Eating and writing about porcini mushrooms recently got me thinking: these mushrooms are really expensive, but they’re so much better than plain old mushrooms that it seems worth the occasional splurge. There are also foods that are so much better than their inexpensive counterparts that it seems criminal to buy anything else – but this list is different for every person. I think everyone has foods they love, foods where they insist on a certain variety or quality – personally, I’ll keep buying good dark chocolate rather than Hershey’s, no matter what sort of budget I’m on, because the quality difference matters to me. (Sorry, Hershey. I liked you when I was a kid.) I’ll buy less rather than sacrifice quality. On the other end of the spectrum, I can skip the fancy imported olive oil and vinegar, or really expensive wine, because I just don’t taste the difference that much. Someone else might feel differently. (I’ll hypothesize that self-identified “foodies” have a lot more of these particularities than the average person.)
Especially at a time when so many people (myself included) are trying to save money, it’s interesting to think about where we’re willing to skimp, and where we hold the line on the foods that really matter to us. Here are a few of mine:
- Chocolate: I’m a chocoholic. I admit it. But if it’s not good enough, I’d rather eat something that’s actually healthy, and wait for the good stuff.
- Cheese: Aged and imported cheeses tend to be much more flavorful and satisfying. With a lot of domestic, industrial cheeses, they don’t really taste like anything. Give me an aged British cheddar, or a smoked gouda, and I’ll be a happy camper. As a vegetarian, cheese is for me what meat would be to a real meat-and-potatoes person. (I don’t mean to dump on American-made cheeses. There are some great artisan cheeses being produced in this country right now. But our “cheese heritage” these days is more closely linked to Kraft than to craft. It’s sad.)
- Tea: I’m not a very picky tea drinker, but the more tea I drink, the more I recognize that higher-quality tea actually tastes less bitter and more flavorful. It’s a pretty complex beverage. When I was traveling a couple months ago, I kept trying to order tea and kept getting Lipton’s, which tasted so bitter it was like drinking dirt. I’ve written about my new affinity for loose tea, which is not only pretty and fun to make, but you can actually see what’s in it and know what you’re getting.
Those are my top foods, the ones where I’m most religious about buying good quality. What foods are you not willing to compromise on? Which ones could you care less about?
One Comment
I worry that this is a common thread in our food culture – people are thinking less and less about where the food that they eat comes from, and what’s in it.
My largest concern is that today’s youth are perceiving that Hershey’s is “good” chocolate, and that American cheese that comes in individually-wrapped slices (ugh!) is edible.
I read an article recently that mentioned that there are now fears that the obesity epidemic will lead to today’s youth being “the first generation in recent history to have shorter life spans than their parents.”[1] That’s everybody’s fault – parents for not teaching good eating habits, society at large for not recognizing the dangerous changes, government for subsidizing corn and the results of its processing, and many others. I think that if people thought about food as more than something that you just ate because you were hungry, then we would be healthier as a community, and better-tasting food would be much more available.
[1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/19/AR2009021902924.html