So, here we go!
This blog is part of a personal desire to eat more organic food, understand more about seasonality and become more sustainable in my eating habits. I’ve always been obsessed with food, cooking, experimenting and devising new recipes and more recently I’ve become concerned with the ways that our buying and consuming habits are having an affect on a wide array of things: from the dearth of independent shops in our town centres as the supermarkets take over; the monopoly the supermarkets have over many farmers’ livelihoods; the loss of understanding of what is actually in season; the change in what we actually look for when buying fruit and vegetables (nice colour and shape instead of actual taste, smell etc).
I think this country is heading towards (if not already reached) a food crisis. On the surface of it, we’ve got greater choice than ever before, more convenience and I would argue more people are on the road to understanding about food and cooking thanks to chefs like Jamie Oliver trying to appeal to a wider demographic. But underneath it all, we’ve lost our connection to the delicious food that we grow in our own country, we’re eating more and more processed food because we’re strapped for time, we’re spending less and less of our income on food, and what fresh food we are actually eating is tasting less and less like it’s meant to (i.e. of something, not just water!).
But anyway, enough of that. After reading various books on food waste and what actually happens behind the scenes to get the food into our supermarkets (Not on the label by Felicity Lawrence is a great read and highlighted many things to me), I decided that I wanted to do something about it. As well as learning more about these issues as I go, I’ve decided to start buying all my fruit and veg from a local box scheme, and to try and use the things I get as creatively as possible to get the very best from the flavours and textures of the foods. However, I don’t make things that are complicated or that require any huge level of cooking skill. This blog is going to document that veggie box journey, and even if I manage to persuade one person to try the same thing, I think it’ll be worthwhile.
About me
I’m a twenty something from Bedfordshire and I work for a charity in London. I’m a vegetarian (don’t be scared meat eaters! There will be ways to add meat to the things I make on here). I eat a lot of fruit and veg, but I try to avoid too much processed veggie alternatives like Quorn because I find it a bit disturbing that you’d give up meat only to eat something that’s meant to look like it.
I’m no chef but I’m obsessed with cooking, and I like to think that I’m ok at it. My style is very much experimentation – I don’t really stick to recipes and when I cook I throw things in to see what works. I like to use herbs and spices and I like to season things well. Tasty food to me is something that’s had a lot of love put into making it. my ideas won’t be recipes as such, but I’ll give some kind of guidelines to say what I did and what might work instead if you can’t get the things I had. I’m not very good at being exact or measuring but I’ll try to present them in a relatively user friendly way!
Why organic?
I want to eat more organic produce because:
• It’s grown in ways that are better for the environment and respects biodiversity, protecting the soil in ways that intensive farming doesn’t
• Doesn’t pollute – no fertilisers, pesticides or other nasties
• It’s meant to taste better
• It’s better for animals too. Organic rules on producing milk and eggs are much kinder to the animals (in terms of being able to roam free, outside where animals should be)
• The veggies and fruits aren’t subject to such strict and silly rules on what can and can’t be sold. There’s an incredible amount of waste generated by this every year, with some farmers losing up to 60% of their crop because of ‘grading out’. I’d rather eat nobbly vegetables – I don’t care what they look like – it’s taste that’s important to me
• The fruit and veg smells of something – have you ever tried to smell produce in a supermarket? Because it’s underripe when it’s picked so it can be transported thousands of miles to be with us, it quite often smells of nothing. Which I find weird.
I’m using a weekly veggie box to do this because:
• It’s better value than buying the same products organically at the supermarket (I am spending about £35 on average for a large vegetable box, a fruit box and sometimes a salad bag or some organic milk. This feeds four of us for a week.)
• It’s better for the environment because there’s less (sometimes no) plastic packaging
• Getting things as locally as possible ensures that they haven't travelled half way across the world by plane to get to you. Makes things fresher too.
• A lovely friendly man brings it to my house every week on his rounds, for free
• I don't want the supermarkets to take over and make our country lose its individuality, difference and charm
• And another nice outcome (as my mum said the other day), is because you scrub the mud off the carrots and potatoes, it almost feels like you could have grown them yourself – wonderfully cathartic.
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