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May 19, 2012
Veg box
Another thing to keep notes on! We've been getting veg boxes from Ocado, mostly because it's easy. It is not, however, any cheaper than buying the veg separately. But it does often provide foods that you cannot get in supermarkets or at our local market.
Ocado do a veg box or a mixed fruit and veg box. I had the latter a couple of times and was always disappointed with the fruit, so have now settled down to just veg. Good things about veg boxes: they have interesting things in, they remind you what is seasonal, they encourage you to eat from a wide range of vegetables instead of getting the same things every week. Bad things about veg boxes: portion sizes are variable, some of the veg is filthy (I know it grows in the ground, but really; life is too short), quality control isn't always as good as it should be, box does not always match the contents you mealplanned on the basis of.
Notes are handy because this tells you what is seasonal for this time next year. Anyway, this week we got: flat beans (not very many, went in the lasagne), cauliflower (not planned for but will probably go into a cauliflower macaroni cheese next week sometime once the fresh meat has run out), carrots (stew bases, stocks, lasagne, snacking), portobello mushrooms (they were *huge* but there were two of them, which is no bloody use unless you're going to give people half a mushroom. So they ended up chopped up in the lasagne where they were very tasty), 'large onions' (a bit irritating this given that they sent four, they were a perfectly ordinary size, and we buy onions in Giant Sacks for 80p), rainbow chard (represented as 'spring greens'), fennel, a rather dull round lettuce, broccoli (don't really need broccoli and cauliflower in the same box thanks) and wild tomatoes.
Wild tomatoes. They make a majestic sight, roaming across the South Downs in their multicoloured herds. I *think* what they meant was heritage tomatoes. They're very beautiful and I will report back later on how they taste.
Posted by Alison Scott at May 19, 2012 11:03 PM