Organic boxes may contain organic vegetable, organic fruit or both. But what’s the point of having a couple of organic oranges delivered when you can buy a carton of organic orange juice at the shops containing the juice of a dozen or so organic fruit?

Organic Fruit

Well, we discovered that drinking fruit juice is not at all the same as eating whole fruit, and that so called fresh ‘not from concentrate’ fruit juice is not what it seems.

First, the worst thing about industrial ‘fresh’ Orange Juice:

Flavour Packs : The Secret Ingredient In Your Orange Juice

That’s right, they are adding back flavour and smell to stored orange juice and they don’t even have to mention anything about it on the label. This is because the things they add back are ‘derived’ from natural oranges. This can’t be right, can it? And don’t even get me started on what they do to apple juice to stop it turning brown.

But it gets worse. Just read what that innocent looking orange juice can do to your health:

And now, the health implications of even the best type of bought orange juice:

In April 2008 a study in the journal Diabetes Care, looked at the diets of 70,000 women as part of the ongoing Nurse’s Health Study, and found that unlike daily consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables, which was associated with an 18 per cent reduction in the risk of diabetes, consumption of fruit juice even in small daily amounts, was associated with an overall 18 per cent increased risk of the disease.

Juice, unlike the whole fruit, contains all the sugars but less of the cofactors found in the whole fruit that help the body metabolise them. This association was strong and independent of other health factors and was higher for those who had a daily glass of orange juice (which raises the risk of diabetes by 24 per cent) than those who had a daily glass of cola or other sweetened soft drink (which raised it by between 6 and 15 per cent).

This was the first study of its kind and such findings are challenging to much that we think we know. For instance orange juice is almost universally hailed as a healthy drink because of its useful levels of antioxidants, but few realise that it contains the same amount of sugar as a glass of cola. If your diet is already high in sugar – like most of those in the Western world, orange juice may simply add to that burden without conferring any real benefit.

…

So is organic orange juice a better option? The answer is yes – and no. Growing organic oranges does not involve the use of pesticides and fertilisers and therefore it may have a lower carbon footprint and lower impact on the environment. However if it comes in a carton or bottle it will have gone through the same industrial process as non-organic juice and is therefore still less nutritious than eating an actual orange or squeezing juice from an organic orange for yourself.

Organic standards of course do not legislate for how the workers are treated. Your organic fruit juice may well still have been picked by an exploited child who should have been in school.

If you absolutely need orange juice, then squeezing it fresh at home from an organic fruit may be your healthiest and most environmentally friendly option.

– Behind the Label: orange juice

So we should all be buying those expensive juicers and making our own OJ then? Well no, not really. Although freshly squeezed juice is lovely, and better than the processed stuff, juice really isn’t all that good for you in many ways. Juicing allows you to consume far more than you ever would if you were eating whole fruit. When was the last time you sat down & ate 5 or 6 oranges at a sitting? That’s an awful lot of fructose (fruit sugar) for the body to cope with, before we even think about what the acid might be doing to your teeth.

Ironically you might be better with old fashioned home-made lemonade than ‘healthy’ juice. I’ll post my recipe for my Nana’s Home-made Still Lemonade later and I might also include her Lemon Barley Water as a bonus.

Ideally, though, eat your organic fruit as part of a meal and drink water if you want a cold drink. Keep it in a covered jug in the fridge, flavour it with a slice of lemon or lime and a sprig of mint. Serve it in pretty glass with ice and it will feel like a treat.

Bean and Fennel Bake

You will need:

• About a cup of cooked beans. I like Aduki beans for this. Please don’t use tinned beans they go to mush too quickly and don’t give the right texture.
• About 2 cups of fairly finely chopped selection of organic veggies from your box. Ideally about 1/4 inch dice. I’ve used onion, leek, celery and carrot today. Other possibles include swede ( better known as turnip if you’re Scots like me!)
• 1 large fennel bulb chopped a little larger.
• 2 cloves of garlic
• Herbs to taste – today it’s thyme and parsley. Rosemary would also work and some people (not me!) like sage. Marjoram might work better if you are swapping the shoyu gravy for tomato sauce (homemade of course!)
• 1 cup of shoyu gravy (2 tablespoons of shoyu or good soy sauce added to a white sauce made with  boiling water not milk. See below)
• About 4 or 5 good sized potatoes mashed with a tablespoon of olive oil
• Optional – cheese about a tablespoon of parmesan or gruyere added to the mash.

Method

1. Heat a little olive oil over a low heat in a skillet, deep frying pan or similar. Add the veggies, fennel and garlic and cook gently with a lid on. Sometimes described as ‘sweating’ the vegetables. Cook till the juices start to run and the veggies soften. Not something you can wander off and leave! Keep cooking, checking and stirring occasionally for about 15 mins till the veggies are all nice and soft but still have some crunch. You might need to taste them, just to make sure of course! Remove from the heat.
2. Make a shoyu gravy. In a small sauce pan heat 3 teaspoons of olive oil. Add 1 tablespoon of flour (organic white or gram are both good). Cook gently stirring all the time until it makes a solidish mass & comes away from the sides of the pan. Add 2 tablespoons of Shoyu and stir well. I like to use one of those wooden spoons with a pointy edge and a hole in them, a balloon whisk is good too. Gradually add about 1/2 a pint of boiling water. You can use vegetable stock or water left over from cooking other veg instead, if you have it. Stir it all the time over a gentle heat till it thickens & will coat the back of a spoon.
3. Add the sauce to your cooked vegetables. Mix really well so that everything is coated. Resist the temptation to eat it now! Or is that just me…….
4. Top with your mashed potatoes. Roughen the top with a fork and add extra cheese or butter if you are feeling indulgent.

At this point it will keep for later or even tomorrow, if you pop it in the fridge. You could even freeze it! Just move it to the fridge the day before you want to eat it.  Make sure you get it out of the fridge a good hour before you want to cook it.

5. Pop it in a medium oven for around 40 minutes till heated through and the topping has gently coloured, golden brown is ideal. Watch it for the last 10 minutes or so as it’s a short step from golden brown to cinders!

Enjoy!

I tend to serve it with some sort of greens, the first of the sprouts are in boxes now and they are perfect with this!

The film will be shown around the country and The Soil Association  are looking for volunteers to hand out information and membership leaflets. You can find out the dates and book on the official Food Inc. site

The film is promoting 10 Things You Can Do to Change Our Food System but it’s very US orientated so I thought I’d do us a UK version:

10 Things You Can Do to Change Our Food System

1. Drink fewer sweetened fizzy drinks and cut down sugar in tea & coffee
   
2. Eating in is the new going out
3. Support moves to force fast food outlets to publish calorie and fat content information on menues
4. Get soft drinks machines removed from local schools
5. Meatless Mondays – go without meat for just 1 day a week
6. Buy organic where possible, when not possible go for sustainable local food
7. Protect family farms. Find your local Farmers Market and use it. Buy organic boxes direct from farms.
8. Make a point of knowing where your food comes from. READ THE LABELS!
9. Tell the government that food safety matters to you – join the Soil Association and support their campaigns.
10. Demand job protection for farm workers and food processors, including improved protection when using pesticides and other chemicals, and decent wages.
    

In 2009 we posted 16 blog posts on the Organic boxes blog, and munched our way through about 47 organic boxes ourselves, as well as three half cases of red wine, some bread and eggs.

In 2010 we hope to continue expanding the world of organic vegetable box delivery schemes.

This is what I like to do with the sprouts

Sprouts Recipe

Wash the sprouts and cut off any damaged bits. With these top quality organic sprouts the amount cut away really should be minimal. Maybe a a piece of stalk here or there and one or two outer leaves, but there is no need to cut off every stalk or peel off all the outer dark green leaves. Try to keep as much of the organic goodness as possible.

Add to boiling unsalted water and simmer for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and leave for another 5 minutes, then drain, retaining the liquid for making gravy with.

Place the cooked sprouts in a shallow ovenproof dish then sprinkle roughly crushed walnut halves over the top. Add slices of blue cheese over the walnuts then put it in a hot oven or under the grill until the cheese has melted to a bubbling sauce and some of the walnuts have toasted. The sprouts should still have plenty of crunch and the special slightly bitter flavour with which they are associated is complemented by the rich cheesy nutty combination.

Whether you are having a vegetarian special or a meat based Christmas dinner, the walnut and blue cheese sprouts from the organic boxes will be a serious rival to the main item. If you are vegan however, I don’t think there is any alternative to blue cheese so I’d suggest using some toasted sesame oil and either vegetarian cheese substitute or tofu.

photo credit johnsu01 recipe by Organic Vegetable Boxes.

Canceling Your Organic Box for the Holidays

Most organic box schemes have quite straight forward ways of canceling your box for short periods.

Riverford

• You can cancel up to 4 orders in a row online through ‘my future orders’ on the web site or by contacting your local distributor.

• If you are going away for more than 4 weeks, you can either remove your regular order via the ‘my regular order’ page or contact your local distributor with the dates that you will not need deliveries. Make sure you also remove any one off orders you may have made from the ‘my future orders’ page.

• Please remember that we need two working days notice before your delivery day to amend or cancel orders. You will need to phone or email your local distributor by 5pm, or by 8pm if you go online to make the changes.

Abel and Cole

• Log in and go to My Account.
• Click on the ‘my holidays’ section.
• Enter all the dates when you don’t want a delivery – you might not want one the day before you go away, so you’ll need to include this date.
• To add dates simply click on the calendar that appears.

Farmaround

• Give them a minimum of 2 working days notice
• They will suspend deliveries for any length of time that’s convenient for you.
• You can do this using their ‘suspend order form’ on the web site or contact them by phone (If you do the latter, please remember to state the date that you want your last order to arrive and the date that you want to resume your deliveries.)

Eating Organic on Holiday in the UK

Here’s an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to make sure they eat just as healthily on holiday as they do the rest of the year.

Organic Places to Stay UK and Ireland

“This book will be an invaluable travelling companion.” – Craig Sams, Vice Chairman of the Soil Association and Founder of Green & Black’s

“Linda Moss’ wonderfully well researched and informative book will provide you with all the information you need to plan your break.” – Guy Watson Organic Farmer, Founder of Riverford Organic Vegetables

“With more and more people choosing a low carbon footprint holiday, Linda’s book is the must have guide for superb accommodation and tasty nutritious food.” – Peter Shield, Editor of Natural Choices

“A well researched guide that is a good starting point for planning a green holiday or just a weekend away. Every Household should have one.” – Laura Sevier, The Ecologist

It looks invaluable and ideal for popping in the glove compartment for trips and even days out. It doesn’t just cover organic B&Bs and hotels but also lots of places where you can eat organically or buy organic supplies in your chosen area.

You can buy it on Amazon here: Organic Places to Stay UK and Ireland

My organic box comes full of lovely, fresh organic vegetables but often I’m out when it arrives.
The front of my house gets the afternoon sun and this is bad news for my veggies! Even if I had a fairly shady spot on those sultry hot London days we sometimes get I could still have a problem.
Riverford have done some interesting work on the problem and spent a considerable amount of time last year experimenting with solutions. They even got Exeter Uni involved to see what percentage of the year temperatures might be a problem for the shelf life of the various vegetables.

How Do You Keep Your Organic Box Cool?

Riverford have come up with a couple of interesting solutions. They tried all sorts of methods but the two best (short of having a hole in the ground to pop the box in!) were using an ‘eco-cool blanket’ or building a rather charming cold store cupboard/planter.

The Eco Cool Blanket

This is a wonderfully hitech solution. You buy a purpose made cover which keeps your organic boxes up to 5°C cooler and keeps the box dry if the problem is summer rain rather than blazing sunshine.
You pop the blanket inside your previous week’s box which you are returning and your delivery driver covers your new box with it.
The eco-cool blanket is elasticated,fits even the largest box, looks very much like the sort of thing people wrap themselves in at the end of the marathon and costs £4.25

Eco-Cool Food Safe

This is a much more attractive solution but costs quite a lot more. Riverford says:

a wooden safe that encases your veg box in a layer of compost and soil, ensuring that any produce put inside stays up to 10 degrees cooler than if just left on a doorstep.

Not only that but it looks really attractive once it’s filled with plants:

How does it work?
1. The safe has a high thermal capacity and captures the cool of the night to preserve your veg through the day
2. Water evaporating from it gives an extra cooling effect, like putting a damp towel over a barrel of beer
3. When filled with soil and compost and locked, it’s so heavy that no-one can make off with your veg box while you’re out

The Eco-Cool Food Safe comes in 3 sizes, is delivered in a flat pack and costs between £69 and £74.

Low Tech Solutions to Hot Organic Boxes

Much though I like the Eco-Cool Food Safe I’m an old hippy at heart and that food safe looks pretty easy to copy. What I’m thinking is two wine crates for the sides and a wooden shelf for the top. Pop a window box planter (wooden) on top, fill with soil and plants. An old cupboard door could be added and the whole lot painted with a chalky mix of emulsion and water to give a shabby chic white or maybe a chippy pale blue. (This might just be my Shabby Chic obsession talking!) Stand it against a wall, ideally  somewhere that gets a bit of shade and your organic boxes are going to stay nice and cool on the hottest day (or dry when it does the other thing!)

It would be a little taller than the smallest bought one but that should make it easier to get your organic boxes out again.

The opposite happened to me though. I thought I’d been efficient and cancelled my regular vegetable box for the week I was away recently, and when I got back the next week’s box of vegetables arrived exactly when it was suppose to, but the week after that I was left without. So make sure you understand the difference between a future order and a recurring order before you cancel organic boxes.

Supermarkets now sell more than 70 per cent of organic produce in the UK — but, having done well in the organic boom, they are now bearing the brunt of the decline. According to Soil Association surveys, it is “barcode” sales of organic that are falling. Farmers’ markets, farm shops and box schemes are still all doing OK.