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.

So I had in my vegetable racks and fridge:

Two sacks of lovely potatoes.

Two enormous cauliflowers

Enough broccoli to sink a battleship

Just the right amount of onions, probably

Half a field of carrots

Lots of lovely lovely leeks

A couple of nice dark green cabbages

I may have forgotten something but if so, I’m sure it was delicious

Now then, Riverford claim about the roots and greens box “The veg has a good shelf life, so if you’re feeling extra thrifty try a fortnightly delivery.”  which is what I effectively had to cope with. I chose to cook one of the cauliflowers first, grated some carrots for a salad and started to munch my way through the broccoli. Potatoes keep for weeks in the dark so I didn’t worry about them too much.  After the end of teh first week I could see an of the two boxes end in sight. The second cauliflower had developed a mouldy patch but only in one isolated segment, the rest was fine. The carrots were in extraordinarily good condition. Supermarket carrots go limp after a couple of days when kept out in a room with variable temperature but these were still crisp and juicy. The leeks lasted well two. No need to peel away several layers of yellow leaves, just trim the ends a little bit.

The controversy has been raised: is it better to keep the bunched carrots with the green feathery top foliage intact or cut them off?

I think the greens help to transpose moisture away from the carrot roots so they dry out more quickly but Linda thinks keeping the greens on will mean they last longer. Probably we’ll eat them with a couple of days anyway but it’s important to know what is really the best way to keep these special vegetables in tip top condition for even a short time.

What do you think is best and what do you do with bunched carrots from your organic vegetable boxes?

Louise Fresco presents at a TED talk on the subject of “Feeding the Whole World” in praise of technology, science and mass produced industrial food.

“Never before has our food been made by so few of us. And never before has it been taken so much for granted.”

( Hat tip to Josien Kapma for the video )

Louise Fresco, Dutch Academic, tells the Californians that holding a preference for wholemeal organic bread and despising mass produced white bread is a luxury for the rich, and not practical for the third world’s poor workers and farmers. So does she have a point?

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.

In their monthly food awards, the Observer newspaper gave the Riverford Field Kitchen the title “Best Ethical Restaurant. Last week Jane Baxter and Sam Miller, who run the Riverford Field Kitchen, were presented with this prestigious award, a fine achievement given some notable contenders.

Guy Watson of Riverford writes in Farm news:

I like to think that we won because, as well as serving the most fantastic and affordable food, mostly grown on the farm, we are the real thing; for 25 years we have been doing what we do, in the belief that great food and sane farming can withstand the ebb and flow of food fashions. Having spent the last few days in London I took the opportunity to look at a few markets, greengrocers and box schemes. It was disappointing to see how many were responding to the recession by trading down to selling uncertified “as good as organic” produce, often with packaging and vans still implying fully organic produce. Everything we sell is certified organic; we keep it affordable by growing ourselves and working closely with our co-op.

Congratulations to Riverford Organic Vegetables, who also happen to be our own suppliers of top quality organic boxes all through the winter spring gap.