Oranges good and bad

Most mornings since I retired, I have taken an orange with breakfast - and as a result have become much more conscious of the vagaries of oranges. They are not all the same at all, although neither BH nor I are much good at working out what they are like inside from what they are like outside, with price being a quite a good predictor of size but quite a poor predictor of quality. Nevertheless, we tend to go for the more expensive oranges when there is a choice. We had also come to the view that Sainsbury's was not a very reliable supplier, although it remained the shop where we did most of our shopping.

On the island, we used the large Tesco's between Ryde and Brading. Their large oranges were not much good at all. Looked OK from the outside, but dry and pithy inside. Maybe they had been kept in store for too long.

Then back on the mainland, it was back to the large Sainsbury's at Kiln Lane. On this occasion, the oranges were very good, despite being navels. Which I regard as a bit of a swizz as one looses a cubic inch or so from the bottom of the fruit. That is to say the flower end, opposite the stalk end, as snagged above from reference 2.

But last week, in receipt of some modest discount or other, it was back to the Tesco's at Leatherhead, a middle-sized store. Their oranges looked OK and peeled OK - but were suspiciously light in weight. Not as bad as the island oranges, but nothing like as good as those from Sainsbury's.

Maybe I shall have to start make a point of going in to Waitrose.

From where I associate to the far-off days when I used to buy 10 oranges for a pound from Epsom market, every Saturday morning. Not the biggest oranges, but reasonably reliable. And as far as I recall, the price held for years.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/06/oranges-from-sainsburys.html. An orange story from last year.

Reference 2: https://www.thespruceeats.com/what-are-navel-oranges-5208713.