Box Divvy Elanora Heights - Powderworks

03/01/2025

• MARKET UPDATE •

FRUIT

🍎 apples remain expansive: depending on the quality, we may decide to take them off for a month or so.

🍑 Stone fruit is so much better value, with lower prices for plums – and larger size peaches and nectarines. Apricots usually finish by February, so enjoy them whilst they last.

🍒 Cherries are now mostly Tasmanian, and whilst not cheap, they are arguably the best-eating cherries this season.

🥭 In the tropical section, mangoes – both KPs and Honeygold – are now mostly from Mareeba in North Qld: home of the best-eating mango around, but they will be a little pricier than before Christmas. Papaya and pineapples are good, but passionfruit (Panama this week) are the best value at under $1 each.

🍉 Watermelons are still a little larger than usual, but good value at around $1.75 a kilo.

🫐 Berries are good, but Victorian strawberries may be up in price due to an approaching heatwave this week.

🍋‍🟩 Limes are cheap, but lemons will remain pricy until new season fruit become available next month.

VEGGIES

👍🏻 Most lines are stable and good value – especially local corn, most leafy greens, herbs (basil is still only $2.25 a bunch), lettuce, cucumbers, capsicums, carrots, tomatoes, pumpkin, eggplant and chillies.

🥑 This time of year, there could be some movement in Hass avocadoes – up more likely than down – whilst we’re waiting for Shepards to arrive from QLD. We hope to score some Reed avocadoes soon: they usually mature in mid-late January.

⬆️ Cauliflower prices are up, but broccoli and broccolini are good value.

🥬 Green cabbages are scarce, but George Portelli has more of the (very) small red cabbages he had pre-Christmas. They’re the size of a grapefruit and weigh around 400g – but at $1.38 apiece, you can get yourself 2 or 3 of them.

14/12/2024

• MARKET UPDATE •

🎄✅ Compared with last year, prices are down 3-4% across the board – and at least 20% lower for mangoes, berries, nectarines, pineapples, rockmelons, watermelon, cabbages, capsicum, almost all lettuces, shallots, pumpkin, all tomato varieties and baby Q’s.


FRUIT 🍑 🍓🥝

Literally everything good!

🍋 lemons are holding their price, but limes are coming down sharply.

Lychees are a little cheaper again, and passionfruit has dropped below $1.

🍈 Rockmelons may appear a little pricy, but they are very large.

🍇 We’re starting red seedless grapes this week: they will be cheaper than the whites.

🍉 Watermelon is still great value, berries are still $3, and although cherries are tightening, they are still good value – and the Lapin variety is great eating.

🍑 Peaches, nectarines, apricots and plums are all great eating and great value.


VEGGIES 🌽 🍆🥦

💵 🆙 In vegetables, the only pricy lines are green beans and (still) potatoes and red onions.

💵 ✅ The rest is between cheap and real cheap!

Cabbages ($2 for both green and red: coleslaw anyone?), capsicums, eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, lettuce, herbs (basil? $2.25 a bunch).

🍄‍🟫 mushrooms (we’ll try and get enough fancy shiitake, oyster and lion’s mane from Little Mountain this week – we ran out at the end of the last week).

🥬 Baby spinach is back!

🎃 pumpkin (including the small butternut) is cheap, and with tomatoes you can’t go wrong - but our pick are baby truss tomatoes!

07/12/2024

• MARKET UPDATE•

We are recording a 4.7% drop in average prices across fruit – stone fruit, passion fruit, limes and tropical fruits – and vegetables.

Fruit

🍑 In fruit, trays of peaches and nectarines have come down to $16.50

🍒 Cherries and apricots remain cheap

🍋‍🟩 Limes, lychees and berries are all cheaper than last week.


Vegetables

🍅 In vegetables, tomatoes and now also capsicums are recording record low prices.

🥬 Lettuces, cucumbers, eggplant, zucchini, broccoli, cabbages, shallots and most leafy greens are cheap and broadly lower than last week.

🎃 Small Butternut pumpkins (< 1kg) have halved in price. Did you know the easiest what to skin a pumpkin is with a potato peeler? It’s also much safer.

This is definitely the last week for loose asparagus – still under $1.30 per handful. If you want these for Christmas, simply blanche and freeze.

🥔 The only problematic lines are (still) potatoes.

😔 Also baby spinach has been hit with bad weather and won’t be available for at least a week. The mesclun – and all other lettuces – are fine.

Happy Shopping ⭐️

30/11/2024

🥭🤩🍒 MARKET • UPDATE 🥦🌧️🍑

• FRUIT •

🍑 🍑 Things are about the same as last week, which – on this occasion – is absolutely PERFECT: stone fruit galore – now also with 5kg boxes of Apricots – in addition to the cherries, nectarines, peaches and mangoes.

🍌🍓Strawberries, bananas, lychees (slowly) and passionfruit are easing.

🍉 🍊 Watermelon is still cheap, Valencias are beautiful

🔝TIP: By-the-way, if you can’t get through the boxes of apricots, peaches or nectarines, you can always dehydrate in a warm oven (60-65 C) fan-forced oven for 2-3 hours or until they are ‘leathery’.

🍋‍🟩🍋‍🟩 Whilst lemons are creeping up, limes are coming down in price: time for a Mojito?

• VEGGIES •

🍅🍅 The BIG news is in Truss Tomatoes: an estimated 60,000 trays will be arriving at the Sydney markets over the coming days (around 6000 of those will be from K-Fresh Farms – via our supplier Kazzi). The going rate for the 5kg trays is somewhere around the $3-4 level – less than 80c per kg. Some independent retailers - to their credit – are selling them virtually at cost. Others – mainly supermarkets – seem to be selling truss tomatoes at between $4 and $7 a kilo, which implies hefty mark-ups in the region of 400% - 700%. If correct (and supermarkets won’t be telling us what they’re paying the grower – commercial in confidence and all that).

Our solution: we are paying the grower at his break-even point of $8 a tray – double to market price – and selling them to our members for $10 a tray. Low enough to stimulate demand, but at least the grower doesn’t lose a bundle.

🌽🧅 Other vegetable news, local corn from Manuel Xerri has started: pretty clean cobs for $1.30 each. Grech & Borg are supplying spring onions. They’re not shallots, they’re not eschalots – they have a green stem and a medium sized white onion underneath. Although they are similar to shallots, they have a small white immature bulb at the end of the stem. They’re perfect for braising or slicing, or adding to soup, stir-fries and salads. They are $2.60 a bunch.

🧄 🧄 We’re also changing from Imported garlic to local garlic: this has been around for a few weeks but initially at unreasonable prices. This week however, they’re down to under $24 a kilo. They are sourced from Tooley Garlic in Nyah, Vic on the Murray River, 20 mins north of Swan Hill.

👍🏻 👍🏻 Most vegetables remain good value, especially capsicums, cucumbers, eggplant, lettuce, cabbages (green cabbages from Kazzi at $2.77), leafy greens, beetroot, tomatoes and herbs.

⬆️ 🥦 Broccoli, pumpkin and cauliflower remain a little elevated, and potatoes are still problematic.

Happy Pickings!

23/11/2024

• MARKET UPDATE •

FRUIT 🍑 🍓

I. fruit it’s One Big Party:

🍉 Seedless watermelons are around 6kg, so a bit bigger than usual – but super sweet and $1.50 a kilo. That’s 40% cheaper than the Coles ‘special’

🍑 🍒 Stone fruit supply has come on so rapidly that we’ve decided to go ‘Box’n’Dice Tray Sales’ this week: get yourself a whole 5kg box of peaches or nectarines for just $19, or a 2kg box of cherries for $29, or a tray of mangoes for $32 (R2E2) or $34 (KPs).

🥭 Single mangoes this week are the Honeygold: they’re a bit more robust for travel than the KP, eat at least as well, and at $2.42 for a Large size, they’re great value.

🧡Apricots are also falling in price: under $7 a kilo.

Oh and there’s other good value fruit: purple passionfruit ($1.20 ea), papaya, rockmelon, pineapple-with-tops, berries, limes (cheaper again this week), Valencias 🍊 – it’s hard to fault this week’s line-up.

VEGGIES 🌽 🧅

📈 Vegetables are a different story though: broccoli, red capsicums, Lebanese cucumbers and cauliflowers have tightened up this week and won’t be anywhere near as cheap as they have been for the past month or so. Beans and Snowpeas are also dearer.

👍🏻 On the other hand, broccolini, cabbages, wombok, kale, green capsicums, any lettuce, leafy green, herbs, zucchini, eggplant and especially tomatoes are fantastic value.

🧅 Onions and potatoes are easing in price, and although Butternut pumpkin is up, J*P pumpkin is still reasonably priced.

🎄Some growers near Bathurst are gearing up for Christmas with...Brussel Sprouts! These days, you can eat them almost all year round. You can even toss them into a salad be peeling the leaves and liberally sprinkling them with balsamic vinegar. Oh, and they're $7.69/kg. Less than half the price in colesworth.

15/11/2024

What a great idea! Especially for easy lunch box toasties. Thank you for the tip Box Divvy Eleebana - Linden 💕

15/11/2024

• M A R K E T • U P D A T E •

FRUIT

🌺 - ☀️ We’re on the cusp between Spring and Summer, and it’s showing in the fruit category: pears are gone, Royal Gala is finished, Kiwi is done, Navels are being replaced by Valencias – and more and more summer fruit is becoming available.

However, at this stage prices of many fruits are holding: we need another few weeks for prices to drop.

🍒 Having said that, cherries are superb - and great value: a 2kg box works out to $14.50/kg.

🥭 KP mangoes are still under $2 each, but for whole trays – which are mostly sucked up by the supermarket chains – we’re going for the R2E2. There was a time, perhaps 5 years ago, that we would not touch R2’s with a barge pole. Since then, selective breeding has made remarkable improvements in the R2’s flavour, and although they’re not a KP (or Honeygold for that matter), they’re worth a try at $32 a tray of around 18-20. That works out to around $1.70 each.

⚪️ White grapes need another week: some growing regions in Queensland suffered damage from heavy storm activity this week and are in clean-up mode.

❤️‍🔥 However, from this week, passionfruit are back (the purple variety most likely), were starting lychees and plums, and rockmelons are back.

🍌 Bananas have tightened up so expect to pay around $4.40/kg. Word is: the fruit is there, but not enough pickers and packers to get it from the trees.

VEGGIES

🥦 broccoli prices are firming – local supply, including Gerard Saad, remains thin on the ground so we’re mostly relying on Victorian – but broccolini from the Bathurst region is cheap.

🫛 So are beans, but sugarsnap is up and corn has virtually disappeared – most likely hit by heavy weather. Local corn is still a few weeks away.

🫑 👍🏻 Pretty well everything else is good value – if not downright cheap – from cucumbers, zucchini and capsicum to lettuce and tomatoes.

🌟 Stand-out highlights: George Portelli’s small Wombok for $2 each; Roma tomatoes from Kim and Laks at Golden Fields ($3.75/kg); Xerri Bros red cabbage (under $3); baby Q’s (under $2 a serve) and baby truss tomatoes ($2.19 a serve).

🍅 Kim and Laks are picking their mixed heirloom tomatoes: small snacking tomatoes including Green Zebra, Black Russian, Kumato and Golden Jubilee. They’re $4.75 a punnet (not loose).

08/11/2024

• MARKET • UPDATE •

FRUIT

🍑 Stone fruit harvest is now in full swing, with quality and quantity improving by the day.

🙃 We’ve had some issues with the apricots, but they should improve over the next week or 2. And whilst we’re nowhere near peak supply, prices of peaches, nectarines and cherries are pushing lower.

🥭 Our Divvy Pick this week however is mangoes: the fruit coming out Katherine in NT eats so much better than the early season Darwin fruit, and at under $2, they’re great value.

👍🏻 But honestly, with the exception of limes and kiwi, all fruit is great value.

VEGGIES

👍🏻 Most vegetable are well-priced – if not downright cheap: beans, sugarsnap and corn are all cheaper this week.

🌽 Local corn from Manuel Xerri and Gerard Saad is only a few weeks away, and prices will be dropping to around $1 a cob.

🥦 All Brassicas are in good supply, but you might want to try the purple broccolini ($2.88 ea).

CHEAP: Cabbages, lettuces, cucumbers, capsicums, zucchini, leafy greens, herbs and even tomatoes are cheap.

🥬 George Portelli has started another patch of his Baby Gem Cos Hearts (87c), Simon Chong says to put the rocket bunches back on, and Steve Grima still has golden beetroot bunches, turnip and curly endive.

🥔 Potatoes are improving and will get cheaper, but onions – even though Spanish onions are back this week – will take a few more weeks to dry and firm up.

🥑 The only other challenge is avocadoes: they are now around $2 – reasonably consistent in size – but they are like to tighten up further over the next couple of months.

25/10/2024

MORE 🆕 products for our Box Divvy members to conveniently purchase and enjoy!

More reason to not need to go Supermarket shopping!

Thank you Box Divvy Farmborough Heights - Ashley for this wonderful post x

Box Divvy sure did test my Canva skills.

Cropped and tried fitting it all on one image and we made it!

What does that say? It tells me that our members have a range that is continuously growing and growing and looksy here 👀...

🫙 Beerenberg has released a special Christmas Ham Glaze. Available from this week.

🌶️ For those of you who like it hot: Belicious Foods is releasing a Hot Chilli powder. The 40g pouch will go a long way, and costs $5.

🍯 2 Pops Honey is releasing a special batch of Coolabah Toffee Honey in 1kg and 500g jars. This honey comes from bees who have been feeding on Coolabah blossom. It’s super-thick, and sweet and rich as toffee. Available until stocks last!

🧇 Lastly, in preparation for the festive season, we’re bringing out a range of crackers and crisps from Urban Pantry Foods Australia.

The immediate trigger was the news that the popular Gluten-Free Tucker Bites have been discontinued by the manufacturer.

We scouted around and found the Urban Pantry range of gluten-free crackers, as well as Pita Crisps and a Toasted Waffle product that we thought would go well with the 2 Pops Coolabah Honey.

💲 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗿𝗯𝗮𝗻 𝗣𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗿𝘆 𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝟳.𝟱% 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝟮 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸𝘀 (𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗹 𝟲 𝗡𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿).

25/10/2024

• M A R K E T • U P D A T E •

FRUIT

🥭 🫐 🍑 With a strong mango supply, berry prices are coming down, and the stone fruit season is about to burst loose!

🍑 Peaches and nectarines are now selling below the $10-a-kilo level

🍏 🍍 🍊 The supply of apples, papaya, pineapple and citrus (yes, another week for Afourers) remains solid and prices are reasonable

New season:
Apricots – also less than $10 a kilo
🍒 Thr first cherries are here! At around $30 a kilo, they’re still pricey – but it’s a fickle commodity: you only need a hailstorm in the wrong place to end what was looking like a promising cherry season. As David Harris likes to say: seize it when it’s in season.

☹️ The news is decidedly less positive for melons: the supply is so bad that we’re taking a break from rockmelons and watermelon. Hopefully it’s just a blip…
🥝 So to for Limes and kiwi fruit. The latter is fast approaching the end of the season, but lime supply will improve in …early December.

ℹ️ 🥭 Lastly, it looks like growers are pulling the plug on mangoes from Darwin: the quality is deteriorating quite fast, and we are going to have to rely on fruit from Katherine from this week. The quality is up, but the price is also up – to around $3 for a single and $36 for trays.

VEGGIES

Good supply and good price:
🫛 🥬 Snow peas and lettuce are CHEAP!
Whilst George Portelli’s Baby Gem Cos Heart is taking a one-week break, why not try Manuel Xerri’s one-dollar-a-head regular Cos lettuce?

In other news George Portelli has restarted Wombok this week, and they’re larger than we had from him before. They’re around $5 each. In addition, Simone Chong is bringing in watercress.

🥦 All brassicas – from broccoli to cauliflowers – are in good supply

💰Beans and corn still expensive,

😁👍🏻 Cucumbers, zucchini, Asian greens, herbs, mushrooms, carrots, chillies, celery, beetroot and asparagus are all reliably cheap,

🥔🧅 Spuds and onions are still a bit in between ‘old’ and ‘new’ season supply. Give it a few more weeks and prices will drop.

🎃 One vegetable that has dropped in price this week is J*P pumpkin: under $2 a kilo for now, but likely to drop further.

🍅 Tomatoes are a mixed bag: Field and Roma tomatoes are a little elevated, but truss tomatoes are Cherry tomatoes $1.75 per servereasonably priced – and baby truss and especially (loose) cherry tomatoes are downright cheap.

🫑 Meanwhile, all Tri Colour Capsicums are aligning in price - at least at Box Divvy – to be $5.90 a kilo. Over at Coles, triple colour will cost you (almost) triple the price…!

HAPPY SHOPPING!

24/10/2024

How I have a vegan hunting dog …

Tully loves Mondays ☀️

I have to hide the Broccoli 🥦 box from her, it’s her favourite!

So I then pop off a little tree from my brocolli, go hide that for her in the yard to go and hunt. She always finds her treasure!

That’s how I have a vegan hunting dog 😆