Organic delivery from farmaround.

troll35

Has anyody used Beanstalkorganix who are based in Addingham, West Yorkshire as they are my nearest box scheme?

competitionscafe

By the way Goodness Direct are doing a free delivery offer on fresh organic fruit & veg until the end of May - plus you can get an extra 10% off your order with the code 'ecologist' (from this month's Ecologist magazine). They deliver nationwide and do a wide range of dry goods too.

From their email newsletter:
"May Madness
We are still mad! That means that for the whole month of May you can order whatever you like from our FRESH selection, and there won't be a delivery charge. Drool over the mushrooms, salad veg, organic fresh vegetables, get your organic potatoes delivered, plus fresh fish, fresh organic fruit, fresh organic herbs - and then treat yourself. If you order over £35 worth you get a free fruit box worth £11.99 thrown in. (You need to order a minimum of £15 to make delivery worth while). "

http://www.goodnessdirect.co.uk/cgi-local/frameset/landing/4.html

The Organic Famers market also do free UK (nationwide) delivery on all orders over £30.
http://www.theorganicfarmersmarket.co.uk/

competitionscafe

nuttyrockeress wrote:

These don't deliver in my area how would I best go about finding a similar service?

Try putting your postcode into the search at this site:
http://www.bigbarn.co.uk/

troll35

I got my first delivery from farmaround this morning. I got the standard organic veg pack for £10.55. The veg looks lovely and has very little soil to clean off. It contains -
1Kg potatoes (not enough for us)
400g carrots
300g onions
large cauliflower
small green cabbage 300g
450g courgettes
200g cherry tomatoes on the vine
200g radishes
400g green beans (huge quantity! we'll be eaing these at every meal.)

Overall the pack doesn't contain enough veg for a week for us but then we do eat lots.
Next week I am trialing the equivalent box from Beanstalk Organix which is much more local to me so I will keep you posted.

Gingham_Ribbon

What kind of packaging was on it? I'm presuming they don't use plastic punnets or anything?

Also, what does a person do with loads of radishes?!

troll35

Everything came in a paper sack (the type you get potatoes in). The potatoes, onions, carrots, cauli, cabbage and courgettes were loose in the bag, heaviest things at the bottom. The tomatoes and green beans were in brown paper bags. Oh and the radishes were in a bunch held with an elastic band. Writing on the main bag asks you to recycle it by handing it back to the driver on your next delivery.

Here goes... I took a picture of everything so I would be able to compare it with the other boxed scheme I am testing.

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a116/cathysue/100_1275.jpg

Hope that works

What to do with the radishes. Well there's only 20 of them, so it won't take me long to demolish them. Usually I chop 5 or 6 of them up in a salad. But I find they're one of those things that jump into my mouth when I open the fridge door. There a love or hate them veg I think. I was wondering if the leaves were edible?

Gingham_Ribbon

http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/vegetables/radish.html
http://frugalliving.about.com/od/howtosaveonfood/a/eatgarbage.htm

Thanks so much for the pic. That looks perfect. I too would need to buy more to suppliment it, but I thought there would be way too many potatoes, but I could use them okay. The tomatoes look scrummy!

To return the favour, I googled for radish leaves and got the above links. Two different opinions though, so I'm none the wiser!

Caterina

Recipe to use radish leaves (but you need a lot of them!):

Wash and chop leaves very finely. Fry a couple of chopped cloves of garlic in olive oil, with some chilli if you like spicy food, in a deep pan. Add chopped leaves, a pinch of salt and the zest of a lemon. Cover and let sautee for a few minutes.

Cook pasta and when cooked dress it with the veg mixture, sprinkle liberally with grated pecorino cheese (better than parmesan when using garlic-based pasta dressing - but parmesan will do too).

We grow radishes in the garden FOR THE LEAVES more than for the radish itself because we all love this recipe!

Buon appetito!

Caterina

PS edited to say that if you only have a few leaves you can always use them finely chopped in soup, they are slightly bitter and spicy and taste a bit like kale or broccoli.

troll35

Excellent Gingham Ribbon and Caterina. I won't be putting the leaves in the compost bin. I thought they looked tasty and now I know. I have some spinach in the freezer so I will probably make your sauce caterina using spinach along with the radish leaves.
By the way I compared the veg bag with equivalent organic goods from both tesco and asda (online prices) and overall there was very little difference (less than £1 I reckon). You couldn't get all the items in either tesco or asda and if you only ordered these items there would be a hefty delivery charge from the supermarket, which would make them much more expensive.

Caterina

Spinach works just as well but the taste is much milder. You can do the same recipe with virtually any greens, including cabbage (very OS!).

Let me know how you liked it after trying it.

BTW, an improvement on the recipe, if you like anchovies, is to sautee and dissolve a couple of salted anchovies in the chili-garlic fry mix!

Another variation is once everything is sauteed, add half a glass of red wine and let stew for a couple of minutes, for an interesting wine sauce with the greens (but if you use the anchovies you should use white wine only, of course!)

Caterina