IN FRUIT
The mango quality is better than we have seen in the last five years. They are absolutely fantastic both to look at and to eat. The cheap prices are still a couple of weeks away but they are affordable and good. Together with blueberries they are my pick of the week. It’s still KPs every time for me which is just as well as my son who exports fruit tells me he is getting unbelievable prices in Asia for other varieties. Reed avocados are coming good which will help take the pressure of the Hass variety. Sundowner apples continue to make a nice change and some of our early Australian stone fruit is now eating well, dear but tasty, I found the white peaches the best of these. Some imperfect lines that I think represent excellent value this week are Navel oranges, Corella pears and Packham pears. The navels especially, a bit big and a bit ugly but guess what, the juice is just the same. Together with lemons at around one third the price of the more attractive fruit these imperfect picks are really worth a look if you have not yet tried them.
IN VEGETABLE
Lots of good choices this week in vegetable lines. Tomatoes continue to be plentiful, particularly most of the snacking lines but also truss tomatoes. The truss are cheap, especially the less attractive older crop fruit which is typically a bit duller and smaller than the fresher new season crop. I find the multiple choices of snacking tomatoes a bit confusing but for me this week I think the Sweet Pearls and the yellow snacking tomatoes are the tastiest. The truss, though cheap enough have lost a lot of the flavour they had at first as cost pressure from the supermarkets has made yield not flavour the critical factor for farmers. However there are now many other specialty tomatoes, albeit more expensive, that fill the flavour gap. Try something different each week and decide which is to your taste. The new crop glasshouse eggplant has arrived and is getting cheaper, local spring onions are underway and Victorian snow peas that supply us the whole of summer are underway. Bargains are to be had in broccoli and broccolini, Telegraph cucumbers and green capsicums.
