What can I say? Not all of us are culinary tourists. I’ve always been a picky eater. I hear it’s now being referred to as a Selective Eating Disorder… sounds less petulant and more costly to diagnose. But, as with all bad habits, there comes a time in life when you can decide to make a change. I’ll certainly be modifying my diet as we travel. So far, Australia’s been pretty easy for adjusting.
As I mentioned in the Eco/Sustainability post, we’ve chosen to try to limit our purchases of single-use plastics and groceries packaged using plastics altogether. This has forced us to shop and eat differently.
We’ve been going to the local butcher where we’ve found some super-tasty beef filets. The burgers aren’t great, so we’ve been making a lot of loose meat sandwiches and mixing it into spaghetti. Beef is – to our taste – tougher and less flavorful in Australia because most of their cattle are grain-fed instead of grass-fed. If you keep an eye out, you can find restaurants and butchers that offer grass-fed beef.
The chicken we’ve bought at the butcher and the store has been suspect. I’m not sure if it’s just the processing smells or if it goes bad quickly, but we’ve experienced a lot of funky smelling chicken and we’ve even tossed it out without eating it on occasion.
At the fresh market we found grapes out of plastic, and of course apples & bananas. Eva’s found some great spinach and lettuce, cheese, carrots & cucumbers. All of these can go in canvas or reusable plastic shopping bags and Tupperware containers.
The bakery has been interesting. I’ve been eating a lot of bread; lots of delicious, fresh baguettes. I’m planning my plastics strategy for the bakery. I’d like to reuse our bread bags but haven’t proposed it at the shop yet. I imagine they’ll let me.
There’s still reason to go to the supermarket. Canned soda, pasta, pasta sauce, we’ve found some chocolates that are wrapped in foil (finally!), corn, beans & wine are all things we can get at Coles or Woolworths grocery stores that don’t use plastics. There are lots of varieties of canned, carbonated fruit juices.
Melbourne establishments boast a pretty good selection of beer. There are indistinctive Pale Ales, IPAs & Lagers available at most bars, not like the US where you go to a bar and all you have is a bad selection of light beers. And Australia is famous for wines. Lotsa Shiraz!
Something we’ve come to love is the prevalence of Beer Gardens in restaurants. There are some sidewalk cafes, but a lot of times, there’s an open-air, walled back patio. They weren’t obvious at first, but once we noticed them, we’re always looking for them now. Sunshine beer-dreams!
Ok, back to the food…
No grape jelly. Hamburger pickles are semi-rare and the ones at the store are sweet and tart and difficult for me to eat in the quantities I’d like. Crinkle cut chips are super salty and the non-crinkle chips we’ve tried taste peanutty, although the ingredients don’t include peanut oil.
Sandwich bread is very dense here; it’s filling, it’s got a processed taste and molds much more quickly than US bread. We’ve found better, lighter, more palatable bread at the bakery.
Overall, we’ve been eating better… fresher. We haven’t bought a lot of sugary snacks or drinks. We largely reuse a glass Voss water bottle. And eating fresher means going to the market more often and lengthening my arms carrying reusable grocery bags 20 minutes back home. It’s been great. But I can’t help but worry about what’s in store for a picky eater on the road in Vietnam next month.
Tips:
Take your reusable bags back to the store with you: reduce waste & save
If you’re an American carnivore, I recommend you seek out the grass-fed beef
I haven’t seen Fosters and there aren’t a lot of American beers, but there is a good selection. Peroni’s available at most stores, and although the local Pale Ales are generic, they are better than most American mass-distributed beers.