Friday 6 August 2010

Two Cauliflowers

There are two types of cauliflower in Coles: organic cauliflowers, which come wrapped in plastic, and cauliflowers that do not come wrapped in plastic and are inorganic.

What would Jesus do?

19 comments:

Lucytartan said...

How long has your blog been green? I don't think Jesus shopped for his own cauliflowers.

M L Jassy said...

HA-LE-LUJAH! (X 3)
And lo, Jesus stretched out his hand and laid it upon the cauliflower in the plastic sheath wherein it lay.
"Pray with me," said Jesus, "that you will stretch to forty servings of aloo ghboi."
"Curry again?" grumbled the cauliflower.
"The People have turned against carb loading and rising mercury levels, so loaves and fishes are out..."

Dan the VespaMan said...

I think he would forgive Coles for their sins.

Ampersand Duck said...

Yes, wow, the greenness! Fresh!

I don't think the big J would have et cauliflower. He ate lentils and bread and stuff, I presume.

What would Joan Jett do?

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Blog went green sometime last week. It now matches my hat.

Thank you all for your astute and salient observations re Jesus and cauliflower. I would ask you Dan, though, what's the point of forgiving Coles for its sins if it doesn't repent? At least it's no longer sporting the "Buy our fresh zucchini, as seen on Masterchef" signage, but this shrink-wrapping the organic cauliflower business: I'm not seeing any sign of moral reform.

Ann ODyne said...

The plastic is removable, the chemicals are not. Go chemical-free.

Coles is also doing the right thing by chickens. It's a start.
They stock ORGRAN products, where SwayWorths no longer does.
Jesus, would not have had us wondering why the Cauli has such robust 'flowers'.
Has everybody voted today for Beatrice?

iODyne said...

The kind of people who want organic, certainly don't want it contaminated by all the germy public handling of it. Coles agonised. over the plastic wrap. Some are now in therapy. Jesus would say "Ye who have never gladwrapped may cast the first stones ... " ? anybody?
Who'll give me a stone? half a stone then? A pebble ...

Lad Litter said...

He'd turn the cauliflower into broccoli.

Unknown said...

avoid shopping at coles? our house has recently signed up to CERES Food Connect and we now collect a box of (unwrapped) organic fruit and veges from a "city cousin" once a week. i think the closest pick-up point to you would be in thornbury, which probably isn't very convenient, but there must be other organic vege co-ops up your way. and there's always preston market (i've never shopped there, but i presume there's a good range of organic produce?)
more generally, i understand your dilemma. i want to buy local, seasonal, organic, unpackaged food that has as light an environmental impact as possible: should i buy the ardmona australian tinned tomatoes that do not commit to being GM-free or the italian tomatoes shipped all the way from the mediterranean (which, mind you, might not be GM-free either)? do i buy australian rice or buy imported rice grown in a country that doesn't experience such severe water shortages? sometimes it's hard to be an ethical shopper, but i guess we are at least reflecting on the choices we are making as consumers and that must be the first step. xx

TimT said...

If you find out which ones the GM tomatoes are, let me know, 'cos I want to cook with them. Hey, maybe we could have a GM dinner party, Baron!

TimT said...

If you took genes from dogs and mixed them in with cauliflower genes you could create a species of border colliflowers. That joke's on my blog somewhere.

iODyne said...

oh Tim Tim Tim - every alpha-gardener knows one cannot have a garden and a dog - the Border Colliflowers dig up their own beds.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Dogs and Brassica oleracea (cauliflowers & co) are probably the best examples amongst animals and vegetables respectively of what a bit of artificial selection can do to broaden a phenotype. Canis lupus familiaris, one species, includes everyone from the mastiff to the chihuahua. Brassica oleracea, likewise one species, includes not just cauliflower, but cabbage, brussel sprouts, kale, broccoli. These vegetables look so different you could be forgiven for supposing that they're different species, but nup - cousins, differentiated over the centuries by the eugenicist hand of the vegetable farmer, just as dog breeders have selectively paired off dogs until producing breeds so different that an individual from is thirty times bigger than an individual from the other. Which is to say, genetic modification ain't got nothing on sexual reproduction plus time. So I propose a brassica oleracea party, and we can eat the wonder that is human intervention in vegetablekind.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

And what a party it would be, too! Bucketloads of cabbage and a scintillating lecture on artificial selection.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Mischa - thank you for such a hugely thoughtful and productive comment to my (pretty silly) cauliflower predicament. I don't normally get my veg at Coles - besides anything else, it's something like 50% more expensive than the Preston markets or the Psarakos markets in Thornbury - but Coles is right there between work and home, and when I'm ambling home and get struck dumb by the celestial vision of cauliflower soup, one thing leads to another.

iODyne said...

a brassica-binge brouhaha would have the neighbours complaining, not to the cops re noise, but to the EPA re emissions excess.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Ahem. Yes. Though there's a bit of that round here anyway, if you get my drift, on account of my daily encounters with lentils, chickpeas, soy beans, etc. Brassicas wreak far less havoc than the above.

TimT said...

Brassica sounds like what you get when you cross a trumpet and a cabbage. So a brassica brouhaha would be a very noisy event indeed.

I propose a variation on the brassica, the crassica, a broccoli that spends its days swearing loudly at everyone who passes by.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

"Move over, Cabbage."

- Prince Philip in The Queen, a reliable record of royal sayings, with extra grouse.