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Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

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Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#51

Post by nickpp »

pocketarc wrote: post #43
nickpp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like all free market failures, the culprit is regulation. Regulated food, local and weekend markets reduced competition by discouraging and removing small retailers until large supermarket chains remained de facto monopolies. Those chains must serve very large number of customers so they must focus on produce that is easy to pick, store and sell. Looks good and survives (even gets ripe during) transit. Taste is often…

While I think there may be something to that, I think there's a simpler, more "it's just normal capitalism" explanation: Making deals with every local small-time producer would be a big pain. Why do that when you can make a single deal with a giant monster of a tomato producer, and sell their tomatoes (especially since as the sibling comment points out, local tomatoes won't be as pretty and as uniform in quality)? Th…

Small grocery shops can and will deal with small producers. The fact we are losing both in favor of giant chains is largely due to regulation and subsidies.

Otherwise we’d have plenty of boutique retailers and producers charging more for better quality produce optimized for different factors.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#52

Post by nickpp »

the_gipsy wrote: post #36
nickpp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like all free market failures, the culprit is regulation. Regulated food, local and weekend markets reduced competition by discouraging and removing small retailers until large supermarket chains remained de facto monopolies. Those chains must serve very large number of customers so they must focus on produce that is easy to pick, store and sell. Looks good and survives (even gets ripe during) transit. Taste is often…

You seriously think that small shops would be competitive if there were no subsidies? No hygiene I could maybe buy, but it goes hand in hand with quality, and there is practically no regulation for that: it's self imposed by the consumer picking pretty produce.

The consumer learns very quickly what they like. Eat a good tomato, you’ll look for one next time. The local fruit shop was even a joke in Seinfeld, I believe.

The closing of the small grocery store and producer can be mostly attributed to regulation.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#53

Post by lifestyleguru »

trte9343r4 wrote: post #35
kungito wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Croatia is having its "bully" tourism phase. They have been historically super cheap and undiscovered location up until 5-10 years ago and now that they are in EU and Schengen and it's actually nicer than some bigger mediterranean countries everyone started piling in. The locals which aren't really business savvy started doubling/tripling prices to see how far it can go without providing additional services or raisin…

> think that the reality is that people "in the know" like polish/chech families are being priced out Not really. They are not poor anymore, and can afford it. But quality is just not there compared to Italy, Greece, Egypt... Only benefit for Polish and Czech tourist, they understand local language.

I would be wary with "Slavic familiarity" while visiting. Slavs in Balkans furiously hate each other. It's safer to speak German or English.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#54

Post by jowdones »

rini17 wrote: post #16
MichaelRo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> They are not demanding I have to disagree on this one. They are prone to a myriad of diseases, mainly fungus: Phytophthora infenstans, Fulvia fulva, Botrytis cinerea, Mosaic Virus, Stolbur disease, and if you don't spray them with the right substances you'll lose a substantial part if not the whole crop, oftentimes lose it even if you spray them. Other than that I agree that home grown tomatoes are better. Of cour…

I lost some crops myself but tomatoes still fared better than other vegetables. It's not like some enormous investment? Having homegrown tomatoes every other year is better than nothing. If you have kids, it's a good lesson about difficulty of obtaining food from nature. I had success with mycorrhizal "good" fungi (brand Symbivit), they were keeping bad fungi away with visible difference between treated and untreated…

Well it's depressing. My mother has a fairly large garden (some 1500 sqare meters) and takes quite some amount of labor to tend to it. So you work all spring and early summer only to see the crops wither away... makes you go on depression pills or just abandon the whole darn thing and buy Duch imported plastic vegetables.

A bit unrelated, nowadays my mother was telling me a memory from her teenage years in the 60s. In early summer she'd come home for the weekend from boarding school in the city and her mother (my grandma) would greet her with lunch and a salad made from fresh cucumber and onion (add salt, oil and vinegar). It would be too early for tomatoes but she still remembers the taste of that early salad.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#55

Post by pnut »

em500 wrote: post #32
wafflemaker wrote: post #14

I'm Polish expat living in Norway. There are no tomatoes to be had in Norway... Just kidding. I'm actually kind of alright with the small ones (pearl tomatoes), any other don't taste like tomatoes. I believe, that the Norwegian people are so used to blandly tasting vegetables, that the worst and least ripe product parties are send to Norway. But my wife and her family are tomato people. Every time we visit Poland or…

I won't comment on the tomatoes, but as far as eggs are concerned, I'm skeptical that any claims about people being able to taste any diffence would hold up in a proper blind taste test. Conclusion from Serious Eats when they attempted to do that: It was pretty clear evidence that as far as eggs go, the mindset of the taster has far more bearing on the flavor of the egg than the egg itself. https://www.seriouseats.co…

I boil six eggs every Sunday and eat one every morning. Same pan, same cooking element, same timing, ice bath with the same volume of water and cube quantity, everything identical from one week to the next. Have been doing it for at least seven years straight.

I want my yolks to be crystalline in texture, at the transition point between runny and chalky. Not precious about yolk colouring. Must be easy to peel.

There are absolutely differences in egg quality when it comes to boiling them.... Specific brands (some of the expensive/omega/free range etc ones too) reliably come out gelatinous and fiddly to peel. Some come out rubbery. Some just taste wrong and bland, even when I sprinkle with Maldon salt flakes. Not one egg, the entire batch.

Over years of trial and error, I found a brand where I can guarantee a consistent textural outcome from my process, and every morning I exclaim "THAT is a good boiled egg" after finishing it.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#56

Post by the_gipsy »

nickpp wrote: post #52
the_gipsy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seriously think that small shops would be competitive if there were no subsidies? No hygiene I could maybe buy, but it goes hand in hand with quality, and there is practically no regulation for that: it's self imposed by the consumer picking pretty produce.

The consumer learns very quickly what they like. Eat a good tomato, you’ll look for one next time. The local fruit shop was even a joke in Seinfeld, I believe. The closing of the small grocery store and producer can be mostly attributed to regulation.

No. They can be attributed to not being able to compete against big chains despite heavy regulation in favor of small businesses.

Big chains can offer what the average consumer wants in greater variety and cheaper, at more places and longer hours. They can gauge prices, do better marketing, have better stock, and wage price wars. They have more power, and what's the purpose of that if not abusing it?

Less regulation would just mean even worse food and less small shops.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#57

Post by jq-r »

senko wrote: post #42
urbandw311er wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just had a week on various Croatian islands. It’s true that we were shocked by the cost of the food (€18 for a pizza in a restaurant) although put it down to the cost of importing the various ingredients. I wouldn’t say any of the food was “horrible” though. We had a tremendous “meat plate” of grilled marinated chicken, pork and steak with potatoes.

(Croat lounging on the Croatian coast right now) No, prices are high because they've been jacked up as high as the market will bear. As an example, an cup of coffee at a beach bar in a random coastal village (€2.5) is about the same as in the (touristy) center of London (£2). The effects will probably be seen the next year. As other commenters noted, Croatia has historically been mass budget tourism location, largely…

While I agree that the prices (of everything) went up, it wasn't due to adoption of euro. The grocery prices dramatically rised in the year before euro adoption due to inflation and then continued to rise after that.

Also I do find it kind of funny when tourists are complaining about prices of food in touristy places. I've eaten a hamburger in Chicago which was $15 and food prices (restaurants etc) are comparatively much higher then in Croatia.

At the same time, the prices in the grocery stores are completely out of control due to high taxes and makes living on the coast or islands as a local miserable and very expensive. Needless to say that housing is also totally out of wack, Croatia is not going in a good direction for it's own citizens.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#58

Post by nickpp »

the_gipsy wrote: post #56
nickpp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consumer learns very quickly what they like. Eat a good tomato, you’ll look for one next time. The local fruit shop was even a joke in Seinfeld, I believe. The closing of the small grocery store and producer can be mostly attributed to regulation.

No. They can be attributed to not being able to compete against big chains despite heavy regulation in favor of small businesses. Big chains can offer what the average consumer wants in greater variety and cheaper, at more places and longer hours. They can gauge prices, do better marketing, have better stock, and wage price wars. They have more power, and what's the purpose of that if not abusing it? Less regulation…

Chains have whole departments dedicated to compliance. They chew through any new regulation you throw at them.

I get my groceries from a tiny neighbor market here in Eastern Europe. Usually from women of surrounding villages. Their main worries are in this order: raising market space fees (these go to the city) and new checks and rules they need to follow.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#59

Post by rini17 »

jowdones wrote: post #54
rini17 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lost some crops myself but tomatoes still fared better than other vegetables. It's not like some enormous investment? Having homegrown tomatoes every other year is better than nothing. If you have kids, it's a good lesson about difficulty of obtaining food from nature. I had success with mycorrhizal "good" fungi (brand Symbivit), they were keeping bad fungi away with visible difference between treated and untreated…

Well it's depressing. My mother has a fairly large garden (some 1500 sqare meters) and takes quite some amount of labor to tend to it. So you work all spring and early summer only to see the crops wither away... makes you go on depression pills or just abandon the whole darn thing and buy Duch imported plastic vegetables. A bit unrelated, nowadays my mother was telling me a memory from her teenage years in the 60s. I…

1500sqm is absolutely not needed for occasional nutritional enrichment. That's why I mentioned pot on balcony. But yes, being forced as kid to help tending big garden does leave some scars.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#60

Post by rini17 »

317070 wrote: post #4
rini17 wrote: post #2

Oh my. Everyone who cares about tomatoes grows their own, supermarkets are for the rest. They are not demanding and will grow anywhere there's sun, including in pot on balcony.

Why is capitalism failing us here? Why do we need to grow our own?

Because economy alone can't solve all our problems? Someone probably promised you it will, but that's scam.
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