I was wandering down the freezer aisle of our local supermarket at the weekend - for such is the mad cap world of the professional plumber. To aid the procurement process the supermarket chaps had very kindly put large signs on each section: Fish, Poultry, Vegetables ect.
I was actually looking for sorrel and since I didn’t have a clue what Sorrell was the signs were proving somewhat redundant but I read them anyway, forlornly hoping for one saying “Here lies Sorrell”. There wasn’t one, but they did have one saying “Free from Foods”.
“!“, I thought.
Was this an ‘in-house’ way of letting the staff know that the freezer was empty? Was it full of none food products, a new line in frozen stationary perhaps? Or was this where they stored all the empty food packets?
Well, I was wrong on all counts. What it actually contained was a variety of foodstuffs that were free from the likes of Wheat, Gluten, dairy products etc. A very good idea, I hear you say. Well yes… and No. One of the products there was “Chicken”, which the packaging informed us was free from Gluten and Dairy products. What’s the big deal about a chicken being free of dairy products? I expect my chicken to be free from dairy products!
I suspect rampant price hiking. You take a £5.99 pack of lamb chops, calculate your profit margin, cry into your silken handkerchief because it’s less then 3 figures, then dry your eyes, scrawl “free from Yoghurt” on it and put the price up to £7.99.
Alas, another item they were “free from” was sorrel, which I have now learnt looks very like the weeds growing on my driveway… which has rather put me off the idea of eating them.
