Wonky veg? Rescued & delivered to my door? This was something I had to try.

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I’ve said before I’m not a vegan, so instead of Veganuary I have been investigating ways of shopping more sustainably and supporting UK farmers and growers where possible. It’s the only responsible thing to do in the face of Brexit.

Getting hold of better quality and tasting food to feed my family instead of the bland produce on offer in supermarkets isn’t easy, there is only 1 fresh market to us locally open a couple of inconvenient days a week, although we try to do lots of pick your own in summer.

What’s in my Oddbox this week?

There are now many fresh food delivery options online, but there are a few reasons why Oddbox in particular appealed to me:

1. The idea of fruit and vegetables being discriminated against by retailers because of their size, weight, colour, minor defects etc. is almost as offensive to me as these this is when you apply it to people. As long as it tastes good I’m not bothered what it looks like, I cook soups, casseroles, curries and salads and I’m not feeding the Queen. 2020 will forever be remembered in our little house as the year I perfected roast potatoes & gravy.

2. As their produce is “rescued” it means it would otherwise have been thrown away - how can this still be happening?

3. With the aim of trying to reduce the plastic having it delivered in a cardboard box all completely unwrapped save for a few delicate items (i.e. baby spinach) this has to be one of the easiest and convenient wins.

What did I get?

I was totally chuffed. I went for the large box as it was on a January offer and it didn’t disappoint. We ended up with 9 varieties of veg: 5 Potatoes, 6-7 carrots, cabbage, large bag of sprouts, 5 medium peppers, large bag of mushrooms, spinach, cucumber and 4 avocados. The fruit (5 apples, 4 pears, 7 clementines and 5 large kiwis) was nearly eaten up by about day 2 though with my fruit gannets.

And the look of them? Looked good and fresh! I was pleased to see the cucumber was bent, the carrots were yellow instead of orange, the apples had occasional dents because they were in a hailstorm, some of the kiwis a bit mis-shapen (almost foetal looking) and the potatoes were absolutely huge. But with real mud on them. Haven’t seen that since I was a kid.

How did the fruit & veg taste?

Most importantly they all tasted great! especially the cucumber somehow. I think it came from Spain, and the avocados were obviously flown in from somewhere, but being probably the most environmentally unfriendly fruit to grow I can’t fathom of a more virtuous way to obtain them than rescue from being discarded. You can always put up to 3 types of fruit or veg onto an exclusion list so if you really don’t want avocados for reason of the environmental impact you can avoid getting them.

The large box size was very reasonable in terms of the amount it contained, and I have reduced it to a medium for next week because we haven’t got through all the veg yet. The only improvement from my perspective is we eat more fruit as a family (particularly with a 6 year old locked down) than came in the large box, so a bit more personalisation from that perspective would be nice because we still needed to pick up extra oranges. And cucumber. We tend to get through 2 of those a week somehow usually.

Weekly surprise

Next we’ve got potatoes, onions, carrots, chicory, celery, cabbage, brussels sprouts, fine beans, apples, pears, clementine, and pineapple coming…and I can’t wait. Opening such a big box of lovely goodies feels like Christmas!

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