Looking back over the past weeks and to the weeks ahead – to rate the noteworthy, the cringeworthy, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the truly amazing.
Frozen pie sold for ten times its price
I grew up in the South Island and we were introduced to fast food chains a little later than our northern counterparts. Georgie Pie was more of a novelty than the much loved late night go it was to say, Aucklanders. The stores were bought out and devolved by McDonalds in the late ’90s before the global titan introduced some of Georgie Pie’s menu items to its own before for a brief period a few years back.
Still, many talk fondly of a particularly Kiwi nationwide chain that had its brief day in the sun before being swallowed up and spat out by McDonalds. Imagine then, if you will, the opportunity to get your hands on a slice, or square, of Kiwi culinary history.
This week someone put a four year old steak and cheese Georgie pie that they found in the back of their freezer on TradeMe with a $1 reserve. It sold for the sum of $45, proving the old adage that one person’s old pie at the back of a freezer is another person’s lunch of the year.
5 stars – to paraphrase The Castle – “45 bucks for an old pie? Tell em they’re dreaming”.
Easter will be more expensive for chocolate lovers
Then rising cost of cocoa has driven up the price of chocolate, meaning Easter treats will be more expensive this year. While consumers will be talking a hit, this hasn’t dented the profits of major confectionery companies. In fact, their earnings up up.
“Cocoa futures have surged this year, roughly doubling since the start of 2024. Rising temperatures and weather conditions have stressed and damaged crops in West Africa, which produces more than 70% of the global cocoa supply. Sugar prices are also rising. Futures for a pound of sugar are up about 8% in 2024, after rising 2.7% in 2023.
“Big chocolate companies like Hershey’s and Cadbury maker Mondelez have been passing those costs on to consumers — and then some: Hershey’s net profit margins ticked higher to 16.7% in 2023 from 15.8% in 2022. Mondelez reported a jump to 13.8% in 2023 from 8.6% in 2022.” (Source: “Rich cocoa prices hitting shoppers with bitter chocolate costs as Easter approaches,” by Damian J Troise, 22nd March, www.stuff.co.nz).
2 stars – this year I think I’ll go back to the traditional painted eggs.
Wastewater overflow wrecks kids’ event
Call me stupid but I do not understand why wastewater and sewerage still flows into our harbours and onto our beaches. I thought the pipes took it all to treatment plants and facilities. I hoped that the practice of just dumping it into the sea was what our forebears did. I’m obviously wrong but I’d like to think there was some sort of solution to this. Auckland beaches being closed for safety issues due to wastewater overflow is sadly common. Today I read of a kids’ TRYathalon event being curtailed as the beach was closed due to contamination, again.
“The school kids, aged 6 to 15, attended the sold-out event, which was revised to a run/bike/run format seeing them run in their shoes along Pt England beach before entering transition for bike and then run.’Unfortunately our contacts at Safeswim have just advised us that ‘we have detected a wastewater overflow in Pt England at about 8:30pm tonight’. This means the beach will be black-flagged for 48 hours,’ the Sanitarium Weet-Bix Kids TRYathlon team told families.
“This is the second year running that the event at Pt England has been hit with a black flag alert on Auckland Council’s Safeswim website. Last year, the event was rescheduled from early February to March 26 when contaminated waterways from flooding across Auckland occurred.” (Source: “Wastewater overflow forces cancellation of swimming leg at kids TRYathlon in Auckland,” 24th March, www.nzherald.co.nz).
0 stars – in a supposedly first world country, is this the best we can do?
