Evidence of iceberg lettuce at major Orange supermarket on Friday night

June 17, 2022

Not much you can do with these. Lettuce leftovers on Friday evening. Copyright: Orange News Examiner.

COMMENT

By Peter Holmes

Evidence of iceberg lettuce has been spotted at a major supermarket chain.

Early on Friday evening at North Orange Woolworths, in the location where plump iceberg lettuces used to be stacked before the great iceberg lettuce shortage of 2022, keen shoppers spied a flash of green.

Could it be?

No, it could not.

Heartbreakingly, while it was clear iceberg lettuces had been in the vicinity in recent times, they were not in the vicinity any more.

All that was left were the sad, wilted outside leaves that we tear off to leave to the supermarket to deal with. So now I know what it's like to teased by an outside lettuce leaf.

And even though lettuce wasn't on my shopping list, I still felt cheated.

Still, at least somebody was having old school Old El Paso tacos in the shell tonight. Or homemade san choy bow. Good luck to them.

Lots of fancies, but no 'bergs. Stock image.

The icebergs had been for sale at a very reasonable $6.50 each.

Sure, there was a time where you wouldn't have happily paid more than $3.50 - or $4 if you really were dead set on the tacos - for a 'berg, but we can all agree those days are long gone.

We live in a different time now.

And it will be this way until the lettuce growers can get amongst the lettuces again. A good run of dry weather will help.

According to Sustainable Gardening Australia, a not-for-profit social organisation: "Crisphead varieties (which includes the ubiquitous Icebergs) take about ten to twelve weeks to mature, and should be harvested roots and all".

In the early phases of the iceberg shortage there was still good lettuce to be had in the fancy range - we're talking mignonettes, oak leaf, butter, cos.

Soon, though, the domino effect meant people were having to adapt and alter.

At Woolies on Friday night pretty much all the fancy lettuces had been snapped up.

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