Continued heat and rain in the Victorian cropping regions has affected harvests of berries and green leafy vegetables, and although the best quality produce will cost more, there are ample fresh fruit and vegetables for your Easter holiday table.
The best buys are reasonably priced Asian vegetables, asparagus, cauliflower, capsicum, carrot, celery, eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms, and in the hard lines, onions, potatoes and sweet potatoes.
With less quality Victorian supplies, expect to pay firm prices for beans, beetroot, brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, leeks, parsnips, snow peas, silverbeet, squash and sweet corn.
Pumpkin is cheap. If your pumpkin is whole, it will store well at room temperature. If the pumpkin is cut, remove its seeds, wrap it in plastic and store in the refrigerator crisper.
Lettuce and cucumbers are weather affected and have firmed in price, along with avocados that have been expensive to firmly priced for some weeks.
Serving up a salad this Easter holidays is more cost effective with all categories of tomatoes, mixed salad leaf, eshallots and herbs plentiful, of quality and a reasonable price.
Add something special to your salad platters to make it Easter-special with dragon fruit, starfruit (carombola), custard apples and persimmons in season and plentiful.
Team them with reasonably priced bananas, valencia oranges, all melon varieties and pawpaw. Lemons are usually expensive at Easter time but this year are plentiful and value-for-money.
Expect to pay firm prices for good quality apples, grapes, figs, Italian kiwifruit, pears, pineapples and passionfruit.
All berries are weather affected and although available, are of poor quality and are costly.
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