Great week for fruit again this week. Two weeks out from Christmas what happens in our game is that people tend to focus on Christmas presents whilst their shopping and food purchases are deferred until closer to Christmas. As a result there are some fabulous pre-Christmas bargains this week as nature grows the fruit at the same rate this week as in two weeks time when demand is much stronger. So we have bargains galore especially with cases and trays of fruit. Twenty dollar trays of mangoes, fabulous one and two kg cherries, peaches, nectarines and apricots are all available this week. It is a great week for berries too for the same reasons. I would suggest the premium strawberries which will last longer than the other ones and this next ten days or so is the time for boysenberries. They are in my view a truly underrated treat in summer. My pick of the week this week is raspberries. Raspberries flush twice through the year, now for about ten to 14 days and again in early Autumn. These summer raspberries are just a delight at this time. Great for dessert or breakfast added to mangoes and the other berries, they are just so good on the warm days we are now enjoying. Unfortunately this big flush of mostly Victorian raspberries tends to peter out before Christmas and they just don’t keep that well that you can confidently store them now for Christmas. Then the Tasmanian fruit gets underway but there is less of these and there is often a gap of a week between crops. Good quality figs and grapes are coming through this week and seedless watermelon and papaya are both still well supplied. Bananas are cheap, better lychees (bigger smaller stoned and sweeter) varieties will be in our stores this week, dearer than the smaller fruit but since you cant or don’t eat the stone, the ticket on these is much dearer but the value far greater. Again I would recommend cherries as a great option this week, the quality of our case sale offers is just fantastic. They are dearer than what is available in our punnets or loose on the stack but in my view the way to go. Enjoy these bargains while they last.
IN VEGETABLE
Fairly uneventful week in vegetable this week. As usual potatoes and onions remain fairly cheap, cauliflowers have eased a bit (they are great as a dipping vegetable served raw) and baby fennel and prepacked snow peas are both good buys. The bargain of the week is again tomatoes, especially our gourmet line. It would appear that the larger producers have definitely over supplied this category and I don’t think there will be any traditional rise in tomato prices for Christmas this year.
Just like to mention the great bunches of Lavender in our shops this week. Cathy and I grow them on our farm in the Megalong Valley and harvest them around this time each year. They have a wonderful fragrance and truly last an incredible amount of time, in fact we keep the lavender all year until the next years crop arrives, after we tire of seeing them in house we bag them up in loose knit bags to hang in our cupboard to repel the moths, what a bargain!
