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18 warning signs you might be a food snob

Every few months I leave Cape Town for a weekend and travel back to my home town to see family and friends. Apart from packing bags and making plans, I need to prepare in another way. I need to unclench my fists and take a deep breath. I have to let go of what I’ve become: a fully-fledged food snob.

You see, while I’m there I will have to go without pine nuts, pesto and chevin goat’s cheese. No baby spinach, truffle oil or those mini stroopwaffels I love so much. Not even the Woolies down the road from my parents’ house delivers on these demands.

Don’t get me wrong. Being a food snob doesn’t mean I don’t love a good Steers burger, glass of chocolate pinotage or bag of NikNaks, but I do feel rather strongly about certain things. Read the warning signs below to see if you’re at risk of being a food snob too.

You can’t abide sliced bread

Only artisanal loaves made from slow-fermented stone-ground flour for you. Free from preservatives, your brown-paper-bagged crusty loaves are short-lived, but so worth it. (Read more about the artisan toast trend.)

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This precious bundle will never know the horrors of a plastic bag.

Premade salad dressing is an object of derision

That plastic bottle of honey-mustard dressing must just go.

You spend way too long looking at fruit juice labels

Is it just reconstituted cells with added water? Is it mostly pear juice? It is loaded with wheezy-making preservatives?

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Freshly squeezed or makes-you-wheeze?

You care a little too much about your coffee

Avert your eyes – and nostrils – from the tin of Ricoffy.

You won’t swallow Wellington’s sweet chilli sauce

Not in public, anyway. When you’ve come home at 2am and you’re making a grilled cheese sandwich, it’s anyone’s game. (You’re not alone – read this blog appropriately entitled ‘Shit I eat when I’m by myself’.)

You abhor white sugar

Only beautiful, caramel-coloured raw granules will ever grace your sugar bowl, because you know that white sugar has been bleached with bone char, also known as cow bones. Yes, really.

No sunflower oil can be found in your pantry

Sunflower or canola oil? Nope, even though it’s been approved by the heart foundation. Only award-winning local olive oil like Morgenster will suffice.

You won’t touch table salt

You will season your food with sea salt crystals alone. Chances are you have a box of Maldon, a fancy Le Creuset salt pot, or a jar of pink Himalayan salt in your pantry.

You haven’t bought instant dip in the last 15 years

You would rather spend three hours grilling and peeling peppers, caramelising onions or shucking chickpeas one-by-one than resort to one of those plastic-lidded travesties. (Read on for more dip ideas to raise your game.)

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The joys of skinny (fries) dipping

You think gouda tastes like rubber

Well, not all gouda. Mature gouda and the pale Dutch sweetmilk variety are pretty good. But that orange stuff in supermarkets is fit only to act as a doorstop. (It’s often conveniently shaped in a wedge too.)

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Living on the wedge

Only free-range beef or chicken will do

This isn’t really snobbery, it’s more like common sense.

Ditto on the free-range eggs

Yes, they may be besmirched by chook poop, but the difference in yolk colour and flavour is unmistakeable, not to mention the ethical considerations. They’re not even much more expensive.

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Gertrude distracted the hens with her winning smile while she escaped with the freshly laid loot

You never drink soup made from a sachet

There’s no nutrition in that powder anyway, and the main ingredients are flour and salt. (Go on, check.) Even the soups that claim to contain chicken seldom have more than five percentage points of actual poultry, and they never say which part…

You won’t buy pre-mix cakes

Gone are the days of those crazily coloured funfetti box cakes. (They were kind of fun, though.) Now you will only accept beautiful buttercream, baked cheesecakes or apple tarte tatin. Or, in a pinch, something like Nomu’s chocolate brownie mix, which is really just the cocoa and flour mix into which you beat real butter.

Tinned white asparagus is horror-film material

This hardly qualifies as snobbery: no-one should be eating this abomination.

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Green is for ‘go’

You believe that polony is a crime against humanity – and pigs

You will happily tuck into a charcuterie platter, but won’t go near a slice of polony or a lumo-pink vienna. (Especially if you’ve ever seen what goes into it – it’s eyeballs and a-holes all the way.)

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For better or for wors

You won’t eat sandwich spread

Now that you’re a grown up and you can make your own sandwiches, that jar of camel kotch can be relegated to your childhood nightmares.

People are nervous to invite you over for dinner

This is a double-edged sword. It’s lovely if people make an effort, but we all deserve a break sometime – even from being a snob. Homemade anything is always appreciated. (I love you, mom!)

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