Tuesday, May 24, 2016

All-Natural!

Y'all, we had lunch in a Farm Fresh Eatery yesterday. It turns out to be a hip little deli in the sort of shopping center where they're far more interested in cramming in as many shops as possible than they are in making sure that there's enough room to park (or space for people to eat inside the restaurants, for that matter). The pricing was maybe a little high -- I wound up paying about $12.50 for a steak sandwich and a drink -- but it was a huge amount of food, so I don't think that was unreasonable.

However, I did run into a couple of funny little things that apparently are a direct result of the "farm fresh" aesthetic.

First, the steak was awfully pink at the center. So much so that for a moment I considered sending it back and advising them to actually cook it, though it was brown enough around the outside to let me know it wasn't raw. My brother tells me that they do that so you know you're getting fresh, quality steak. So, y'know, okay. Odd as hell, but okay.

The second one, though... Let me tell you, these people are hard core when it comes to using fresh, all-natural ingredients. Healthy food matters to these people, and when it comes to what they provide in their restaurant they are not kidding around. Y'all, the salt -- the salt! -- was enthusiastically labelled to make sure we'd know that what we were putting on our food was 100% all-natural sea salt with no preservatives!

No preservatives.

In the salt.

Do you have any idea how much effort -- how much sheer, relentless work and research -- must have gone into finding a source for preservative-free sea salt?

7 comments:

  1. Did they not also identify the salt as cholesterol, trans fat and sugar free? You're taking your health in your hands if they didn't.

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  2. I'm from Portland. Store owners have been known to sell sand (or some sand variant designed to be played with) and, this being Portland, label it as gluten-free.

    Just in case.

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    Replies
    1. ...Just in case people eat it?

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    2. That's not that far out. Play-Doh is made of wheat, so it has plenty of gluten. Kids sometimes put that in their mouths, so it's designed to be reasonably non-toxic. If they are allergic to gluten, though, that can be a problem. (Gluten allergies are rarer than mere gluten intolerance, and even rarer than Portland parents imagining their kids are intolerant to gluten, I bet.) It's not that unreasonable to point out that an alternative to Play-Doh is free of gluten, because, in practice, children will eat sand too.

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    3. Huh. Turns out there's a whole... genre, I guess... of "play sand" that I wasn't aware of. I was picturing something more along the lines of sandbox sand, not anything that might be compared to Play-Doh. Thanks! That does make more sense.

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