Welcome home to New York- snow, sleet, chills, ice.... yet, it's still better than San Francisco's chill.  Here, at least, they shut the frickin' doors!

Can I say "frickin'" on the internet?  It'll have to read up on that.

Of all the many things that I miss from San Francisco, NUMERO UNO on the list is the Berkeley Bowl, with it's long aisles full of vegetables (organic or otherwise), or its butcher offering grassfed, meat from grass-fed cows who spent their afternoons dancing in the fields and only passed away when they were good and ready, nay, EAGER to feed the wealthy hippie carnivores of Berkeley. 

I come back to New York and trundle through my old grocery store (and I use the term VERY loosely), and I see the shoddly veggies haphazardly arrayed without any descriptors, demonstrating all the variety of a "Police Academy" sequel and the pricing of Tiffany's.  The "meat" aisle comes courtesy of Mr. Purdue (even the beef!), and I bristle at the cereal prices, none below $5.00 per box!

But I need to eat, right?  So I grab some mediocre veggies, some lousy boxed pasta, and some canned tomatoes, head home, and start cooking up.  Ask anyone that's eaten my spaghetti sauce and the worst you'll hear is "yeah, it's good."  The best will make you beg me to cook for you.  BEG!  So the veggies are chopped, the garlic diced, the oil hot, the tomatoes....

...packed with High Fructose Corn Syrup?!?!??!

Okay, that's comPLETELY insane.  When I buy canned tomatoes, I expect the ingredients to be:

tomatoes

I'm willing to put up with additions like "salt", or "water", or, if it's a particularly frisky company "love".  But CORN SYRUP?  That's a sure sign that whichever company made said canned tomatoes was significantly more concerned with profit than product.  And while I'm loathe to mention the name of the company, I will say that it's name rhymes with "Hell Jaunty".  Figure it out.

And never, EVER, buy their CRAP!  I'm so enraged that I fell for such a scam.  Tomato sauce companies like Ragu and Prego add Corn Syrup (in their organic lines, ORGANIC corn syrup.... welcome to the end of Western Civilization as we know it) in order to cut quarterly costs- if last Summer not enough soccer moms cashed in their Prego coupons, make them pay for it in useless calories courtesy of the cheapest crap around, government subsidized CORN SYRUP!

Sure, it's nice to see my friends again (though Ellen, I miss you three times over, my dear), and it's nice to be able to enjoy the fruits of the city once more (figurative, not literal).  But the food here?

Fuggeddabowdit!

TOMATO POETRY!!!! 

Dear tomato,

you're just not good enough at being a tomato 

though red you be, and sweet you taste,

riddled through and through with flavor,

destined for salad, sauce, or paste.

You're just not that Great-O

Tomat-O

The thing is, my plump, red friend,

that you cost three cents more per pound,

than our stock can bare this fiscal quarter's end.

Our accountants have come up with pricing that's sound.

You're just not that Hot-O

Tomat-O

Your friend from the field next door,

the one with pointy green stalks and yellow ears,

Will be taking your place in store.

No one'll know- we've been conditioning them for years.

One day they'll all Hate-O

Tomat-O