In fruit: Fortunately, fruit fares better than vegetables in these extreme weather conditions. Not all fruit of course, and in fact all our berries and many of the fig growers, have suffered a similar fate to to the vegetable crops .
However, bananas are plentiful and our farmers have advised us that the next few weeks will see enormous quantities of fruit arriving in both Sydney and Brisbane. Grapes, all grapes, are very good and cheap, all our stores have the best line of Thompson seedless I have seen in years; really big sweet fruit that we are selling the old fashioned way: loose on the stack not hidden in bags. My favourite grape is the old fashioned black Muscatel (seeds included) now in store and eating superbly.
Pears, avos and apples are all good value and we have a line of small lemons in the stores this week to sell as Imperfect; they are dead cheap and the only thing Imperfect about them is they are on the small side. Tegan blue plums are my plum of the week this week, we source them from Western Australia and they are a far better eating plum than the same plum from our southern states. Finally, I have been advised that next week for 10 days or so we have our extraordinarily good eating KP mangoes from Mildura again. I love them!
In veg: Not much good news here! The vegetable outlook is even grimmer than a week ago; if that's even possible. As always though, there are a few options: Cauliflowers, that have been very dear, are now in good supply. Similarly, Imperfect zucchini are suddenly available again, and Imperfect kūmara is also quite plentiful. So, it’s a difficult week, however, I feel there is light at the end of the tunnel.
