Pete Luckett, your produce expert

If you'd never seen the inside of an avocado before, Pete Luckett was there for you.

Luckett, a Nottinghamshire transplant who owned an eponymous Saint John produce market called Pete's Frootique, was a regular on the CBC-TV current affairs program Midday from 1985 to 1996. During his weekly spots on the show, he demystified the new and exotic fruits and vegetables Canadians were beginning to see at the grocery store. 

Sundried tomatoes were new once 

Kale, kiwis, pomegranates and avocados — all pedestrian foods by today's standards — were among the hundreds of items Luckett profiled during the 1980s and '90s. They are just four of the 13 fruits and vegetables included in the Pete's Footique supercut video seen here.

Sundried tomatoes, one of the signature flavours of the 1990s, made a tasty dip with cream cheese, basil, olive oil and garlic, according to Luckett.

Luckett even brought his brother Dave to demonstrate how to make a New Brunswick caesar salad with garlic ("don't ask your boss for a pay-raise the next day"), capers, anchovies, Dijon mustard, egg yolks, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, wine vinegar, extra-virgin olive oil, Parmesan cheese and homemade croutons, plus romaine lettuce.  

How to make a New Brunswick caesar salad

35 years ago

Duration 1:48

Produce guru Pete Luckett gets a demonstration from his brother Dave on how to make caesar salad.

In later years, Luckett said toodley-doo to his retail business in 2015 and created Luckett Vineyards, a winery near Wolfville, N.S.