Courgette crisis!

Couldnt do without cauliflower, I grow Courgettes, very easy to do, also home grown tomatoes, now THEY cant be beaten, mmm, the delicious flavour, roll on summer.

I was just about to ask what courgetti was! Interesting.

Probably the weather causing shortages . We had a very hot summer and our courgettes , peppers and aubergine didn't do too well. We now have had cold and frosty weather since early December, the ground is frozen and the citrus trees are looking very sorry for themselves. Maybe more shortages in the spring and summer!!

We could eat English seasonal instead?

No one else seems to have mentioned broccoli but I had to go to three stores on Monday to find any!

Quite likely, Grannynise.
Couldn't live without onions and tomatoes. Mercifully, one can get good tinned toms. One should be able to make do.
Frozen veges are pretty good on the whole, except they are a bit boring.
Yes, we have got used to having everything at all times - no real "hunger months" at the end of winter after the winter vegetables have finished and the spring veges start.

I wonder if the current trend of eating ready made courgetti - expensive ready spiralized courgettes - has exacerbated the shortage?

Couldn't live without onions. I rarely buy fruit & veg from Supermarkets preferring my local shop which stocks mostly local produce some grown less than a mile from where I live.

I also get veg boxes from Riverford delivered, they are about 10 miles from where I live, superb, in season, straight from the ground veg (carrots with soil on them). Used to use Abel & Cole as well but they don't deliver where I live now.

When I was growing up we grew all our own fruit & veg, apart from potatoes as they always got "wireworm", greenhouse grown tomatoes absolutely wonderful flavour

I always put my excess courgettes and squashes beside my gate with a 'help yourself' notice. I find that they only disappear at night!

We used to grow courgettes (zucchini in US) during the short New England summer. Peppers, too, though they are more challenging.

They grow so quickly, you can end up with cricket bat sized courgettes if you wait too long to harvest, even a day can make a difference in a few inches.

My expat friends likely will recall home-gardeners leaving a basket or box of zucchini at the end of their drive with a sign saying FREE-PLEASE TAKE ALL YOU WANT! My mum used to make zucchini relishes.

I also remember back in the US that California (and now Florida) was the 'salad bowl' of America. Spain is surely the UK's.

Here, I wish we had more Greek produce. They grow lovely soft fruit and vegetables. Their peaches and melons are amazing.

Fruit and veg don't taste the same as when I was young because they are specially bred for shelf life. I remember when I was a child being sent to buy tomatoes that were over ripe ,
for frying. What has happened to juicy William pears? Russet apples? Small Canary bananas? They go off too soon for the supermarkets to stock.
Tomatoes should not be refrigerated.

Potato, onion, just thinking bit of bacon, white sauce and yes another hot pot!

Oh dear! How did our parents manage? I love courgettes but it's not the end of the world if we don't get them. If I were a gardener [which I'm definitely not!] I'd try and grow them myself. Perhaps that should be another NY resolutions

Yes Welshwife, I saw that item re courgettes on the news this morning. Apparently due to bad - and pretty much unheard of - huge snow in Spain. My disappointment was there is still huge demand for the outrageously overpriced few that get through. Beware the traders who might be opportunist and simply do without them for a little while. Does anyone remember many years ago when potatoes became a silly price and people resorted to alternatives such as rice? The price soon returned to 'reasonable'. Nowadays, I think many of us don't take time to be price aware. Yep TIME is indeed precious.

It's definitely got to be Onions for me ....would be a sad world without them ...they go in practically every dish l cook! ?

They did a report from a veg market on Breakfast and wholesale boxes of courgettes are four times the normal price.

I heard on the Today programme that in the UK one farmer has invested millions to grow tomatoes hydroponically under LED lights. They are basically grown in guttering as they do in Holland - I think this method is the reason for tasteless tomatoes - the ones OH grows in the garden are delicious.

Spuds.

ps - I've just looked it up and the reason is the extreme cold, courgettes etc are very susceptible to frost damage.
It's been a lot colder here than in the UK. Still is.

I saw that item on BBC news this morning. They said something about the ground being too wet to plant the new crop.
I saw some today at 1.80€ a kilo, lovely fresh produce, also peppers and aubergines, but we're not far from the Spanish border.
I wonder whether the replanting story is the real reason?
Onions are my favourite. We like fennel too.

Definitely potatoes, with onions a close second!

I'm sure growers and dieticians are in cahoots over the 5 a day recommendations. We certainly didn't have that when I was a child and as a generation we're living longer than ever

PS I always remove tomatoes from the fridge a couple of hours before eating, the flavour seems much better.

Carrots and onions

I wondered where all the courgettes had gone, I use them a lot, great for spiralizing and in veg bakes. I would miss cauliflower too shysal for the same reasons as you. Since low carbing I have come to resemble a cauliflower

It's lovely that we have so much variety now. I really like those jars of peas and carrots you get in French supermarkets
DH has taken over the shopping but he is still not a good vegetable buyer. He never buys enough and I like to have a basic soup on a regular basis with celery onion and carrot.

Since trying to eat fewer carbs I have become a great fan of cauliflower, it is so versatile, roasted, mashed and grated so would miss it. I like banana shallots too, but fortunately grow enough of my own to last the whole year.

Like others, for me it would be onions; I'm not a fan of courgettes. Celery, too, I don't like to be without. I only buy vine tomatoes - at least they smell of tomatoes even if the taste leaves a lot to be desired, but my preference is for the smaller sweeter varieties. How spoiled we are now, though. When I was a child, you could probably count on two hands the varieties of vegetables you saw in the winter months, and who had ever even heard of a courgette or a pepper?