me wonder, if we all went back to being scratch cooks after COVID-19, how many food processors around the world would be out of business? In fact – how many food processors exist in all the world?
In the vegetable section, I found bags of zucchini labelled “odd bods”. They were half the price of the other zucchini. Just as fresh, just as flavoursome (which some may say is not at all), but not as pretty. Why does a zucchini have to be uniform in appearance? It’s not as if you serve it on a plate whole. You slice, dice, grate – whatever. So how is it we let so much go to landfill just on its looks?
Anyway, I brought my poor little orphaned rejects home. Fried off some onion, garlic and a dash of green curry paste, put the chopped zucchini in the stockpot with chicken stock and a dash of white wine, and let the lot plop away until it was time to get the blender stick in there. Finished off with a touch of salt, pepper and a little cream, and here goes another tasty lunch. Enough left over for tomorrow’s lunch. And it all worked out around A$1 a serve.
Yummy! I’m also stunned by how much non-food lines the shelves of my favorite market. They could sell nothing but produce and Real Food, and I’d be ecstatic! Great travelogue! 🙂
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Bring back broken biscuits sold loose in a paper bag!
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I came back and read others’ comments. Sadly, we have only a few relatively small Aldis in our area. Lots of Trader Joe stores, though. Still, they aren’t as adventurous as Aldis! When I was growing up in Savannah, Georgia, we used to go to Tha Bargain Corner. A huge open warehouse full of day old bread and not so beautiful produce. bargains! We always came home with cheap goodies like out of date moon pies. Those days seem gone forever. 😟
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We’ve noticed the same thing here. There is generally little to no processed food in our house anyway, but looking at the shelves in the stores, it became apparent there is a plethora of processed and often unhealthy food sold.
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I think it was because the supermarket was so new and open that I particularly noticed I was going up and down aisles and finding nothing to put in my trolley.
Now I remember returning to Australia in 1981, after having lived a time in Yugoslavia under food shortages, and being amazed that there was an entire aisle devoted to what you fed your cat or dog. And everybody was telling me Australia was in recession!
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Everything is relative, isn’t it? 🙂
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Lovely soup, Gwen. I love what a splash of red does for my stews, but have never tried wine in soup. Does the alcohol cook out?
Got take away from my favourite Thai restaurant for the first time since the lockdown arrived. I like cooking, but it was so nice to have someone do for me.
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I’m liberal with wine in stews too. Although I’ve reverted to white in chicken dishes on account of colour. Unless it is a traditional coq au vin. The idea to put it in soup is new to me, but it certainly did no harm 🙂 I think alcohol always cooks out under prolonged heat.
We are off to our on-site restaurant shortly. Now open for couples, maximum five tables (10). They are booking us in three sittings, so good on them if they can do 30 covers for each night they’re open (Fri and Sat).
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My granddaughter has booked us for brunch on Thursday. It’s our special place for get togethers. Enjoy your outing, Gwen. It’s like that song, ‘everything old is new again.’
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Well, ‘odd bods’ over here are labelled ‘wonky’. And, they are about a third of the normal price – what’s not to like!
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I think it’s slow to catch on here, but hopefully on the increase. Zucchini (courgette) was the only vegetable on offer on this occasion. I mentioned to a friend I had bought some odd fellows (forgetting the actual name), and she said she’d had a few of them in her lifetime 🙂 .
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Ha ha – very good. Think that goes for all of us doesn’t it? 😉
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Oh my word, yes.
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So nice to find another fun post from you Gwen. I didn’t realise that Aldi were also in Australia! We have one about. a 20 minute drive from home and I like to buy some of my groceries there. I’m always drawn to their weekly non food offers and have returned home often with odds and ends that I thought would be really useful but I didn’t really need. I tend to gravitate between Aldi and Waitrose but at present we are getting home deliveries from Tesco as my preferred shops aren’t providing the service, at least not to the likes of us. Tesco sell mis-shaped fruit and vegetables and market them as ‘wonky’. I found this out because they substituted my carrots for the wonky variety. As you suggest they are perfectly edible but I found them a bit tricky to peel! Take care,. Marion.
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I registered for home delivery – at first it was only on offer to people who fit a vulnerable category – and we passed! LOL. Bless those age wrinkles. But in the end we shopped ourselves. Aldi did not offer delivery, and we were not keen on their sanitising at first, so that is what had us converting to the big guys.
We pounce on the catalogue, and it is a standing joke among friends and neighbours when they admire something in our apartment – ALDI! we say – and they are all the same.
But they don’t sell Wonky’s. And I will be more particular about Country of Origin in the future also. I mean to be more determined to support Australian grown or produced.
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I’m pleased you got out. Mis-shapes are not only just as good, they are fun. The central aisles at Lidl and Aldi over here are magnets to me, because you never know what you will find. I am wearing a linen shirt that cost less than £7.
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I know, right? The groceries are really of secondary interest. It’s like, “what the heck?”. Aldi saves you having to chase all over the place. This week’s catalogue is power tools and office bits. A Canon printer for about 25 pounds!
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It always amazed me when people wouldn’t buy a piece of produce because it wasn’t ‘pretty’. Some of the sweetest, juiciest oranges have an off-orange color speckled with black – they look awful, but………
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My grand-daughter won’t touch a banana if the skin has a speck on it. We’ve got what we deserve. If people wouldn’t be so particular, the supermarkets would not screw the growers so hard. It’s an indictment on a first-world country that they can afford to plough back perfectly good produce, while millions around the world go hungry.
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Hi Gwen.
Soup sounds lovely but I have a good one to pass on-
Add teaspoon curry powder. ( instead of chilli )
Two tablespoons of white rice (uncooked)
This makes the soup rich and creamy so you don’t have to use cream. Wizz really well.
Let me know if it works for you. Gave the recipe to Staindrop Allotment Society to use for their glut of courgettes .I am now famous in Staindrop 😎 I also have a courgette chutney recipe for very large courgettes. You know the ones that hide under the leaves and arrive as if by magic.🤣
Take care. Glenda x
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Great idea about the soup Glenda. I’ll incorporate in my next batch. Meanwhile I adapted your suggestion last night because I fried a couple of chicken drumsticks, parboiled rice, and then added the leftover zucchini soup.
A one-pot meal that was a kind of risotto. Very Tasty!
When I lived in England I loved those huge courgettes – actually marrows. I used to stuff them with all manner of things. I haven’t seen them on sale here in Australia.
Xx Gwen
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Good question. Why wate good food? One great outcome of the lockdown is that we are cooking all our own meals every day, so fewer things spoil and get thrown out..
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The first time I realised how tasty zucchini soup could be was when I emptied the refrigerator of all the vegetables that were looking a little sad, and put them in a pot with some chicken stock. Wow! Delicious.
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Made some delicious zucchini and sweet potato fritters the other night…well, Brett did. The zucchini is forever versatile. Called courgettes in NZ.
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They sound delicious! One of the staples of an Italian get-together is bite-sized zucchini fritters. Pity the auntie (zia) who was the specialist decided to move back “home”. At 93 years old, mind you.
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Sounds good and very tasty Gwen! I agree – fresh is best & forget all the fancy kitchen machinery!
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We haven’t space on our kitchen benches for all those gadgets anyway!
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