Fresh is Best

As a keen vege gardener, earth/kitchen witch, foodie And of course Princess,  it's fair to say I have fairly strong opinions on the freshness of food, what goes into our food and whether or not it passes the all important taste test. 

At the risk of sounding like a righteous purist foodie pratt, we seldom eat takeaways, much preferring to make delicious food from scratch, often using ingredients just picked from the garden, and I would rather eat raw goats testicles than a ready made, boxed frozen anything from the supermarket. But as much as I might wish it,  I don't have 100% control over the entire food production industry on the planet so there exists a multitude of ready made products masquerading as food. There have been times when we have ventured out of the safety of our own kitchen and been subjected to these imposters. I refer to those times as traumatic food experiences or TFE's (can also stand for "terrible fucking everything" if the outing is a complete disaster) And I have a rating system for them.  TFE's ranked between one and three are up there with puppy beating and mud running events. Here are just a few that make that grade:

TFEs 1-3

1. Ready made Cheese sauce from a plastic packet.  Is basically  genetically modified paint and I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be a skerrick of difference in flavour (and I use that term loosely) if you threw the plastic packaging in and heated that through at the same time...

2. Frozen ready made pizza, tasteless tenderised cardboard, you might as well be eating the box for all the flavour and goodness you get from it.

3. Frozen fish crumbed with flavoured partical board. An abomination.

4. Gravy powder. Salt and dirt.  An abomination

5. Margarine, two chemicals away from being hair removal cream. I swear I've accidentally swiped margarine across my upper lip area and haven't had to wax for three months in spite of my aggressive French facial hair gene.

6. Canned asparagus. Should be illegal. Looks (AND TASTES)  like the unwanted residue from a paper pulping operation.. And if you've never had fresh asparagus cut from the garden and in the pot in under ten minutes,  you have not lived.

So there you have it, some of the worst offenders.  I find I can generally avoid TFE's if I never visit a student flat, flats of teenage offspring, homes with a high ratio of doilies to table tops (nests of table is another give away) or food halls. I mean, I am a princess afterall...