Once upon a time, in a land far away, the arrival of summer brought with it sweet succulent fruit which had been ripened in the sun, that were packed in wooden crates ready for the endless stream of cars that drove to Henderson to purchase them. Peaches are my fondest memory - Paragon I think they were, large yellow fleshed with juices that ran down your chin.
Today if I were to ask you the question "What do you think of the seasonal fruit available at the moment?" would your answer be tasteless, hard, goes rotten on the bench before it ripens (despite advice from TV ads to do so) the flesh is brown when cut suggesting it has been in cold storage, expensive. Let's sum that up into one word: DISAPPOINTING.
Next time you are in the supermarket stand in the fruit department for a moment and watch the fruit selecting ritual. Feel - squeeze - leave. Who wants to pay top dollars for fruit that will probably go brown before you reluctantly throw it away.
At a time when New Zealand is ranked second in the world for obesity we want to encourage our children to eat fresh fruit. What child is going to eat sour, hard fruit when other high calorie, high sugar, pseudo alternatives are available. As parents we try but the fruit invariably comes home in the lunch box or is discarded at school if we make an issue about it.
So here is my experience over the last couple of weeks; suddenly the stickers on the fruit, which having to remove usually annoys me, have come into their own. They allow me to differentiate between fruit.
Coconut Ice Peach - White flesh fruit (Yummy 4400). I bought several kilos of these a few weeks back, to make the Cinnamon Sugared Fruit recipe in the class but the majority were brown inside and tasteless (see photo above). I abandoned the peaches and used apricots instead.
Pink Otago Peach - I bought one as a test and found it to be dry and chalky. I didn't go back and buy any more.
Golden Queen peaches - I became briefly excited as they looked golden and ripe. If I had been blind-folded and asked what I was eating I would have said a piece of rubber dipped in a watery juice. Not good eating unlike the one precious Golden Queen peach my friend gave me off her tree. That was a peach.
Apricots a few weeks back were my pick of the fruit but the selection available now are dry and tart. Can any of you shed light on this? Have they been held in storage for a late delivery? Yes, I do appreciate that there is a season and fruit has to get picked but I would rather have a glut of fruit when it was ready to be eaten than this apparent need to have cold stored fruit all year. What do you think?
Nectarines - Yellow and White Flesh. Hard as a rock and watch your teeth on the stone when you bite down with force. They have the crunch that is missing in apples (and that will be a separate topic to come!). I found the nectarines that were beginning to soften also had wrinkled skins which suggests old rather than ripe. My mother had the best nectarines in a bucket of spoiled fruit she bought for $2.00 at a fruit outlet shop.
Dark Plums (Yummy New Zealand - no code number) purchased 11 March. An unpleasant texture which made me feel like I was eating raw liver! Started to go off, in the fridge within 2 days.
My plan and hope for this blog is that we share information. What do you know about the fruit - methods of growing, varieties, what has happened to the flavour? Is all top quality fruit exported overseas? Where to overseas? Have you found an outlet that has good quality fruit? Tell us your experiences on my Facebook and Twitter pages.
Why are we so complacent about the decline in the quality of our fruit? Is it because we think our lone voice will be dismissed as having no value? Let us then create a collective voice that asks the questions.
As I suggested in my last entry - it is time for us to ROAR!
