NZ grown stone fruit is in full flight – apricots, peaches and nectarines.

Vegetables in season now include:

Beans – all sorts – runner beans, butter beans (yellow) and short green beans (sometimes known as French beans)

Cauliflower, broccoli and cabbages. Red cabbage bakes a great coleslaw when sliced finely and mixed with red onion and a lemon or orange juice based dressing

Lettuce and other salad greens

So what about all the other fresh fruit and veg in the supermarket?

There are still imported plums and other stone fruit. Watch for these now our own stone fruits are in season.  The imported fruits are often picked very green so they keep till they reach our supermarkets.  They often don’t have a lot of flavour or juice and don’t keep well at home once they have ripened.

Pumpkins were harvested before last winter so best to buy small quantities as needed now as they won’t keep well after being cut.

Citrus – lemons oranges, tangelos

New seasons’ apples start to become available, also apricots peaches, plums, nectarines – but watch for imported ones still.

You’ll also find black currants (these make wonderful jam), rhubarb and cherries

In the veg department you will find a range of fresh items, including aubergine, avocado, green beans, beetroot, capsicum, celery, chilli, cucumber, outdoor tomatoes, garlic, zucchini.

New season’s onions come in about now.  With the ordinary brown onions you can tell the difference between the new and older onions that have been stored for a while by the shape and feel.  New onions are firm to touch and are round.  Older ones are going soft and are more oval in shape as they start to send out a shoot at the top.  I try to dodge these and will only buy loose onions towards the end of the year so I don’t end up with soft onions that don’t cook well and you end up with a lot of wastage.

New potatoes are great for boiling and in salads.

Personal or family tastes are the obvious starting point.

Cost and freshness are important factors too.

So how do you buy your family’s favourite fruit and vegetables without overspending your grocery budget?

The key thing to remember is that when there is a good supply of fruit or veg, the price will be lower.  The plentiful supply coincides with the high growth season and good weather.  Have you noticed that after a period of rain or stormy weather, the price of veg will skyrocket?

To avoid paying high prices, it’s worth learning and remembering what is fresh in what season.

You won’t get that information from the supermarket shelves as fruit and vegetables are imported from other countries when they are out of season in New Zealand.  Often imported fruit and veg are not so flavoursome as those locally grown so if its flavour you want (and you can’t grow your own) check for the country of origin.

Here are some guidelines for New Zealand.

January

February

It’s also a good idea to review you civil defence kit, replace batteries, check the barbecue gas bottle and restock food items that are past their use by date.

You can put together your own survival kit or you can purchase one ready made.  For a list of what you need in your kit, go to a government civil defence site such as Get Ready Get Thru in New Zealand.  If you want to purchase one, type  “emergency survival kit” into your search engine (eg Google) to get a list of sellers. You can choose a kit that suits your household size and needs.

Milli explained that she made sure her children had lots of vitamins in their diet.  Lots of fruit and vegetables for Vitamin C  and additional vitamin C tablets in the winter. Also calcium pills helped. 

She said they are very itchy and she used to paint them with calamine lotion.  She suggested any of the anti-itching creams available now might work. 

Milli said her brother got chilblains on his ears and they were really painful. She thinks there is little you can do to get rid of them. They just take their own time.  It certainly seems easier to prevent than cure them.

So in spite of the cold weather outside, try to open windows to air rooms at least some days each week.

Failing that when you get a fine day, wash bedding in hot water and air pillows duvets etc in the sun or wind.  You’ll be amazed at the difference this makes.

If you feel really brave against the cold, leave your bedroom windows open at night throughout the winter so that the bugs don’t get a chance to get cosy inside your home. 

Make sure the windows are securely latched open to deter unwanted intruders.