For Use of a VegBox

Back when I first started researching and preparing for this year I discovered a link for Farm Direct, a company that offers weekly fruit and vegetable box deliveries filled with locally grown, organic, seasonal produce. I fell in love with the idea and knew that I wanted to sign up as soon as we got to London. Sure enough, within a few days of moving into our flat, an advertisement came through our letter box for Abel & Cole, a company that provides the same service for our area and offered a free cookbook and the fourth box free if we signed up by the end of October. Sold!

Each week, ridiculously early on Wednesday mornings our driver Lazlo drops off our small Fruit & Veg box, filled with an ever-changing variety of 3 fruits and 5 vegetables that are all either locally grown or fair trade. The only thing I can absolutely count on is potatoes every week. Other than that, I can see what is coming up to two weeks in advance. Based on an extensive rating survey I completed based on Joe and my likes and dislikes, some of the boxes are adjusted to skip foods we absolutely will not use and replace them with another fresh, seasonal option that we like better. We do not get to pick what is in the box, but we can pick what is NOT in the box.

Here are a few examples of boxes we received in weeks past:

Potatoes (in the bag), white onions, fair trade bananas, apples, pears, carrots, broccoli, and Chinese lettuce

New items: mandarin oranges, gem squash, green point cabbage, roma tomatos

New items: Romanesco Cauliflower (that crazy Fibonacci sequence in the front), rainbow chard

My favorite part of this is that it is forcing me to be more adventurous with my cooking. One of my personal goals while living abroad is to learn to cook and add variety to my repertoire. At home, Joe and I stuck to the same 3 or 4 basic meals. For one thing, our work schedules made creativity less appealing and for another, if I wanted better food I had the option of going to my Mom's house to eat whatever she was making. Those of you who know what an excellent (and often spontaneous) cook Joanne Cocita is will know what I'm talking about. Why play the Trial and Error game when delicious, dependable home-cooking is so readily available?

Living in a new place was always going to push my boundaries as a cook if only because certain foods and products I'm used to are either unavailable or cost-prohibitive in my new environment. Our Abel & Cole food delivery adds an element of excitement to this newness, though, and makes newness as a concept far more palatable for a person who readily admits she hates change. Each week's delivery inspires me to make the best of whatever shows up, rather than brooding and feeling frustrated when I can't make my go-to recipes. (Even with taco seasoning from home, for example, the tacos we made last week were just a bit off because of the different cheese, tortillas, and guacamole available here.)

For example, when we received Chinese lettuce as an unexpected replacement for a vegetable Joe and I had put on our skip list, we decided to experiment with lettuce wraps. The "recipe" was entirely spontaneous but very tasty.

For autumn, we are likely to get carrots in almost every weekly box. This plus the standard "spuds" means that I'm doing a lot of Google searches for soup and stew recipes. When we received two softball-sized gem squashes in one week's delivery, I decided to attempt this Carrot Squash and Ginger soup. 

Again our land lady, P, came in handy. She left this awesome soup pot and an immersion blender!

The recipe wasn't our favorite and I had to add a lot of ginger, garlic, cinnamon and eventually some sugar before I really was happy with it. Still it made for a tasty and healthy veg side when we reheated this concoction:

By the Seat of My Pants Pork Stew included:
- Shallot and Cider pork sausages
- Somerset Pork Stew seasoning packet
- Apple juice
- White wine
- red onion
- Leftover gem squash (A&C) or butternut squash
- green point cabbage (A&C)
- white mushrooms
- white potatoes (A&C)
- carrots (A&C)

I've now made this dish twice and am really pleased with the flavor. It's hearty and healthy and perfect for the cold evenings here. Joe gave it his highest rating: We Should Have This Once A Week.

And here's the carrot soup and pork stew when we had them together for leftovers:

I'm excited about the prospects of cooking using different vegetables each week and, for the first time, learning what is "in season" in a way that has been mostly unnecessary living in SoCal. Stay tuned for some other meals I've made with my VegBox: decadent Bolognese sauce, Jamie Oliver's beef stew, potato and leek gratin, and braised red cabbage with apples. Yum!