At certain times of the year, pumpkin is new season, and very pale. At the moment both the butternut and the jap are a rich, dark orange colour great for making soup or roasting. There are plenty of pumpkin soup recipes online, it’s not rocket science, sometimes the simplest of recipes are often the best.

Stewed rhubarb and apple with a dollop of cream was one of my favourite home made desserts growing up. Rhubarb is really easy to grow, and simple to stew. If you’ve never cooked it before, there are plenty of recipes online. A word of warning, rhubarb leaves are poisonous, so if you are going to grow it in the backyard, keep that in mind if you have free ranging chickens. We at Micky Booth always cut the leaves off the rhubarb prior to packing it in an order.

Locally grown navel oranges are now in season, and are on special this week. They are a winter variety, easy to segment, and better eating than the Valencia variety. Valencia oranges are the summer variety, harder to peel, and more suitable to juice. Valencia oranges quite often have a green tinge to them, which is often mistaken for un-ripeness. In fact, the greener the skin, the sweeter and juicier the Australian Valencia orange is on the inside. It’s an indication that is has been left on the tree to absorb the energy of the sun and ripen naturally to its full potential.

Looks like “soup weather” has set in. Time to stock the veggie crisper with those favourite soup vegetables, and there’s a lot of them; leeks, celery, parsnips, turnips, swedes, carrots, onions and potatoes…

There is plenty of new season fruits available… pink lady apples, packham pears, gold kiwi fruit, ruby grapefruit. All are on our specials page. Our online store is now mobile optimized, which means it is much easier to place an order with your smart phone if your tablet or laptop is not handy. Let us know what you think.