Well smack me down with a well oiled kipper and call me Cliff, this week’s news is as feisty as an irate fishmonger.

Price of passion fruits

Never mind the price of bread or toasted teacakes, the currant (sp) hot cross bun of the fruit world is the knobbly little passion fruit. Over in Ecuador right now, passion fruit prices are at the highest they’ve been for 30 years and it’s not down to poor weather conditions, crop failure or a sudden surge in pavlova making. In some sort of freaky telepathic coincidence, all 6000 passion fruit growers decided to dig up their passion fruit vines at exactly the same time and plant other stuff instead. Lots of people are taking them out their recipes in order to save money but you’ll be pleased to know that we’re not. Come rain, come shine, we’ll keep passion fruits in our smoothies, whatever the price (or latest meringue based obsession). Thankfully, passion fruits only take 6 months to grow from seed to fruit so the growers are busily planting away again. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Spring it back (or forward)

The clocks go forward on Sunday which means it’s officially time to stop kipping in your fluff lined bird box, get outside and embrace all the lush green goodness that spring has to offer.

Here are a few ideas to entice you out of the nest this springtime.

What’s new

Recently, we asked you what you wanted to see more of in our web news. More dogs in jumpers, more stuff on fruit, more random trousers, that sort of thing. Apart from the random trousers, lots of you asked to see more of what’s been going on in Fruit Towers. So here’s a quick update. It’s actually pretty quiet today. The Pritt Stick that was lobbed on the ceiling several years ago is still there (which bodes well for all those homemade Mother’s Day cards). Sam’s chilli plants are coming on a storm and Eddie’s just found a Mickey Mouse costume. In other news, our chief designer, Kat, got papped on our drive by Google Street View the other week. It’s all go here today, I tell you.

And finally...

Spring has sprung, the grass is ris’ and the ice cream van is pumpin’ out Greensleeves. Welcome to this week’s news, spring stylee.

Spot the difference

Notice anything different about these two cartons? Well, it’s sort of a trick question because unless you pop them on the scales, you probably wouldn’t notice anything different. Unless you’ve got a weird thing for weighing your drinks that is. In which case, you’ll already know that we’ve managed to reduce the paper used to make our big cartons by 8%. That means we’ll save nearly 100 tonnes of paper, a whopping 2500 tonnes of CO2 emissions and just over 2000 trees. Blessed be the forests (and all the beavers that live there).

Hot competition

We’re having a chilli growing competition in Fruit Towers and to say the competition is hotting up is an understatement. Sabotage is rife and people are using all sorts of tricks and tips to spice up their plant’s prowess. IT Sam is using positive visualisation to beef up his plants. Becca is taking hers for a daily walk and Reece’s pulley system method is getting odder by the day. Work has sort of taken a back seat for the time being and it’s getting to the stage where if you can’t stand the heat, then it’s time to get out the, er, chilli kitchen. The heat as they say is on. Click here for more chilli updates and appalling temperature related puns.

Focus on fruit

This week, we introduce a new exciting feature – Focus on Fruit. It’s a working title and hopefully by next week we’ll have thought of something catchier, but for now, please bear with us. The first fruit up for focus is the hairy coconut. It took us three years to find the perfect coconut milk without any additives or weird stuff in it, so here are three amazing things you might not know about coconuts.

•The clear liquid inside coconuts can also be used as a blood plasma substitute.
•You’re 10 times more likely to be hit by a falling coconut than attacked by a shark.
•Coconuts can power factories. Our coconut milk factory runs on old coconut shells. Which is as sustainable as it gets.

Stay tuned for the next thrilling edition of focusing on fruit very soon (tenuous title sign off pending).

And finally...

Giraffes have exactly the same amount of neck vertebrae as humans. For more fascinating, slightly lame trivia, see you here, same time, same place, next week.

The story of daal

Well, sort of. This particular pulse parable concerns the spelling of our new veg pot recipe, Indian Lentil Curry. Are you sitting comfortably? Not nodding off just yet? Okay, then we’ll begin. Once upon a time, there was a spicy Indian dish made out of lentils. Some people called it daal, others called it dahl and some people called it that spicy soupy lentil thingy. So to solve the riddle, we called up The Indian High Commission, where a charming lady assured us it was spelt ‘dal’. However, our local curry house (The Kathmandu) insisted it was actually ‘daal’ and then our Aslam waded in, adamant it was spelt ‘dahl’. Thankfully, the fair Princess Shilpee decreed it to be her favourite dish and lentil semantics went out the window. The end. P.S. Big well done to Niamh who won last week’s competition by correctly guessing that Danny Boyle’s Oscar winning film was called Slumdog Millionaire (as opposed to Slumgerbil Millionaire).

Posh compost

We like to leave things a little better than we find them and our sustainability team are always working their bamboo socks off to make our business more sustainable. Their latest project is figuring out where to put our organic waste (i.e. all the stuff we don’t use) instead of sending it to landfill. The good news is that from May we’re going to be putting all the bits that don’t go into our veg pots (like potato peelings and carrot tops) through a process called anaerobic digestion. Sort of like a compost heap (but much bigger, with some nifty bacteria), it’ll produce bio gas and a nice pile of slurry, full of nutrients, to be used for fertiliser. If all goes well, we’re going to see how we can use this process elsewhere in the business. Should mean we have a cracking set of cabbages next year anyroad.

JT in Kenya

Our JT (Wolverhampton’s answer to a young Bobby Davro) is now back from working with the innocent foundation out in Kenya. Not only did he deliver some top IT services to Excellent Development Kenya (one of the projects we support out there), he also got to check out the wildlife, keep up the jogging and climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. All in 3 weeks. JT said that the whole experience ‘properly took me out of my comfort zone’, which for reference purposes is halfway down the Uxbridge Road, in an armchair, watching The Wanderers on Sky Sports. Read more about his trip here.

Stuff we’ve been thinking about this week

And finally...

There are 5 Tuesdays this month. Great news if Tuesday is your regular Cheese, Wine and Connect 4 night. Not so great if that’s the night you visit your aunty (you know - the one with the fishy dog and the cake that tastes of onions).

Daal do nicely

To curry favour (idiom) - to get people to like you by saying they have nice trousers, making them cups of tea and generally sucking up.

Now we could mention how nice your hair looks and what fly trousers you’re wearing today before telling you all about our brand new veg pot recipe. But as it happens, we’re better at currying flavour than massaging egos. Lentils, chickpeas, turmeric roasted cauliflower with fresh spinach - our new Indian Daal Curry recipe has got it all going on (no fawning whatsoever). It tastes great with a dollop of cooling raita and a right good chunk of naan bread, so if you fancy giving this spicy new recipe a whirl, just pop into your nearest Sainsbury’s or Waitrose. Alternatively, you can win yourself some by entering one of our patented extremely easy competitions right here.

Love on a bottle

Thanks to everyone who entered our ‘Would like to meet’ label competition. After sifting out all the rude and slightly stalkeresque entries, we’ve chosen not one but two winners. Mainly because we’re hoping it’ll prompt the next update in the Nicole et Papa saga. You can read the winning labels here and then keep your eyes peeled for them on shelf. Meantime, if you’re still looking for love, GAFYK, maintain a GSOH and make sure you LOL everytime someone attractive makes a joke. KWIM?

Masters of the pots

In living rooms across the land, there’s a monumental chasm in the 8pm telly slot. Yes, Masterchef is over for another year. No more Gregg and John, affably shouting at each other. No more tears over floppy roulades or aprons being pulled off in a huff. It’s enough to make you want to weep sea salt tears into your julienned carrots. Thankfully, the finals of our very own Masterchef will be taking place very soon. You voted in your tens of tens and we’re pleased to announce that Chris, Nina and Roisin will soon be battling it out to become our innocent Masterchef 2009. Hopefully we’ll have found a culinary expert who is shouty yet fair to come and judge. Otherwise, it’ll be Dan dressed as Greg or Loyd (depending on which accent he’s best at)

And finally...

GAFYK Get away from your keyboard
GSOH Good sense of humour
LOL Laugh out loud
KWIM Know what I mean