Monday evening ramble

At a barbecue yesterday, someone asked me what was in a three-bean salad (four, I guess, if you count green beans) I'd brought. As I went through the ingredients, I found myself needing to clarify that it calls for real balsamic vinegar, not wine vinegar with crap in it. It's actually quite the ordeal to find the real thing, and really easy to not check for the difference. I recently ran out of the bottle I'd had for years--because you only need to use a drop of the real stuff--and found myself shopping for balsamic. The ingredients on bottle after bottle--each bottle labeled "Balsamic Vinegar of Modena"--read, "wine vinegar, caramel color," etc. Trader Joe's doesn't sell real balsamic; Whole Foods sells a few bottles amid the impostor.

I bring this up because it has to do with the way we buy and sell food in this country. Companies can just label their product "balsamic vinegar," even though it isn't. Don't you think there's something wrong with that?