Always take sale prices with a pinch of salt

WOULD you pay R30 for a litre of salt water? Of course not. We have a whole ocean of salt water going for free right on our doorstep. You’d be crazy to buy a litre, especially if it cost more than a litre of cooldrink. You can buy cheap wine in a box for almost that price. But you probably have bought expensive salt water quite willingly in your local supermarket without a second thought.

I was looking for bargains in the full-colour advertising pages that came with my Cape Argus, when I saw frozen chicken pieces advertised at R109 for 3.5kg. It was described honestly as “chicken with brine mixture”.

Nobody’s trying to hide anything here. The small print says it’s made up of 70% chicken, 29% water and 1% salt. This means about one third of the price is for salt water. That’s roughly R32 for just over a litre of brine.

I’m sure the purveyors of brine chicken will be able to offer convincing explanations as to why we need to buy salt water with our chicken, but I’m also pretty sure the actual reason is to increase the weight of the product and make us pay chicken price for salt water.

If we felt our chicken pieces needed salt water we could easily add our own without too much hassle. Every kitchen has a salt pot and a tap full of water, which may be expensive here in Cape Town, but certainly costs less than R30 a litre.

Shoppers are such suckers. We fall for marketing tricks everywhere. I saw cans of pre-mixed gin and tonic in my local liquor store recently, and readymade brandy and Coke, at quite a whopping price and wondered who would pay that much simply to save the trouble of pouring your own G&T.

Have we really become too lazy to mix a drink? What will they think of next to exploit our laziness? Pre-stirred tea?

We’re already looking at a world of driverless cars, which I find rather a sad idea. I enjoy driving. I enjoy mixing my own drinks too.

I like to cook a chicken and play my own music, even if I do it badly. I don’t want to hand over my life to be lived by experts. If I want salt water in my chicken I’ll add it myself, thanks very much.

Life is to be lived and even when we make mistakes, it’s better to make our own mistakes than to sit back and let somebody else live on our behalf.

Last Laugh

It was a beautiful sunny day and a lady was walking through the park when she decided to sit and enjoy the glorious sunshine.

She sat down on a park bench and before long a scruffy tramp came and sat beside her.

“Hey, lady,” he said, “how about you and me having a good time together.”

The lady was shocked. “I’ll have you know I’m a respectable married woman,” she huffed.

“So what are you doing on my bed?” said the tramp.