a good rant.
Is it just me, or are easy peelers taking over the world? Where once the shelves were full of clementines and tangerines, satsumas and minneolas, now my local supermarket displays no fewer than six permutations, including organic and miniature, of a variety hitherto unknown to me: the boring and uniquely unappetising sounding ‘easy peeler’.
Until fairly recently, easy peeler was a trade term for the whole mandarin family. Now, I suspect, it’s adopted more widely to allow supermarkets to choose whatever variety is cheapest at the time, without changing the packaging. That would be fine if it was equally easy to know what variety was inside; I happen to like the tartness of a tangerine and I don’t want to find myself with a bag of puffy, bland satsumas instead. I have fingernails and I’m prepared to use them.
A similar trick is at play over in the veg aisle, where they offer potatoes in 16 distinct forms, only three of which are loose. Woe betide the lone shopper who goes in for a couple of wonderful maris pipers, as they only come in 2kg bags.