Organic vegetables box

The main reason the box will be good for us is because we are crap at shopping, I mean we don't have any weekly shop routine or lists or anything, just potter out when we want to cook something. It's getting silly!

I have a love/hate relationship with our Saturday market. Love it for the produce and the regulars we buy from (tomatoes from the old italian couple, giant cabbages from the three old bachelors, beets and lettuces and garlic from the large jolly lady, stone fruit from the hispanic guy with the sweet smile). Hate it for having to get up so damn early every Saturday to get there before everything sells out and parking gets impossible.

We've finally settled on our supplier & I cannot wait to get started. (Yes I know, very sad!)
It was wonderful, and introduced us to things we wouldn't have bought normally.
This is what I'm looking forward to!

We just got a new fridge too!
Don't know which box we'll be choosing yet though.

1. Lack of variety - so many courgettes, cauliflowers, broccolli ect every damn week - yes, you can state preferences & omit items, but that just narrows the range even further. The excitement I intintially felt at returning home from work to find a box of food on my doorstep wanes when once again it's full of green peppers.

2. Some of it (eg spinach, lettuce) has to be eaten at once as it doesn't keep - can screw up your dinner plans.

3. Emphasis on organic-ness also limits choice. Some things don't appear to be grown organically (eg English apples - at the height of the season we were being sent NZ Braeburns), in summer we were getting pumpkins from Italy & beetroot from France & christ all those bloody kiwi friut.

What I REALLY want is seasonal UK produce - don't care whether it's organic or not, and a good greengrocers or farmers' market works better for me.

On the other hand you do eat more veg & I have continued to do after cancelling the box. You learn more recipes & learn to appreciate each veg for its own sake. Some things do taste much much better (eg spinach & anything that has to be eaten really fresh & god, the best potatoes I'v eever eaten, every week - perhaps the one thing I really miss).

I never buy veg from the supermarket now (also thanks to Joanna Blythman). The box supplier I had was a vey local one in N London, so maybe others are better.

We went for realfood-direct.com (not the same as realfooddirect.co.uk, confusingly) in the end, because they're local, and you could basically do all your shopping with them if you wanted to, not just fresh produce (probably won't as it would end up fairly pricey). And you can choose from different delivery days and times.

Excited!

My wife is a teacher in the Bronx, and through her school we recently joined an organic farm co-op/CSA deal. $14 a week for two huge bags of fruits and vegetables, fresh as fuck. Amazing. Yes, you have to take what they give you, but that can be fun to work with, especially since it tends to be very good produce.

Apparently the program also takes food stamps and serves a lot of poor customers in the Bronx.

Holy crap that's a bargain!

Great produce too - you can see it when it comes out of the bag and the color just starts singing. First night we sauteed a bunch of summer squash and it was far better than anything we can get in our local supermarkets. Second night was tomato & onion salad and that was excellent as well.

There is one of these in my city (Ottawa) that delivers "heritage vegetables" on a weekly basis but it's $45 per week for their "two - person" basket (!) and one cannot order anything less. That is a little out of my price range even though their produce is really delicious. Luckily I live just around the corner from a city - sponsored local farmer's market...

We were paying $34/week for a 2-person box, which was plenty of produce for us, but seemed to come from all over the planet. I canceled once the farmers' markets opened up, but it was nice while it lasted. I doubt I would have ever tried fennel if it hadn't shown up, feathery fronds and all, in the box.