teeym

Those wouldn't be the rose tinted spectacles I've heard so much about would they?

simonsi

you got me!

ibex

It is, steak season is all year round

Check out this

Bo-Jangles

Yup and 'cheap' meat from the likes of The Mad Butcher is usually cheap for a reason. Good quality usually comes with a higher price tag to match. There's no accounting for taste; we go to friends houses for dinner and BBQs and they usually brag on about how cheap the steak was and wax lyrical about how good it is. I generally try to avoid it, as my jaws and gag reflex don't cope well with chewing boot leather.

I agree with Bevs on the veggies too, I don't ever remember a time in my life in the UK where I would have seen tomatoes for sale with 'bottom end rot' or scabby and scarred fruits, the likes of what we see in the supermarkets here. Mostly I attribute the poor quality due to lack of correct storage in most shops rather than the them starting out as poorer quality. Fruit and veg shops pile it high and leave stuff hanging around far too long with flies and wasp crawling all over. Stuff like soft fruits being kept in sweaty polythene bags outside in the sun.

UK supermarkets would have sold it off as 'Whoopsies', long before it reached the overripe, squashy, limp or shrivelled stage. Not so here, it will stay on sale at full asking price until it's practically unfit for consumption.

pricklykina

I don't buy veg on a sunday usually because I figure that it's definetly not market fresh that day

I do like buying in season though...I only ever buy what's cheap or in season but my weaknesses are bananas and mangoes

I hate crap meat so never ever buy at mad butcher.
I only (well mainly) buy free range chicken and pork which I sometimes get from supermarket, sometimes from butcher

for people coming to Auckland, then I recommend nosh for meat and sometimes veg as they have good specials

Stormer999

The UK supermarkets have their food specially prepared sized and cloured to suit their needs. The Golden Delicious apples are sprayed 7 times to ensure no blight contamination, colour correctness, no bruising etc...hence why it is so hard to bite through the skin! Tomatoes from Italy are picked green to supermarket sizing and loaded into massive wharehouses, gassed to stop ripening. They are loaded onto container ships and regassed at the last mo to send them red before shelving hence no taste. All of the other veg from Kenya, Uganda, egypt etc is treated the same. If that is what people are stupid enough to set as an acceptable standard then give me the overripe shiverilling variety please

Bo-Jangles

Indeed and they get a lot of that produce from New Zealand, we generally get what's leftover that didn't meet the exacting export specifications.

pricklykina

Karma for that...british supermarkets are not to be upheld for their ethics.
Not that we can say that the Australasian one's are but british supermarkets have a particularly shady record

crap coffee

African lettuce....................... yuck.

Gill and Rob

[QUOTE=Bo-Jangles;8473069]Yup and 'cheap' meat from the likes of The Mad Butcher is usually cheap for a reason. Good quality usually comes with a higher price tag to match.]



Hello
We have a great Mad Butcher here in Rotovegas. I can honestly say we have had some fabulous steak from there and this week end I cooked a leg of MB pork and it has been delicious. OK some of it may be that I'm an wonderful cook, but it pays to shop around eveywhere as there are lots of inconsistencies with supplies.

Gill

ibex

I didn't try Mad Butcher during our trip but meat from the supermarkets (PaknSave, Countdown, etc.) was all good. And at least here in Europe this is not where the best quality may be found.

Speaking of lettuce, I've been said the italian one is fertilized with waste water Yumee!