UNLIKE the food writer for this esteemed publication, Wanda and I don’t go out looking for food overly often.
I’m happy with a sausage wrapped in bread with a slice of cheese and a smattering of barbecue sauce, something I’ve learned to cook to perfection over the years.
Wanda will insist I put a token vegetable inside, which – as anyone who’s read this column over recent weeks will know – I’ve got growing a gogo in my ceiling, fuelled by the city’s most elaborate hydroponics system.
Free lettuce. Aha, genius. I know. Stop the letters now, please, I don’t have the time to read them all. Hydroponics system cost a bomb but never mind the semantics.
We did however, venture out the other night in search of banh xeo.
I’ve never been to Vietnam, but we have a couple of friends who have, and they swore by these savoury crepes filled with bean sprouts, pork and a few herbs and spices.
Apologies, Ms Food Writer, I’m not trying to take your job. I wanted those crepes. And I wanted them right then and there.
So we tucked Wags in, locked up the house, and we drove to where we knew the best banh xeo in town was. Imagine the horror to find these morsels of mouth-watering tenderness are cooked with rice flour.
“Sorry, no banh xeo tonight,” our friendly chef announced. “Can’t buy the flour.”
The flour shortage got me a little wound up. How can this happen?
Then, it got me thinking about this peculiar economy we’re in. If the Reserve Bank can be believed, we can afford everything, which is why we’re in all sorts of trouble.
Too much money, they say. So, they solve the problem by making the basics – like home loans – more expensive for those living on the edge.
Because those most vulnerable are the low-hanging fruit, the ones who’ll have to rein in the purse strings first, stop buying fruit and vegetables and get back to fast food which we all know is a much cheaper and more convenient option, particularly when you’re working three jobs to keep the mortgage afloat and don’t have time to cook.
The result of all that is that demand is reduced for all those luxury fresh food items, thereby making it easier for those with investment properties to dip into their deeper pockets, eat well, and save a few more pennies for the next rainy day, pandemic, or whatever you want to call it.
Meanwhile, over in China, the rice farmers are busy shipping their little white grains to the flour factory whose suits can’t seem to find any workers without Covid to either grind the stuff or pack it.
Even if they could, the price of petrol has doubled which somehow means the cost of shipping packets of rice flour to Australia has increased seven times the amount they were charging two years ago.
Some economist somewhere will no doubt have an explanation for the apparent disparity.
Regardless, whitegoods and electronics are only marginally more expensive, so someone must be hustling to ensure Gerry Harvey’s got access to a few painters and dockers who are prepared to get out of bed in order to fill a lazy cargo freighter.
Far more chance of that than finding a bloke willing to lift tonnes of rice flour into a shipping container.
So, in today’s economy which everyone keeps saying needs to slow, we have farmers with rotting produce, factories on holiday, ships tied to docks, fat cats with new electrical appliances, and a greying pensioner with an ongoing hankering for banh xeo because the local Vietnamese cafe can’t find a packet of rice flour.
Hey Wanda, can you pass the pepper? This pho they’ve given me isn’t quite hitting the spot.
