Organic delivery from farmaround.

Gingham_Ribbon

I ordered too late for this week, but I'll let you know next week how it goes. The woman on the phone was very friendly and said I could change ask not to be sent something and they'd change it free of charge as long as they got 38 hours notice. Seems reasonable.

competitionscafe

nuttyrockeress wrote:

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

There is a good list of box schemes here:
http://www.theecologist.org/banner.asp?banner_id=18

troll35

I got my box today from Beanstalk Organix. There £10 standard box contained-
1 large lettuce (looks very nice)
2 tomatoes (150g)
1 plum tomato (100g)
mushrooms 125g
sweet potatoes 300g
carrots 275g (with more muck on them than last weeks from farmaround)
1 green pepper
2 courgettes 325g
3 onions 400g
broad beans 250g
potatoes 1.3kg

The quality looks very good but the selection (for us) contains less of the veg that we would serve on their own with a meal. Plus I'm not a lover of either sweet potatoes or broad beans...but unlike DS I will eat them.


I also got extra potatoes and carrots but didn't include them in the photo.

competitionscafe

Looks a bit on the small side for a tenner (will photo my box next week for comparison if you like) - already eaten half of it this week Is that strange looking elongated thing a tomato? Looks nice though - I got half a red cabbage and a whole (huge) green cabbage this week - neither of which are my favourite, well not the green cabbage anyway. Love broad beans - not had any this year yet..

Sweet potatoes are another one of my favs - try them different ways to see if there is a way which may make you like them more - roasted is good, mashed with a bit of chopped rosemary , chilli and butter is good too. Or try this recipe which is yummy: http://www.travelerslunchbox.com/journal/2005/6/9/for-the-sweet-love-of-spud.html

Gingham_Ribbon

Well the delivery arrived about 10 minutes ago and the food looks lovely. I have half a dozen eggs, a large selection of very fresh fruit and vegetables and a toddler already tucking into it.

However, several of the items came wrapped in plastic or in plastic punnets. (Cherries, apricots and peaches in punnets, some salad items plastic bags.)

I have cancelled the fruit order reluctantly because it looks so tasty. And I've voiced my concern to them and said I'm considering cancelling it altogether since I was under the impression that this was an environmentally aware company. She was very apologetic but said that they'd 'done a survey' and their customers in the main didn't care about the plastic. But they were 'looking into' using cardboard punnets.

I'm pretty disappointed, particularly because the stuff does look amazing and so fresh. And I feel pretty cheated too. If they really were doing it for the environment, they would never receive goods packaged in this way.:(

Gingham_Ribbon

I've just had a phonecall from them to try and sort out my delivery. She said my items could be sent in paper bags. This would mean taking them out of the punnets and putting them in different bags. I don't think so! LOL

She did say that the punnets were reused as some customers return them. And she said that the ones that can no longer be used get recycled. She also said that most customers recycle them themselves, which I'm confused about becuase I don't know any facilities to recycle any kind of plastic except bottles near me.

Not convinced yet. She's phoning me back with details of the type of plastic and how to recycle it, but I'd just rather not use it in the first place.

annie-c

Well done Gingham Ribbon for making the point about the packaging!! Let us know how you get on.

I used to have a lovely veg box delivered, but have since moved out of the delivery area and rely mostly on supermarkets now.

My biggest issue is that I wish that the smaller boxes (intended for 1-2) carried smaller quantities of the full range of fruit and veg available that week, rather than similar quantities of a more limited range. Cooking for one or two means that I have time on my hands to be more creative with food, not less so, and so it's a shame that the more exotic items tend not to appear in the smaller boxes. Sadly, it means that I get a better service from the supermarkets where it is fine to buy 1 pepper and a small squash,etc.

Maybe I should ring them up and let them know, Gingham Ribbon, since they seem to take notice of feedback!

Baileys_Babe

Quite a few friends who live in West Yorkshire have their fruit and veg from https://www.goosemoor.org.uk who appear to deliver to most of Yorkshire.
Everybody seems very happy with the produce. They also do other produce including milk.

Gingham_Ribbon

I have to say that I am completely swayed by the utter scrumptiousness of the fruit and veg and have decided to live with the packaging for now. The big bags it was delivered in are clearly reused. The punnets ARE recycled and reused first. (She phoned me back and was very keen to stress that they are trying to work out a means of getting the suppliers to deliver in cardboard punnets.) I have packed up the bags and punnets to give to the driver next week.

We have scoffed a whole tub of fresh cherries between the 3 of us today already. We had mixed salad and cherry tomatoes on home cooked bread with mozzarella, followed by apricots. And I can't wait to tuck in to the rest.

I have never tasted such fresh food since my grandpa kept a vegetable patch in his garden and we'd just pull it up and eat it there and then.

Edited to add: Sorry, I just needed to enthuse a little bit more. Pasta with tomato and herbs and a selection of today's veg for dinner. Even my toddler, who is not so good at mealtimes at the moment, scoffed the lot.

competitionscafe

Gingham_Ribbon wrote:

Pasta with tomato and herbs and a selection of today's veg for dinner. Even my toddler, who is not so good at mealtimes at the moment, scoffed the lot.

I would guess the cherries etc (yum, my favourite!) are from Italy, France or perhaps Spain and that it is the suppliers there using that packaging (perhaps for easier transportation??). So hopefully the message will get through to them about more environmentally friendly alternatives and they will respond (and take action).

Amazing how good even simple food can taste when the ingredients are top notch. Last week I made pasta with fresh tomatoes (Italian ones as the UK ones have no flavour yet) capers, fresh garlic and basil (all chopped and 'marinated' in olive oil with salt & pepper for an hour) and then just stirred into some decent cooked pasta (De Cecco) - took 10 or 15 minutes to make (plus an hour to marinade, but that bits not essential) and it tasted fantastic. Bit of freshly grated parmesan on top and a feast fit for a king.