Boy howdy that's the truth!
"Well, she is right about apples and steaks. Especially steaks.
If you never want to know how tasteless American beef is..."
Odd. I've had some excellent steaks in America, can;t say I've ever had a bad one there now I come to think of it.
No she's not. They range in quality. She just doesn't know where or how to shop properly.
(As for Kobe beef, it comes from special cows that are fed beer, massaged, and kept sedentary, all to increase the fat marbling in the beef. Fat equals taste. Of course it tastes great, if you can afford it. It has the wrong consistency for really good hamburgers, though.)
You just need to know where to buy your beef: Or continue to buy Kobe!
The best beef I ever had was at a shooting match in Garden City, KS. The guy who hosted the match was a rancher, and on the second day of the match, he had a BBQ. The "guest of honor" was a cow that he slaughterd the previous day. No stress to the cow at all, unlike those who go through the slaughterhouses. This cow was just calmly standing around, chewing its cud, and he walked up to it and put a .357 round into its skull. It just dropped dead on the spot. After 24 hours in a BBQ pit, it was the best tasting, most tender meat I've ever had.
Mark