The veg thing (again)

Good news! I managed to overcome my veg box phobia and have now already had 3 deliveries - and what do I think about it? Well, if you had asked me after the first delivery I wouldn't have sounded too impressed. Not only did it contain kale, which is something I really struggle to eat, but it also made me realise that I might have to rethink my food planning. I usually try to plan the meals for the week at the weekend - longtime readers of this blog might remember that I took part in a food waste project in November that reminded me how useful it is to plan your meals and your shopping in advance, so I have stuck with this routine as much as possible. Problem was that the veg box gets delivered on a Wednesday, so getting an unknown quantity of unknown fruit and veg in the middle of carefully planned week made things a bit awkward. I was having visions of lots of food wasted - not good.

But a few weeks down the line I am quite beginning to like this. Now I probably should admit that I am playing safe and the size of box we are getting at the moment is far from enough to keep the whole family going for a week, it is kind of a top up, but it has brought a bit of excitement to the whole food/shopping thing.

It has been a rediscovery of certain foods. Turns out that without really realising I had got into the habit of primarily buying stuff I knew the kids would eat. 4 weeks ago the chances of finding a pink grapefruit in our house would have been approx nil, but last week we had one delivered - and it was a nice change from the usual. Likewise I rarely buy melons, they can be rather heavy and bulky to fit in the backpack, but my son suddenly got the chance to totally indulge in it. We have even had several different varieties of apples over the last weeks - amazing how set we can become in our habits.

It has also reminded me what food really can taste like. On top of our box I have ordered potatoes on a weekly basis, and I don't want to sound like some fanatic foodie, but honestly they do taste better than the ones from the supermarket.

Finally I think it has forced me to remember dishes I haven't done for some time or at least to think the other way round, so rather than decide what we want to eat and then shop, I look at what we have and then think about what we can make with that. It is refreshing! I have even managed to postpone some of my food planning, so that I wait and see what the box will bring.

Amazingly my fear of strange green leafy things have been taken care of as well. It turns out you can tell them if there is stuff you really don't want, so I have now added Kale to my list, and that shouldn't show up in my box again. Great!

All in all the veg box is a success, which is good, because my homegrown stuff isn't doing well. Turns out you actually have to look after the things... OK, I knew that, but I obviously haven't been doing enough, because the garden is a rather poor sight. 4 weeks ago everything was looking great. We were eating the first peas, we had overload of lettuce, we had handfuls of strawberries, everything was sprouting and looking green. Now however the remaining peas have gone yellow, because I really should have picked them a bit sooner, the spinach grew to a height of an inch and died, the parsley is light brown instead of green, the carrots have just withered away, the pumpkin plant has given up growing and the radishes have bolted. All rather pathetic and my visions of meals made from homegrown ingredients are very quickly fading. Sigh...

Funnily enough the plants that seem to be doing really well are the ones everybody told me couldn't grown in Scotland - tomatoes. One of the blackberry bushes is also happily producing, which is great although they only seem to ripen 4-5 at the time, so kind of hard to get enough together to actually make something. I also have a couple of beetroots that might turn into real veg and there is still hope for the onions and the potatoes, so not all is lost. And the remarkable thing is that I still want to do the garden thing. I still want to extend the vegetable plot and start all over again next year. I just want to be slightly smarter about the whole thing.

I am going to get more low maintenance stuff. More soft fruit, maybe another tree or two. Yes of course you need to pick and prepare the fruit when the time comes, but there is less weeding involved and the stuff you get is primarily for puddings - best incentive in the world.

Yes, one day I will get that meal made from homegrown produce, one day in the future - until then I will hang on to my new veg box.