Supermarket Fruit: alternative uses!

I made nectarine cobbler this week with our supermarket fruit. Didn't want to waste it.

We find the best stone fruit comes from a market stall in centre of town. They buy from the big regional fruit and veg wholesale market and only buy what is ripe and ready to eat. Had amazing apricots and huge donut peaches recently. And gorgeous English cherries (but at £18 per kilo, we didn’t have very many!). My dad loved them and I did buy them by the kilo for him - I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it for ever. Tell myself that I am eating them for him now….thanks Dad!

ferry23

Have a French afternoon and play boules with them in your garden? Obviously with a bottle of French Champagne. And you could always wear a beret to make it more authentic.

😂😂

Siptree Tesco also have the best tomatoes 🍅. Always sweet/sharp. Delicious.

I find Tesco Finest fruits are usually quite good. White flesh nectarines and peaches are always a waste of time. My real bugbear is oranges, impossible to tell till you eat them which ones will be dry and fibrous virtually no juice at all. Although fruit is never as good as it was when we were kids, I still eat 3-4 portions day for heath benefits.

I don't think that being unable to consume food that you've paid hard earned money for can be described as a 'first world problem '

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202507/medium-7z325i-20120515-leo-markt.jpeg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202507/medium-g4fahz-5315.jpg

mabon1

First world problem

Certainly fruit and vegetable markets in 'Third World' countries may sell fresher produce spin the markets but that's because it's local. No food miles.

First world problem

I’d roast them with red onion wedges and chantenay carrots, drizzled with honey or maple syrup!

Have a look at Mary Berry's boiled orange cake recipe. Delicious and simple. Can use lemons as well.

The ones we've bought have been fine after a couple of days.

It's very difficult for farmers to pick at the right time to ensure they get to markets in peak condition. They also depend on supermarkets to store them and display them correctly.

If you knew the care they took to pick and pack, only for supermarkets to store them badly. throw them in a heap in the shops, you'd be in despair too.

I bought a bunch of bananas - sharp and dry inside - never ripened at all.
Apples all brown in the middle even though the outer part was edible.

Most supermarket fruit is tasteless and/or unripe. Apples are like chewing wood and leather and soft fruit never lasts till the best before date. Luckily my soft fruit, raspberries blueberries are all producing well so I can just pop outside and pick what I want, when I want, can't wait for the apples, pears and plums. Birds had most of the cherries. The gooseberries and Blackcurrants are just coming to an end now. I haven't bought a peach or nectarine for ages as they are always too hard or already too soft.

With a banana!!
Both will be so ripe they'll have to go in the compost bin 😁

Put in a paper bag and ignore for a week. If that doesn't ripen them...

Put a banana with them in the fruit bowl, it helps to ripen them.

Some nectarines and peaches never seem to ripen properly though, but most do.

Mrswoo, I’m with you. I don’t think supermarkets should be allowed to claim ripeness when simply not true. Don’t get me started on pears either! I wonder if anyone has ever tried returning unripe fruit advertised as ripe for a refund? It’s a rip off really.

I’ve had 3/4 lots of strawberries grown locally this year, yummy.

Peaches and Nectarines are always dodgy. Bullet hard when you buy them and in a couple of days they are a soggy mess. Nothing like the fresh ones you buy in Italy - and only half the size too! The best thing to do with them is to halve them and simmer them in amaretto. Serve them with amaretti biscuita crumbled over the top.

You've hit the jackpot mrswoo - I love ripe, juicy nectarines.

I have nearly given up buying fruit and think anything labeled "Ripe and Ready to eat" contravenes the Trade Description Act.
But
I bought 4 nectarines from Morrison's last week which were sweet, juicy and perfectly ripe.

I was raised in a fruit growing area in Ontario, and in fact picked cherries, grapes and pairs as a teen. I know how lovely fresh, ripe fruit should taste! And we never had fruit in the fridge, it was always room temperature.

Living as an adult in a non-fruit growing area in northern BC now, I find all the fruit so disappointing. DH was raised with either tinned or week-old fruit due to shipping. All stone fruit is pulpy because it is ripened off the tree instead of on the tree in the sun. And he has all the fruit in the fridge, blasphemy! I take it out as I eat it, but find that all the fruit in the stores are the varieties that keep well but have little flavour.

We are headed to the Okanagan area in a few weeks, so should hit apricot and peach season, as well as the last of the cherries. I'm looking forward to it!

I rarely buy fruit from abroad anymore. It's all picked before it ripens, and is stored for months before it's artificially ripened by gases (Controlled Atmosphere) to go to the shops. Some fruit may never ripen properly, some is picked too late and ripens too fast.

Even the UK strawberries we bought last week were hard and tasteless and the bananas went from green to black in a couple of days and ended up in banana bread.

I remember, fifty years ago, in the Dordogne, eating enormous peaches. Unbelievably juicy and utterly delicious. I don't buy the supermarket peaches and nectarines in the UK, there's no comparison.

I had some hairy grapes delivered yesterday. Not much you can do with mouldy fruit apart from add it to the compost heap.