The Online Veg Box Shop is Now Open

 The Online Veg Box Shop is open for deliveries next week. 

As Spring moves on, we’re pleased to say the Locavore flowers are now fully blooming, and are available to buy for all delivery days next week. These organic flowers are grown at the Veg Box HQ in Bellahouston Park by the resident Locavore florists. They’re gorgeous, ethical, and the perfect way to bring the sunny days indoors and brighten up the cloudy ones. Celebrate your vaccine appointment, finished knitting project, or just getting through another level 3 week with a bouquet of locally-grown flowers. 

And as always, our Online Veg Box Shop is stocked with everything you need to turn the contents of your veg box into many delicious dinners, from black garlic to fresh garlic, baked beans to butter beans, brown rice penne to basmati. This week the Peelham Farm salami is back in stock, so snap that up if you’d like to try it. 

The deadline to get your orders in is 11pm Monday.

Headlines

Spring

A new sign of the season changing is that lockdown restrictions are easing- hooray! If you’ll be out and about more often now, you might need to think about how your veg box is delivered. If there’s a safe place to leave it, drop us an email. If you live in a block of flats or tenement, we can take a key to the close and leave your deliveries outside your flat door. Email us for the address. 

And if you’re planning to go away, remember that you can let us know up to 9am on Monday in the week you need to pause for. We greatly appreciate earlier notice, however, as it helps us order only the veg we need and avoid waste.

Fruit

This is a tricky time of year for fruit, with little variety even internationally. Europe’s citrus season is now over, but stone fruit is only just starting, and apples, pears, and melons are a while away still. Please bear with us during this time if your fruit bag is a little sparse- we’re working on sourcing more fruit, and will have a wider range as soon as more is in season.

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!

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

It isn’t Spring without spring onions. I mean, it just isn’t, is it? They’re named that for a reason. If it’s your first time getting a veg box through the Spring, the spring onions may surprise you- we have long, untrimmed ones, sometimes the length of my arm (although I don’t have particularly long arms). This is spring onions as they are straight from the soil. And although you can simply slice them up and top your noodles with them, they aren’t only a garnish. Spring onions have their own particular flavour and they are, like all the veg we grow and know, worth getting the best from. 

Champ doesn’t sound like much. If you don’t know much about Irish food, you might know about colcannon all the same, but champ, which is cabbageless but studded with spring onions, is less glamourous. But oh boy, it’s no less delicious. Here is a recipe but you don’t need one, Make a buttery, milk-enriched mash (and the vegan block and a plant milk or especially a homemade cashew cream will do very well) and stir through sliced spring onions. It’s vital to make a little well in the top of each heap of potato, into which a knob of butter is placed, allowing it to melt and run down the sides. The spring onions soften gently in the heat, and add a little sweetness as well as a contrasting allium-ness and bite to the dish. It is a simple but perfect thing. 

Leftovers can be fried up into potato pancakes, which brings us neatly to another pancakey use for spring onions. Scallion pancakes are a classic of Chinese restaurants in North America, and my North American friends and colleagues say they’re amazing. Flaky, crispy pancakes with bright spring onions and a black-vinegar based dipping sauce- let’s popularise them over here. Here’s a recipe from a trusted source.

I’m running out of segues so let’s switch to a list: 

–marmitey, cheesey, spring onion muffins
–stir fries and stir fries
–steamed fish parcels
–bahjis!
-the perfect Spring soup

There’s so much more out there, as this is another versatile ingredient that lends itself to enriching any dish you like (more or less). Which goes to show: there isn’t a vegetable in the box you can’t make a meal of.