strawberries

My female owner says that fruits are expensive in Australia. This is surprisingly, considering that there is a lot of fresh produce grown in Australia. Just think, apples are sold 3 for $1 in Singapore. In Australia, it is about 40-50cent per fruit. Same with bananas. One bunch for about S$3. In Australia, its like 40-50cent/ fruit.

Despite the variety of fruits in the supermarket, my female owner finds that she often ends up buying apples, bananas and sometimes oranges. In summer, she would be indulging in stone fruits like nectarines, peaches and plums. When in season, grapes and cherries. If cheap enough, lychees and longans. The observant one may notice that my female owner gives big fruits a miss (defined as having to use a knife to cut into smaller pieces). These include watermelon, rock melon, honeydew, paw paw etc. Kiwis are small, but you need to cut them. So, they don’t really make it onto her shopping list. She doesn’t like pears coz it means “leave/ separate” in Mandarin (?!).

Right now, it appears to be the strawberry season. However, my female owner has never been too keen on strawberries. She realises that this is foolishness, coz Australia is THE place to get cheap and good strawberries. They are often sold for a premium in Singapore. Someone asked her why she doesn’t really fancy strawberries and after much thought, my female owner traced it back to her negative associations in Singapore.

Firstly, strawberries sold in Singapore were not only expensive but sour. Secondly, they made so many products out of strawberries, the greatest culprits of all: strawberry milk and strawberry ice-cream. My female owner could never figure out how bright red strawberries could turn so sickeningly pale pink in DAIRY products. There you have it, a double whammy. Thirdly, strawberries are pink, girlie girls like pink… some dress in everything pink.. so nauseating for my female owner. It definitely didn’t help that Hello Kitty is pink too. And that some of her ex-colleagues either worshipped Hello Kitty or the Strawberry.

So anyway, despite her misgivings, my female owner decided to give strawberries a chance and bought a small box today (250g). So far so good. Sweeter than sour.