Covid-19
You can read about changes made to our service due to the pandemic here.
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!
Veg Box Price Increase
From 15th March, the price of all our veg boxes will be increasing by £2- so a small veg box will be £7, a standard £12, a large £17, and an XL £22. This is because what we charge for each veg box relates directly to what we’re able to buy for each box, and between inflation and the recent pressures on the food system, we found we needed more buying power for the boxes. After the change, we will be better placed to weather these storms, and to keep the boxes full. The change will mean we’re able to include more produce, and a wider variety, than we would otherwise have been able to.
Please Return Your Veg Boxes!
Just a reminder of what we collect from your door each week:
Veg Boxes– we reuse these
Online Veg Box Shop 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
The Nice Bit
I am so excited about the purple sprouting broccoli we have at the moment. It’s from Yorkshire, and is really the best green (and purple) thing we have through the hungry gap. While of course it’s an amazing side dish, steamed or roasted (with a lot of garlic, please), I eat most of mine in pasta dishes. There are two directions I take my purple sprouting broccoli pastas.
The first is to boil the broccoli (remove it with tongs or a slotted spoon and use the same water for the pasta, which dyes it purple a little- a bonus in my book), then cut it up fairly small and sautee with loads of olive oil (plus garlic and anything else you fancy- a few anchovies would be amazing) When the pasta’s done, reserve a mugful of pasta water. The combine the cooked-down broccoli, the pasta, a good grating of parmesan and the pasta water (a little at a time) over a low heat, stirring until it turns (as if by magic) into a creamy, rich broccoli sauce.
The other is to keep the broccoli whole (or slice it into halves lengthwise), boil it much more briefly or skip the boil, and toss the pasta with it, a little pancetta, slightly fried slices of garlic, parmesan, maybe some walnuts and, of course, plenty of olive oil. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s more than the sum of its parts.
Just coincidentally, our new pasta- now avaliable on the Veg Box Online Shop- would be perfect for either of these. Anyway, I’m off to get the pasta water boiling. See you next week when we’ll have some news about opt-out lists.
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.