These basic foods are costing you too much.

Smashed avocado on fancy, schmancy toast is soooooooo yesterday, according to Melbourne chef Victor Liong, and he has declared war on the over-priced trend. Same goes for porridge, omelettes and green juice which he thinks should be officially “retired” from cafe menus.

“Since when did we think it was acceptable to charge $14 for half an avocado a cook has smashed up with a spoon, served over a few slices of bread?’ he asked Ninemsn.

EXACTLY!

The days of $2 avo on toast or $1.50 raisin toast are O-V-E-R courtesy of avocados being “smashed” and raisin toast that is as thick as all hell. Seriously, I can’t even open my mouth that wide and FYI butter isn’t meant to look like pâté.

Ooooh, you sprinkled the porridge with chia seeds. Now I’m happy to pay one hundred million dollars for it. No problem. Just take my car while you’re at it.

May as well eat my money instead.

My cafe-loving-colleagues share my outrage because we friggin’ love our food here at Mamamia – free food often causes shrieks of sheer delight – however most of us are choking on our food purchases these days.

Honestly, coffee and avo on toast/croissant combos are now in the league of $8-9. What even is that?

TOAST –  look, I know I should just make it, but it went from $3 to $12 overnight. Just plain Vegemite and butter, 12 effing dollars.

$4 for an avocado in the supermarket… I mean come on!

I got a coffee, and avo with tomato and feta on toast when I was living in Bondi….$20. 20. dollars!

Poached eggs and toast all all their add ons. $4 extra for a roast tomato? WHAT THE HELL?

Toast is a joke. so are juices/smoothies $15 for a glorified milkshake no thank you.

Add-ons are the worst – $5 for avocado – it arrives and it’s a few small slithers. Shit house.

$17 for two corn/zucchini fritters. Those things cost next to nothing to make, and even if you layer them up with some feta/bacon/whatever there;s no way it should cost that much.

When the avo arrives and it’s still in the skin? like i’m paying you for the labor smash that shit for me.

Salads that are $20 and are 95 percent Iceberg lettuce. I’m literally paying $20 for crunchy water, in my opinion.

Juices. $ 8 – 14.

Juice yessssss. I swear a juice is like $113 at the moment.

Nigella Lawson came under fire for including a smashed avocado recipe on her new TV show Simply Nigella, with many saying it was too simple. Article continues after this video.

MILKSHAKES. I will not be handing over $10 for a milkshake.

I don’t want a dessert that costs as much as my dinner.

That dumb cold press juice stuff?! I once was asked to grab one of those with an old co-worker and when the shop assistant asked me to pay for my $15 juice… I nearly died. I have never taken angrier sips.

There must be some rule in chef-world that says whenever you use ‘deconstructed’ as an adjective on a menu, you get to charge double the price and do half the labour.

$8 for a sachet of instant rice at the convenience store across the road.

I went next door to grab a straw. They asked me to pay 50 cents.

When you have to pay $1 if you want tomato sauce with a pie. And one sachet is never enough, you need at least 2-3. It’s just unAustralian.

$12 for bacon and egg roll.

And did I mention that most of us are buying this stuff takeaway, so we can’t even blame the cost on the service. It’s like we’re being punished for being busy and hungry at the same time.

And it’s not just the grownups who are paying too much for food. Don’t even get me started on kid’s food. When I was little a chocolate Paddle Pop cost 20 cents and I’d get a strap of licorice for 5 cents. At my kid’s indoor sports centre they are selling Paddle Pops for $2. I can buy an entire box of them from Coles for $7.69.

Was it that hard to take them out of the pack. Was it that hard?!?

And another thing. If any of the above foods were cheaper we’d BUY THEM MORE OFTEN! We’d also feel happier about our indulgences and less guilty while we ate them.

Now obviously we won’t be reducing our curbing our food habits because that would be completely insane. We just reserve the right to complain about them.

We are fully behind Victor Liong and his campaign which interestingly isn’t about making food cheaper but about making food worth the cost by being more innovative. His ideas include Asian inspired offerings such as crispy egg with tofu and ginger instead of omelettes, Vietnamese style congee instead of porridge and avocado with things like pistachio and peas served on Chinese fried bread instead of smashed avocado on toast.

Sounds pretty good to me? Better at least than the cafe where the put honey on the avocado on toast and the one where a slice of blood orange adorning the plate was meant to justify the expense.

Why do we continue to pay these exhorbitant prices, aside from the aforementioned “busy and hungry” reasons? Because food just taste better when it’s prepared by someone else, even if it is just smashed avocado on toast.