Lady Lunchalot

Forgive me, dear readers. I haven’t exactly been writing prolifically lately. The main reason is that I haven’t exactly been eating prolifically, because I’ve been busy baking Something Very Special. (Yes, that’s with capital letters.)

You see, for the past twelve weeks… we’ve had a bun in the oven!

In February O and I will meet Baby Lunchalot!

So I’ve spent the past couple of months feeling very green indeed, and culinary exploration hasn’t exactly been high on the priority list. In fact, I haven’t been able to look at a piece of red meat without feeling my stomach churn in quite a while, and I seem to have developed a strange penchant for chocolate milk and Bega Tasty cheese slices.

So please excuse my recent silence. Writing about food isn’t exactly a great treatment for morning sickness - which, I have to say, is the biggest misnomer in the English language. Just ask anyone who’s ever been up the duff. Trust me, it lasts all day.

Food cravings are a strange thing for a food lover like me. For example, one week I became obsessed with oranges, and went straight to the market, bought six navel oranges and had scoffed three within minutes of returning home. The other day I couldn’t stop thinking about the vegetarian fake meat burger patties I used to eat during the vegetarian phase in my early teens (yes, believe it or not dear readers, this die-hard carnivore was once a vegetarian). I hadn’t thought of those burgers in over 15 years, and the first bite was an almost orgasmic experience! I had been terrified they didn’t make them anymore or that I wouldn’t remember the brand, but there they were on the supermarket freezer shelf - what a relief. There’s nothing quite like satisfying a craving when you’re pregnant.

Food aversions and sensitivity to smell are the other strange things. Red meat has become nothing short of repulsive. And the smell of meat, whether it’s in the fridge or on the grill, is enough to send me running to the loo. When I walk into my supermarket I can immediately smell the meat section lining the back wall of the building. O and I recently bought a beautiful new fridge, and every time I open the door I am hit in the face by that plastic new fridge smell, which puts me off whatever I was just about to eat. I even rubbed vanilla essence on the door seals to try to cover it, but it only worked for a day or so before the plasticky smell fought back.

So while I don’t know what weird food topics I will be writing about until Baby Lunchalot makes his/her debut into the world, I can promise to keep blogging throughout the pregnancy. I’m a firm believer that you are what you eat, and in this case, this little bubba will be a product of what I eat. Does that mean I will be giving birth to a vegetarian cheese lover?

I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank the love of my life and Daddy-to-be, my wonderful O, for his patience over the past few months. I’ve been a bit hard to deal with at times, and he’s been very patient with me. Not to mention putting up with night after night of macaroni cheese. And giving me his Singapore noodles when I couldn’t eat my Char Kway Teow. And for feeding the cat because the smell of Whiskas made me gag. And for barely mentioning a distinct lack of his favourite burritos on the dinner table. And for not complaining about a lamb shankless winter.

Thank you beautiful man. You make me very, very happy. I love you madly. And I promise I won’t eat any more fresh pineapple until February.

I was recently talking to marketing guru Stu, who told me some disturbing news about supermarket branded products, such as the You’ll Love Coles range.

Stu explained what had happened in the large UK supermarkets over the past few years when the big supermarket chains over there started initiating their own house brands at low prices.

It seems that the large supermarkets can offer these products at a very low price for a year or so, which is long enough to put major pressure on smaller labels and close many of them down. I mean, let’s face it, when the average mum on a budget is faced with a bag of frozen house branded peas at 99 cents, or Farmer Joe’s frozen peas at $2.50, she’s going to choose the house brand. Farmer Joe can’t stand the loss of business for very long, and before you know it his peas have disappeared from the shelves, along with a few other brands.

Next, we see the price of house branded peas creep up from 99 cents to $1.50, then to $2.00. Before we know it, the supermarket brand has a monopoly on the peas you can buy, and can charge a higher price for them. Farmer Joe’s brand isn’t around anymore, so we can’t turn back to them. There’s really no choice other than to buy the supermarket brand and pay the price the supermarket asks.

So much for competition.

When you multiply this across all the products you buy in your weekly grocery shop, it’s a bit scary. House branded products are everywhere - laundry detergent, honey, butter, breakfast cereal. You’ll Love Coles tinned tomatoes are made in Italy. What about all our Australian tomato farmers who produce a great product and supply jobs here?

It’s important to think about factors other than just price when you’re in the supermarket, because the food you buy today can impact on the food you will be able to buy tomorrow. I know this is hard for some people who are stretching the grocery budget as it is, but I see it as safeguarding my rights as a consumer and a food lover.

Stu’s little lesson really opened my eyes as to how our everyday purchasing choices have an impact on a whole economy. So next time you’re in the supermarket, I urge you to think about whether saving a few cents now is worth having no choice but to shop in a monopolised grocery market later on.

Stu and I aren’t the only ones talking about this. You can read more about it in a Sydney Morning Herald article, Choices fade as Coles Stacks Shelves.
.