Delivery Time

With a new year comes a new veg box from the Riverford box company. My friendly delivery man David managed to call during a brief 30 minutes of sunshine on Thursday, I hope he didn't get too rained on during his rounds. 

This weeks box contained classic January UK veg including carrots, potatoes and leeks. A few Spanish imports of cherry tomatoes, ramiro peppers and broccoli brightened things up, giving a bit of variety, but I can never decide if this irritates me or not. It's lovely to have peppers and tomatoes in January (especially knowing they're organic and shipped rather than flown across) but when you buy a veg box to get a sense of the seasons it seems almost counter productive. It does however make meals easier. I'm the only one eating the green veg so if we got just that it would take me weeks and weeks to get through. 

January is great for some veg, such as kale, potatoes and cabbage but it's definitely not a very fruity season. After the deluge of oranges, satsumas and other citrus fruits over Christmas January feels a bit boring. I always thought oranges must be out of season and flown across the world for Christmas but according to the Riverford website they get their oranges from Spain between October and April, so I know what I'm buying in my next box. Although it's still Spanish and not as local as my UK apples I got this week.

As well as maybe getting some Spanish oranges next time I'm considering another addition to my regular order. Riverford offer meat boxes as well as their veg ones. The cheapest one is about £30 but you do seem to get a lot from it; a stock pack, beef pot roast (1kg), pork belly joint (700g), beef diced (400g), 4-6 lamb chops and chicken quarters. The website says this should last two adults about a fortnight, which for us is probably about right as we only have meat about 4 times a week. 

The convenience of getting all our veg and meat delivered is quite tempting especially because you couldn't get it as locally or all organic in the supermarket. What I'd really love is a local farm shop somewhere close to Preston but I haven't found one yet, maybe I'm not looking hard enough.

Book of Green

Today I've been having a bit of a winter clear out and tidy up. It's good to get the house tidy and in order before filling it with decorations and, a little later, nice new presents. During my tidying I found lots of environment and conservation leaflets I've collected from various places over the last few months and it's given me a new sense of enthusiasm.

In particular, I rediscovered the Book of Green which I found in the Beautiful Planet cafe in Preston. This little book is free and is an "eco-living directory" full of companies and products that are ethical or environmentally friendly. The book comes out once a year and has been running since 2006; it's also online here.


Looking through, the book is split up into sections including Food and Drink, Travel and Leisure, Green Child and  Business Services.  It's a great resource to flick through for ideas and having it all collected together makes it easier to fight the urge to just take the easy option when buying things and forget the environmental impacts (both direct and indirect).

The clothing and jewellery pages are filling my mind with thoughts of post-Christmas shopping while the Eco-builds section makes me think wistfully of future dream homes full of eco-friendly gagets and powered by renewable energy. It's going to be a good source of ideas for Christmas presents for friends and family too, although I'm still busy with crafting home made gifts most evenings-hopefully they'll be done before the big day!

Why not have a look at the Book of Green online and see if it sparks and ideas for last minute presents for you?

My Beans Dilemma

Baked beans are an incredibly versatile food stuff. Pop them in stews or pasta sauces, have them with your full English, on toast or a baked potato; they're great however you eat them. They are low fat, vegetarian and one of your five a day portions of fruit and veg, definitely a super-food.

Their simplicity is one reason why they're so useful at lunch times. Take in a few slices of bread and you can easily have beans on toast for lunch and feel all warmed inside and healthy too. It's not a huge hassle, but taking them out the tin, finding a microwavable  container, cooking them and then washing up all seems more effort than taking sandwiches. Then there's the problem of size, one tin is a little too big for a lunchtime and the smaller tins at 150g are just not quite enough. So the new 200g snack pots are great because you have the right amount of beans for lunch and you can pop the plastic containers straight into the microwave and then bin them straight after.

It's so easy. Just open, cook, then bin the packaging. But that's "bin the packaging" not recycle the packaging. One of my favourite things about baked beans is that (apart from the plastic wrapping around 4 packs) they come in completely recyclable packaging. I've never met anyone who wouldn't automatically recycle tins, it's ingrained in our lifestyles. But the new plastic containers are much harder to recycle. I definitely can't here in Preston, I might have been able to recycle the main pot at university in Durham but not the plastic film lid. So the question is, do I sacrifice sustainable packaging for convenience of cooking?

I don't have an answer to that. I love the convenience of the new pots, but hate the waste that the new product brings over the old version. It seems backwards to move from a sustainable packaging to non-sustainable. Maybe I am being a little naive about what people do with their tins at work, I might be in the minority to carefully wash mine and pop into my bag to take home to recycle if there aren't facilities in the office. For now I'm sticking to leftovers and sandwiches but I'm still jealous of colleagues who sit eating their warm (just the right amount of) beans on toast at lunch time.


What are your green dilemmas? Post a comment to discuss!