IN FRUIT
The bad news is that those rains really did hit hard in the places our new season strawberries and blueberries are growing. Right now stock picked last Friday is in store but as the week goes on both berries will be weather effected damaging both the flavour and even more significantly the keeping ability of the berries. Over the next five to seven days only buy what you are going to consume over the next day or so. Rockmelons and Honeydews so are cheaper and eating quite well. Papaya continues to be cheap and good. Both types of kiwi are coming down in price and the gold variety is eating fantastically. Navels get sweeter every week and I ate an absolutely delicious imported white nectarine at breakfast this morning. We have some incredibly well priced black America grapes in bags this week; this is a one off end of season bargain. Finally in our Imperfect range this week I would like to recommend both the Buerre Bosc pears and / or the Corella pears. All pears suffered weather damage early this year and an unusually high proportion of the crop will not get to market this year, however they eat just the same as the premium fruit.
IN VEGETABLE
Luckily most of our veg lines at this time come from Northern Queensland rather than lower and Victoria so the massive rains have not greatly affected supply. Red caps are a particularly good bargain this week, but there are solid supplies of many other lines also. The handpicked beans this week are possibly the best quality I have ever seen, not cheap but quite reasonably priced. Also good buying are all the cucumber, twin pack cos, and Broccolini and similar baby stem broccoli products continue to be well priced and it appears that consumers are really switching to these lines in preference to broccoli. Tomatoes are meeting price resistance and will get cheaper over the next week also.
