The Online Veg Box Shop is Open!
The Online Veg Box Shop is open for deliveries next week.
For this week only we’re offering UK pickling onions, from Ormskirk. These are miniature little onions perfect for popping in a jar and preserving. Keep it fish-supper-classic with just malt vinegar or experiment with your vinegars and spices. This peppery, bay-leafy version sounds like it’ll be perfect with your ploughman’s. Here’s a thoughtful post on the general principle of pickling your onions.
As always, the Online Veg Box Shop is choc-a-block with anything you could need to keep your cupboards and your bellies full of delicious organic food. Plus eco-friendly cleaning supplies, the best-smelling handwash on the face of the earth, and loo roll in biodegradable plastic.
The deadline to get your orders in is 11pm Monday.
Headlines
Covid-19
You can read about changes made to our service due to the pandemic here.
End of Collections
Our veg box collection service has now ended. A huge thank you to all our collections customers! Most of you have now switched over to deliveries- email now if you’d like to but haven’t yet.
Send me your recipes!
If you’ve got a recipe you can’t stop cooking, something that makes the most of the season’s plenty, please send it to me at saoirse@glasgowlocavore.org. It might be featured in the newsletter, and you’ll get a bit of credit on your veg box account to say thanks if it is!
Please return your veg box!
Just a reminder of what we collect from your door each week:
Veg Boxes– we reuse these
Mossgiel Milk bottles – we return these to the dairy for reuse
Ed’s Bees jars – we return these to Ed (and his bees) for reuse
Plastic bottle lids – we recycle these
Plant pots from Locavore potted herbs- our farm reuses these
Locavore hummus Vegware pots – we return these to vegware to be biodegraded
Ella’s Kitchen baby food pouches – we recycle these
We aren’t able to accept glass bottles, egg boxes, or any other items for recycling, I’m afraid. Please dispose of these as you choose.
If you collect your orders from the shop, you can return them there.
We’re running low on veg boxes at the moment, so please do remember to leave them out- reusing them as many times as possible helps keep our veg box scheme as carbon-efficient as possible!
In the Veg Boxes This Week
Subject to last minute changes
Check out storage guidance for helpful tips and tricks on how to prolong the life of your fresh produce. If you’re wondering where your veg comes from, have a look at these maps. You can also join your fellow subscribers over in the Facebook group for lots of tips, tricks, and recipe ideas!
To contact us, ring 0141 378 1672 or email us at subscribers@glasgowlocavore.org
Click here for Veg Box Contents
Scottish Elections
If you’ve been on our Facebook or twitter account this week you’ll probably have noticed that we have launched our set of Manifest Asks, setting out some of the issues we think parties and candidates should be addressing in the Scottish elections if our broken food system is going to stand a chance of being fixed.
Whether the debate is about poverty and the use of foodbanks, Brexit and the impact on the fishing industry, or the implications of the Climate Emergency on how we feed ourselves, this election more than any other should be where the food system is held under scrutiny.
We’ve put together some of our thoughts in this document, condensed down from an even longer list of issues – we don’t put them forward as a definitive list, but as some suggestions on actions that would make a real difference in reshaping the food system into something more fair, less destructive, and better for us all. We’re going to be contacting parties and candidates as the election gets closer to ask for their support, and would love you to help, whether by promoting through your own networks or by joining in the debate on our social media channels.
The Nice Bit
| This time of year, just about the only thing I want to eat (although I do eat plenty of other things) is a well-baked potato. And as a card carrying member of the Chapel Farm Potatoes Fan Club, a Chapel Farm baked potato might be enough to keep me happy until the daffodils and wild garlic start popping up to tell me Spring’s arrived. As there are baking potatoes in the veg boxes (standard and up) this week, let’s celebrate them. Just what’s so good about potatoes from Chapel Farm? Well, since they’re in our veg boxes, they’re organic- so better for the planet for about a million reasons– and from just down the road in North Berwick so there’s far fewer food miles to worry about. But they’re also just delicious. Unlike supermarket potatoes, all pale and watery, C.F. potates (as those in the know call them) have dense, yellow flesh with a sweet, creamy flavour. A little salt, a little oil or butter, a little cheese or nutritional yeast: heaven on earth. The great thing about baked potatoes is they’re insanely easy, but like everything else in life they will reward whatever effort you put in. By all means, start them off with 10 or 15 minutes in the microwave, but if you can finish them in the oven I must insist that you do. A hot oven to a good potato is like the topic of potatoes to me, apparently: all that hidden potential is unlocked. If you salt and oil your potato skin- right at the beginning of the process- and then either bake for the whole hour, or transfer your par-microwaved potato to crisp up for 10 minutes, you’ll have a perfect thing to serve as a side, or topped with whatever it is you like (an extremely personal choice). And then, if you really want to go all out, there’s the twice-baked potato to contend with. Take a finished potato, cut in half, scoop out all that wonderful steaming flesh and mash with oil or butter, then return to the skin (I like to leave the skin in the oven to stay crisp in the meantime), top with cheese if you like, and bake again until browned, and melted, and wonderful. While I always have mine with butter and cheddar, there’s no need to involve dairy if you’d rather not. The vegan block we sell on the Online Veg Box Shop makes a luscious butter substitute, or try with this amazing-sounding recipe for vegan twice-baked potatoes. And on the side? Suma baked beans, of course. Or a vegetable stew. Or a brussels sprouts slaw. Or creamy, gingery cabbage. |
The Good Food Fund
During 2021 our customers funded the provision of around £30,000 worth of fresh fruit and veg to organisations working with some of the most vulnerable members of our communities, including food banks, and community cafes. Being able to provide this support, week in and week out, brings these services some level of stability of supply, and access to produce that often isn’t as easily available through other routes.
One of our partners is Glasgow Nightshelter, who in 2020 moved to new premises meaning they have been able to expand from providing emergency overnight accommodation to a 24 hour service, and the support provided by the GFF supports the provision of freshly cooked and nutritious meals three times a day.
We’re currently working on a short report to give more details about the money raised through customer donations and to show the difference your donations make, but you may be interested to read more in our 2020 Impact Report, published at the end of last year, which covers the GFF, but also how just by shopping with us you are supporting change in the food system.