"On your last trip, did you discover what the Earthlings eat?"

[661-Pete]

They eat a great many of these, so it seems.

So, farewell to "peel them with their little knives, boil them for twenty of their minutes, then mash them all to bits", so it seems.

Change for the better?

 

[redjedi]

Isn't that how potatoes are born though? In little cubes wrapped up in clear plastic?

 

[Fnaar]

Boil spuds in their skins... nicer, to me.
Or cut them roughly into chip shapes, bung a bit of olive oil on, 40 mins at 180 in the oven... couldn't be easier!

 

[Arch]

"To many, peeling potatoes is a boring way to spend a few minutes that you would rather spend reading a book, watching a film or with your family"

Eh? If you're cooking a meal, you're cooking a meal. You peel the spuds while the water boils. Are you really going to buy prediced veg thinking "oh, good, now I can spend 3 more minutes reading my book...."

<sigh>

 

[661-Pete]

I just had to link to the advert, didn't I? But it had to wait till I got home.

We must have got umpteen different ways of preparing potatoes. None of them, I think, involves opening a packet. Fishcakes tonite...!

 

[palinurus]

cut them roughly into chip shapes, bung a bit of olive oil on, 40 mins at 180 in the oven... couldn't be easier!

I'm doing that right now. Lovely.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Crap isn't it. After all it's not diificult to peel a few spuds or chop a few veg as I was instructing my Butler to do the other night...
I hate it when he buys that pre-packed stuff.

 

[Kestevan]

One of the comments on the article was understandable though. Anyone with arthritis or similar grip problems can really suffer when trying to peel/chop fresh veg.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Fact of the matter is, most of the people who buy this stuff don't want to save time to do something more interesting or valuable... they want convenience to spend more time sat in front of the telly...

 

[Arch]

One of the comments on the article was understandable though. Anyone with arthritis or similar grip problems can really suffer when trying to peel/chop fresh veg.

I'd be interested to know what proportion of preprepared veg was bought by people with that sort of problem though. I suspect, quite small...

 

[Apeman]

I work the big Green One and it amazes me why people buy prepacked prepared fruit and veg. It is just out of pure laziness. Elderly people rarely buy that sort of product as even they know the benefit of freshly prepared food. Mind you I was flabbergasted one day when a lady asked me what a sweet potato was and how did one cook it!!! Another query was how long would it take to boil a lettuce!!!!!!!!!

 

[Fab Foodie]

I was flabbergasted one day when a lady asked me what a sweet potato was and how did one cook it!

I'm surprised the Sweet Potato has made it to Enniskillen...

 

[Arch]

I work the big Green One and it amazes me why people buy prepacked prepared fruit and veg. It is just out of pure laziness. Elderly people rarely buy that sort of product as even they know the benefit of freshly prepared food. Mind you I was flabbergasted one day when a lady asked me what a sweet potato was and how did one cook it!!! Another query was how long would it take to boil a lettuce!!!!!!!!!

Answer: not long!

It's amazing how many people know nothing about food. Or is it just amazing to those of us who do? I know bugger all about a lot of things many people regard as terribly important....

 

[ufkacbln]

We had a heated discussion at work today over Bananas!

In the red corner - Bananas can't reproduce naturally and are only sustainable through grafting and culture

In the blue corner - Bananas must be able to reproduce or there would be no bananas to culture

On the fence, agricultural bananas may be dependent on cukturing due to manipulation, but "wild bananas' can reproduce.

 

[661-Pete]

I didn't want to sneer too much at the pre-prepared vegetable scene: after all we've all probably been there, one time or another! I remember my student days, though of course in those days it was all stuff out of tins: the day of the pre-packed fresh peeled and sliced carrots lay in the long-distant future, for us!

In the red corner - Bananas can't reproduce naturally and are only sustainable through grafting and culture

In the blue corner - Bananas must be able to reproduce or there would be no bananas to culture

This seeming paradox is quite commonplace in the plant kingdom (for example the English Elm which - all trees being effectively a clone of a single individual - all the more readily succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease 40 years ago). Also with fungi: there is a whole range of so-called fungi imperfecti with no sexual reproduction phase (mostly microscopic ones, not the familiar mushrooms).