My organic vegetable box

In London, home grocery delivery is far from a luxury – it’s a necessity of life. The overwhelming majority of Londoners don’t drive, which means that simple errands such as a grocery run are complicated by the logistics of getting all of that stuff home. For a year, I thought that grocery delivery was unnecessary, and to be honest, I just didn’t trust anyone to pick out my fruit and vegetables for me. We’re lucky enough to live near a large grocery store, but for a year, my Sundays have included the weekly grocery trip, followed by trudging home like a pack mule laden with bags of groceries hanging off my shoulders and my wheelie cart.


Then I found a flyer for an organic food delivery service. Three things caught my eye about this service.


1. It was organic and locally sourced, so the fruit and veg would be fresh and surely delicious. These people care about their produce so much they won’t even put pesticides on it!


2. The delivery fee was only 99p as opposed to upwards of £6 ($9) for some of the other delivery services.


3. They were offering £50 off your grocery bill if you ordered from them four weeks in a row.


So what did I have to lose?


As it turns out, they are wonderful! Each Friday I come home to a box of seasonal mixed fruit and vegetables, along with whatever meat, dairy, and other items (even beer and wine) that I have ordered.


As the vegetables are seasonal, and as it’s winter – a particularly harsh one at that -- we’ve been getting a lot of root vegetables. Naturally, that includes more potatoes than two people really need to eat. But it also includes some really alien looking things as well. Fortunately, it lists what’s been included in the box, so I at least have a name to attach to that weird growth sitting in the bottom of the box. After that, Google has become a kitchen staple.


I have ‘discovered’ such vegetables as celeriac, which does not look like celery. It looks like Wilson from Castaway – towards the end of the movie. Swede looks like a really big turnip, but tastes a bit like carrots. And Jerusalem Artichokes (which apparently have nothing to do with Jerusalem or artichokes) should only be eaten if you live alone!


But there are heaps of delicious (and recognisable) foods on offer too. I have fallen in love with blood oranges (from Spain), and am always in search of new ways to do something with all of those apples. I got three amazing looking green artichokes in my box this week and I am so excited about taking my first crack at an artichoke which hasn’t been marinated in oil for six months! The one drawback of organic food is that it goes off quite quickly, so the pressure is on to do something with it fast! (Soup is a great solution for vegetables that have reached their last day – quiche is another).


Experimenting with ways to enjoy apples that didn’t involve immense amounts of butter and sugar, I came up with the recipe below. One of my favourite snacks is apples and cheddar, so I took that concept, and adapted it for dinner. As with most of my recipes, it’s really simple, and is designed to highlight the natural flavours of the ingredients. You might have alternative tastes, and wish to embellish it a bit more. Feel free!


The dish below should be served warm and goes great as a side dish to roast chicken. It’s not meant to be sweet, and the apples really lose a lot of their tart in the cooking process.


Apple Cheddar Bake


6 medium apples (and/or) pears, sliced into thin half-moon shaped slices


Juice of ½ lemon, sprinkled over apples


Sharp (Mature) cheddar (white cheddar is recommended, as it’s less oily than yellow cheddar) sliced to be same size and width as the apple slices


Salt to taste


Mix the apples, lemon juice, and salt


Layer in a ring mold or cake pan in concentric circles placing a slice of cheese after every five apple slices or so until you’ve covered the entire pan.


Bake at 350F (180 C) for about 25 minutes or until apples are fully cooked, and cheese has melted. Top with a light drizzle of honey, and allow to cool before plating.


I’ve been back and forth on the argument for/against buying organic. As I get older, I’m much more conscious of what I put into my body. And since I’m also now largely responsible for what goes into Mark’s body too, I feel even more compelled to go organic. But is it worth it? For some items, the cost is significantly different. For others, it’s negligible. I think that foods like meat and dairy really should be organic. It’s been proven that children are hitting puberty much earlier as a direct result of the hormones that are put into our food. That goes doubly so for chicken. If we have come anywhere close to creating a bionic species, it’s got to be the chicken that goes onto our plates. But do I really need to buy organic canned beans? Does it matter if the crackers or cereal I buy are organic?


Organic vegetables definitely go off much faster, but I have found that they really do have much more flavour than the conventional variety. So I will continue to have my organic grocery box delivered, I will continue to panic every Friday when ALL THOSE vegetables show up, and then as each week progresses, I will continue to have fun finding new ways to use familiar ingredients, and new ways to make something tasty out of something really strange! And ultimately, I will continue to feel good about what I’m feeding us – whether eating organic is necessary or not, it’s been a lot of fun!