Madras Vitamins

Fruit and Vegetable shopping:

We have been trying out different varieties of local produce, here is a list of the hits and disappointments.....

Hits: (all at prices between 20 and 60 rupees a kilo - that's 10 to 30 pence a pound....

Watermelon: small, tasty, almost seedless and almost free !!
Bananas: ah yes, but which of the 8 or more varieties do you mean....? All tiny, all delicious
Cucumbers: as long as you buy the smaller "herbal" variety, the larger sized ones have hard seeds.
Limes: small and delicious.Perfect for mojitos. Full of seeds though, and takes ages to squeeze enough juice to be useful for anything else.
Avocados (called Butter Fruit here): huge, mostly tasty. Go from green to over-ripe in the flashiest of flashes.
Okra (lady's finger) yum yum....
Green Beans: whenever they have the smaller ones in, the larger ones get stringy
Sweetcorn: delicious!!
Red, Yellow and Green peppers: very tasty.
Green coconuts: drink the water and revive instantly.

Misses: (same prices though)

Tomatoes: look good but no taste or acidity....and not RED enough !! Still no alternative, so we buy them anyhow.

Musk melon: looks like a melon, smells like a melon, tastes like a melon rind....

Courgettes: ghastly expensive (90 rupees a kilo) and such a minority market that they are geriatric by the time they get to the stall.

 

More exotic fare:

Bottle gourd, Snake gourd, Mangustan.... watch this space!