Bananas, bacon and bread

A truly great combination that I may never experience again. Well, maybe I will but it’s not going to be easy.

The bread will be the easiest because the only reason its off the shopping list at the moment is because our household is currently gluten-free.

Bacon is allowable if I can find free-range bacon. Unfortunately there is only one brand that guarantees that no sow crates were used. It’s bad enough to kill something to eat it without putting it through a lifetime of misery. I feel ok about eating happy pigs. Even more unfortunately the supermarkets in my shopping zone either no longer stock it, or never have.

Bananas are the latest loss, and the hardest to bear. As far as I know there are no ethical issues involving cruelty to banana trees. Maybe indentured child labour is used in banana production but I don’t yet know this so it’s not my problem. The problem is the carbon miles used to transport bananas to this very untropical place. Apples are fine, oranges are ok since my current self-imposed rules say that as long as it was grown in NZ it’s ok. No more Australian oranges though, and definitely not Californian oranges.

I love bananas. Pre-packed and sweet, one of nature’s convenience foods, the perfect snack on their own or in a bacon and banana toasted sandwich. Sweet, salty, oily and crunchy, the ultimate “tired and sorry for myself I need a treat” snack.

I guess I could go and live in banana growing territory, but would I still be able to eat roast lamb? Is a craving for bananas a sufficient reason for a tropical holiday?

Buying local

On the news yestersday, some business thinktank suggesting we respond to the “buy local” movement by moving production facilities closer to overseas markets.

Why? How is it our product if it is not made in NZ? Why shouldn’t Chinese factories make Chinese products for Chinese markets and NZ factories make NZ products for NZ markets? Yeah, I know that we can pay Chinese workers very little and then pretend that the goods were made in NZ, especially when they are being sold back in NZ.

How about our main exports, all primary based? Are we going to take over English farms and grow lamb to sell in English supermarkets? Hey, why don’t we export our comparative advange in sunlight and rainfall at the same time. What is the difference between this and intellectual property?

The Export Education could export all or teachers, and since students want native-speaking classmates, we could export whole schools full of students. Tourism? now that’s a hard one. Maybe they could all imagine they are visint NZ and pay us anyway.

Actually, what interests me more is what we are going to do if the world stops importing our primary products. Given that there will be no money to buy anything from the rest of the world, we will have to start making it ourselves again. Just imagine, NZ made shoes and clothing, NZ furniture, maybe even NZ made cars. Seems to me that I can even remember those things.

Would life be any less enjoyable without the Warehouse and all those other megastores full of imported junk? Do you need Australian made canned products on the central shelves of our supermarkets?

Fewer, higher quality products, less cluttered lives, less waste, doesn’t sound too bad really.

Responsible consumption

The electric kettle died yesterday. Today I asked Mike if we really needed one. Well yes.

“What do you use it for?”

“To heat water.”

Ok, that was a dumb question.

“I just use the microwave instead.”

“So, what about when you are cooking potatoes?”

Now I am really confused.

“I don’t boil the water in the kettle first when I am cooking potatoes. I put cold water in the pot.”

“Isn’t that a waste of energy?”

“But the kettle uses electricity so it uses energy, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, but when you boil water in a pot you are using gas. Isn’t that a waste of gas?”

Impasse

So, what uses more energy, using electricity to boil water, or gas? I have no idea. Should I know? Should I have known this for years already? So many confusing decisions!

Anyway, as Mike said, its convenient to have an electric kettle so I bought one.

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