Veg Box News 16th – 22nd September

Hello and welcome to this week’s rather strange looking Veg Box News. We’re experimenting with a new format which will be jointly posted to the blog section of our website – please bear with us while we figure it out! For this reason it’s pretty bare bones this week, but we’ll be building up the look and contents over the next few weeks. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy this lovely weekend.

With the darker evenings taking hold, there is only one activity that can sweeten the change between Summer and Autumn – bake the blues away! All year I avoid getting caught up with baking; measuring ingredients is a faff and whatever I’ve baked is usually eaten before it has time to cool down! But something about these autumnal evenings are making me daydream about stirring a big pot of bubbling jam and before pulling a golden loaf from the oven.

If you are feeling this cosy, domestic vision, you will be happy to know that a baking section has arrived on the Webshop! We are now stocking Organic Icing Sugar, Organic Demerara Sugar, Golden Granulated Sugar, Baking Powder, Doves Farm Quick Yeast, Dove’s Farm Plain White Flour, Dove’s Farm Organic Strong White Flour and Certo Liquid Pectin.

A slightly abridged update on the organic section this week as Gemma is away! The local offerings are still going strong, with cucumbers, courgettes, kale, spinach, runner beans, salad, fennel and green peppers all coming from growers just a few miles away. This produce is generally picked and delivered to us on the same day. This means it’s far, far more fresh than anything you could buy in a supermarket, and is better value because it doesn’t include the price of long-distance haulage and warehousing.

Still from the UK, but slightly further afield, we have some really tasty winter squash coming in. Varieties are red kuri, acorn and harlequin – try roasting them halved and eating simply with butter or spiced olive oil.

More exotic and just as exciting, we’ve been getting a few Padron peppers from Portugal. Ella and Chris are the main market for these at the moment, and both swear by them with an aperitivo – coat a heavy frying pan with olive oil and toast, hot, until some patches blacken. Salt liberally with Maldon or something chunky, and serve with a gin and tonic – if you’re my grandma this will be at 6p.m. sharp!

The organic fruit is much the same as last week. French muscat grapes continue to be a bestseller, and rightly so. The plums are winding down now so get ’em while you can. And we’re heading into apple season proper, with the crunchy and flavourful mid-season varieties hitting the shelves this week. Robin and Windsor are the ones to look out for, and we’ll have various different types coming through from local growers too.

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Mushroom punnet IRL
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Spinach local
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