Since I’ve been around for a while and got dragged along on shopping expeditions when I was a kid, I’m constantly frustrated about the fact the stuff we could buy 50 years ago isn’t on the shelves today.
Most of today’s apples were apparently created in a lab, but nobody carries Winesaps any more. I ask about them, and the produce people haven’t heard of them.
Here in Georgia, we’re next to the country’s number one citrus state (sorry, California, your production is a pittance compared to Florida), but for some reason, we can’t get kumquats. We’re just a few miles up the road, yet our produce departments don’t even know what kumquats are. That’s just bad.
It’s really hard to find endive and watercress these days.
I asked the meat department at Publix this morning for salmon steaks. They don’t have them because nobody buys them. Every one wants filets. I sure as hell don’t.
At least Publix sells radicchio. Humorously, many of those running the checkout cash registers think I’m buying red cabbage. They usually ask me how to spell radicchio. They’re costing the store a bundle when they charge me for red cabbage.
One day when I was in a bad mood and couldn’t find any real feta cheese, I went to the Publix website and asked why they were labelling cheese as “feta” when it was made with cow’s milk rather than sheep’s milk. They just said that’s the way things are done in the U. S. I said that’s like making a cherry pie with blueberries but selling it as a cherry pie. I think they should call their fake feta cheese “feta-style” cheese, but since I’m not Bobby Flay or Gordon Ramsay, they don’t care what I think.
Frankly, I think grocery stores have dummed down their products, reduced their inventory, and are denying us many of the items that used to be available in every IGA and A&P in the country.
I’ll confess that–in addition to remembering products that used to be common on grocery store shelves–I do watch shows like “Chopped” and “Master Chef” where I see a lot of products my grocery stores have apparently never heard of. Some of those products are disgusting and I really don’t want to see them on the shelves. Some are things we used to see every time we went shopping, yet if you ask for them these days, store managers look at you like you’re crazy.
I may be crazy, but I still like kumquats.
Malcolm's Round Table 
I miss Winesaps. And I really miss Jonathans. The only thing I can find anymore are johagolds, a cross between jonathans and golden delicious, which are neither Jonathans nor delicious. I don’t remember the last time I had a real Jonathan — those that are grown in western Colorado where I used to live are some sort of hybrid with no taste whatsoever.
I wish food — not just apples — tasted the way it was meant to.
I don’t know why we can’t get the apples we grew up with.
It’s such a shame that local stuff gets lost in favour of homogenized national and international items. It’d be so much tastier to have local fruits and vegetables!
I grew up on a Mediterranean diet, so I always feel badly for people that don’t know what do with a wide variety of vegetables.
Funny, if feta ever gets a certification from the right authority, others will *have* to call it feta-style, like the way certain French and Swiss cheeses can’t be copied.
I want what I want and that means the store doesn’t sell it. Yes, I think the feta is mislabelled.