Guide
How to keep fruit in Pune’s heat
Forty degrees turns three days into one.
Heat is a speed dial
Fruit keeps breathing after it’s picked, and it breathes faster when it’s warm. Every few degrees roughly halves how long it has. None of that is visible until the day it isn’t.
The drive home is the worst part
A closed car in a Pune afternoon gets considerably hotter than the afternoon does. Berries and cherries can be finished by the time you’ve parked. If fruit is going in the car, it’s the last thing you buy and the first thing you carry in.
The first hour decides the week
Get it into the fridge quickly and most of it holds. Leave it on the counter until the evening and you’ve spent a third of it before anybody has eaten anything.
Monsoon is a different problem
Humidity, not heat. Anything that came in damp will grow mould in a sealed bag. Dry the skins before it goes away, and never store fruit you’ve already washed.
Where we come into it.
It’s why the box travels in an insulated bag with frozen gel packs, why the berries come out first on the route, and why the route never runs in the middle of the afternoon. Fruit in Pune is a logistics problem before it’s a shopping problem.
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