There I was last week thinking that coffee mug wielding mom was the most dangerous thing I’d seen on the road for some time, only to have her well and truly superseded this week, not just by the two drivers who nipped out to overtake me when they realized I was slowing down to stop at a red light, but by the giant white poodle spotted dropping the kids off on the school run. Yes there might well have been someone sat beneath it but there could just have easily have been a couple of Chihuahuas down in the foot well operating the brake and the accelerator pedal. Yes it was that big, and yes it was sat in the driving seat.
It’s all very well entrusting your pets with more responsibility – why did I never think of sending the cat out with my weekly grocery shopping list – but sometimes your child’s safety has to come first. On the other hand Americans love their pets and you’re not a pet-owner over here, you’re a pet parent. Your domestic animals are part of the family so why not let them earn some extra pocket money assisting with the daily chores.
Doggie-day-care is readily available for working pet parents, and there is a huge market for pet related products – designer apparel, diamante accessories, and of course, gourmet diets. I’ve noticed that pet food is very much promoted on quality of product, as opposed to convenience and low cost. As a discerning pet parent you can rest assured your dog or cat is getting only the very best.
It’s a shame that food producers and manufacturers don’t appear to believe the US public share these same values when it comes to feeding themselves. Whilst your dog and cat are being promised only the very best cuts of meat, little importance appears to be placed on what's going into your kids' chicken nuggets as long as it's cheap.
Why am I so surprised in a land where a tin of Spam is still advertised on TV as a culinary must-have? Grocery shopping remains one of my major bug-bears. I still haven’t got used to walking past the chemically enhanced radio-active looking fluorescent iced cup cakes on sale in most supermarkets, or the stacks of packet meals ready to be reconstituted with a half a pint of boiling water. That’s okay when you’re stuck on a NASA space station for six months but is it really necessary back down on earth where you have easy access to a veritable harvest of fresh produce?
Southern California is the land of the citrus groves, the home of permanent sunshine and acres of salad crops, yet rather disappointingly a lot of what is on offer on general supermarket shelves, whilst arranged in beautiful artistic displays, tastes and feels as if it has been sat in a warehouse for the last six weeks. Call me old fashioned but when I buy fruit and vegetables, I expect them to be fresh. I like a sugar-snap-pea to well, snap. Likewise I'd like to think that my beef had roamed freely on those Californian hills and my chicken had lived its short life outdoors to the full. Whilst free range and organic products are available, they are certainly not low cost and they are certainly not promoted widely on TV.
Sadly, it appears that if I want guaranteed quality and freshness I'd be better off sticking to pet food.
Having lived in the States for over a year by now, I realized that we buy a lot of European foods (such as cheese, jams, tea, chocolates and even bread). We are lucky to have a few specialty stores in our area which carry these products. First we tried buying US products but we did not like the taste that much (especially bread and cheese sold in normal, non-gourmet grocery stores and supermarkets). I do not know whether this is due to quality differences or due to our taste preferences, but there you go. So we definitely live in a "food bubble".
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