May will certainly go on record as a month during which weather conditions were hardly conducive to the start of a long, hot and fresh produce-filled summer, particularly as it has held back the UK soft-fruit crop.

But despite the climatic pressures on the consumer mindset, stone fruit is beginning to build nicely, apricots included. It is one of the few fruits which really moves in and out of seasons, but North Africa seems to be finding a niche market before Spain gets underway.

Marks & Spencer, for example, is stocking fruit from Tunisia, both as Perfectly Ripe for £2.99 where the consumer gets six fruit of a variety quantified as 85, and a Ripen-at-Home pack (Variety 83) for £1 more - but you get 14 fruits.

Certainly overall there is plenty of fruit about, which seems a good time for one of Tesco’s latest launches in the prepared fruit salad range at £3.99.

It has also come up with a new descriptive term. While pineapple and melon are the main constituents of the 500g trays of “Fresh Fruit Fingers”, accounting for 57 per cent of the product between them, there are also strawberries (16 per cent) and blueberries (four per cent).

It was the salad counters, however, which really caught my eye, with the arrival of the trademarked Salanova lettuce at 89p, provided by JB Shropshire. The USP is that with just one cut the product falls apart providing “a delicious full flavoured salad”.

The packaging helps sell the idea, as the rosette-shaped variety is presented looking almost like a gardenia in its own bowl.

It will not have escaped FPJ readers’ notice that the watercress industry has been celebrating a special week, and Sainsbury’s, probably to coincide with the event, has come up with a living pack for 99p. There are however no drips, as the tight root ball also has a proportion of growing compound to hold it altogether.

And I found more innovation in the same store with the arrival of a new 140g English asparagus steamer pack, complete with Parmesan butter for £1.99. As most people probably do not have an asparagus steamer, it’s an engaging idea. There is a warning however not to pierce it and to beware of hot steam.

And of course at this time of the year there are still those of us who enjoy what I have always considered are winter vegetables, although this definition really seems to have gone by the board.

It would have been unthinkable in the not too distant past for Spain to have become a source for parsnips (M&S: 300g: £1.79), indeed the majority of Continental Europe seemed only to recognise them as cattle fodder, rather than root vegetables.

And South Africa has become a source for tight fresh sprout buttons (Tesco: 200g: 99p).

All highly commendable, but I envisage that it won’t be long before the whole argument about food miles again comes to the fore in the national media.

Topics