Have you seen the series of videos from Riverford called What’s What in The Box ? They’re very good. Sometimes it’s one of the cooks from the field kitchen or the head chef, or one of the growers or Guy himself. There’s always something useful you can learn about what’s in the organic vegetable boxes by watching the videos and they seem very natural and well put together. I hope they manage to keep up producing a new one every week for us, because in some ways it’s the topical nature of the information that is so useful. Just when a new vegetable starts turning up in the organic boxes, and you might think you already know all about it and what you can do with them, a new tip gets included that just might help save some time or enable the cook in your house to make the absolute best out of the lovely top quality and healthly looking organic vegetables that come from Riverford.

Organic Vegetable Boxes (video)

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.
    

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.

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So many more questions are thrown up such as how would these claims apply to those vegetarians who eat the occasional bacon roll and what are the ramifications of consuming dairy produce – could double whipped cream be a dampener after all?

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?

* Green chillies : Don’t put the raw green chillies straight in the fridge. To keep them fresh for a long time remove the stems and put them in a ziplock bag or in some storage box.
* Carrots: Cover the carrots with a damp cloth and put them in fridge. They can keep for a whole week like that instead of going soft and limp in a few days.
* Herbs: Bunches of coriander have to be one of the common one to go bad before you get to use it all. To keep them fresh I store them in a salad container so the leaves don’t touch the icy wall at the back and get frostbite. You can use the same tip for greens too.
* Brocoli: When you store brocoli look for dark green buds with no yellowish color. And store them in a airtight container or in a sealed bag and it will last up to a week. Don’t store more than a week.
* cucumbers: Pick the ones that have no soft spots or visible bruises. It should be dark green and firm, So it will last longer in the fridge when you store it in the air tight bag. It will stay fresh up to 5 days, but really it’s probably better to take it out of the plastic wrap and use it sooner rather than later.

When you are stocking organic vegetables in your refrigerator, make a list of them and stick it in your fridge door. That way when you are trying to make up your mind on what to cook you can quickly decide on what to use first and avoid wasting vegetables that go bad faster. I hope these tips are useful for making the best use of your precious vegetables from the organic vegetable boxes.

Ethical Superstore have recently introduced a system to provide a small range of local organic veg box schemes as a trial, with an additional national vegetable delivery scheme to cover most of the remaining areas of the mainland UK.

We at Organic Boxes blog would be interested to hear from customers who tried this method, whether by registering for a regular organic vegetable box scheme or ordering a one off hamper.

What’s in season over the early winter months ?

organic boxes

Here’s what you can expect to find in your organic boxes in the early winter.

A list of what could be the ingredients for the world’s greatest stew!

Organic Vegetables from the boxes

Romanesco and white cauliflower,

red, green and savoy cabbage,

purple, white and orange carrots,

leeks,

Ramiro Pepper

red and white onions

pumpkins,

squash,

beetroot,

brussel sprouts

celery

celeriac

turnips

parsnips

curly black and Russian kale,

Isle of Jura, Orla and other main crop potatoes

sweet potato

flat leaf parsley and other hardier herbs

Organic Fruit from the Boxes

Apples

You might already have more apples than you can deal with coming from the garden anyway, in which case why not find out how to make cider ?

Pears

Oranges (just coming in)

Fair trade bananas

So there you are – these are the sorts of things you might expect to find in your organic boxes of fruit and vegetables over the next couple of months.