Yes Frank, this is one of the things I was really getting at. It seems people become spoiled and think they have to have melons and strawberries all year round. I even see them served at the nursing home sometimes off season, much of which goes to waste. The energy that is needed to import this unnecessary food out of season just gets to me. They grown hot house strawberries here in California but all the berries don't look too good and I wouldn't buy them anyway when I can get baskets of fresh local ones at the farmers market in the summer.
@Holly Saunders Appreciated your post above. I am a great fan of roast lamb, having gotten accustomed to it at the Fremont Hotel in Las Vegas in the late '60s while vacationing. Never understood how our familial "meat & potatoes" culture as I gre up, did not include lamb! Yet, my Dad asking for rabbit now & then, my Mother would buy a big, frozen jackrabbit imported all the way from Australia, kept frozen! This was perhaps in the '50s, when the land down under had somehow become extensively over run with these big rabbits. One Aussie member corroborated that earlier in another forum. Personally, I love fish. The prevailing preference emerging over past decades for more seafood created whole new industries involving "Acqua-culture". A friend who ran a chemical supply house was promoting this in Japan in the '80s, selling algicides to Japanese pond-raisers of fish. Not long ago, there "seeped out" information that the enormous pond-raising industry in China was fraught with practices disgusting to Western consumers: pond-raised fish were raised on feed consisting largely of chicken droppings. As a natural "self-doubter", I wonder about all the claims splashed on seafood product as "Wild Caught", "Fresh Caught", "Alaskan", "Atlantic", etc. What are the REAL origins of the stuff being sold to us (only if we buy it)? Frank
You couldn't be more correct about the disgusting practices with regard to the imported fish from China Vietnam etc... and there's no reason apart from the cheap availability of it to supply to unsuspecting customers in the west. At least the individual customer has the ability to be savvy about what they're buying, however it's restaurant customers and fast food customers who have to trust they're getting fed something fresh and pure...and more often than not we/they are not. As for the Lamb , we're lucky here in the UK... we can have lamb any and every day of the week if we wish...it's just that if we choose to have home reared lamb , or veal, or for that matter beef.. we have to pay more... It never fails to befuddle me as to why lamb which is imported from the complete other side of the world can be so much cheaper than home grown . I can buy 4 Kangaroo steaks for less than I pay for one rump steak reared from cattle in this country...it's madness!!
I went to Trader Joe's today. Not one tomato that wasn't grown in Mexico. Not one. Nothing against our neighbor to the south but we can grow Tomatoes in California. Locally. I didn't want to stop at another store. No tomato for me this weekend.