Picking up where I left off yesterday....
Right at the very beginning of the first lockdown, you may recall there being some issues with food shopping, as well as some other vital household products. There were massive queues to get into supermarkets, empty shelves and it was impossible to get an online delivery slot with any supermarket. So the natural thing to do was explore some other options and turn towards online food box services.
My first port of call was Riverford. This is a collaboration of farms that works to grow organic veg in the UK, and deliver as locally as possible. You can order individual products or regular fruit/veg/meat boxes. They drop off on your set delivery day (mine is Tuesday) first thing in the morning and then you've got some farm-fresh local products to form into your ideal meals. If you're an exploratory cook this works especially well - I personally thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of figuring out how to cook and combine different vegetables, including some I'd never come across before!
It's worth noting that I used Riverford in a way that suited my mad way of living, mainly ordering their zero waste medium organic veg box, with milk and a large sourdough loaf on a fortnightly basis. It does offer a recipe box service, which gives you the convenience of full meal products plus recipe cards delivered straight to your door. It also offers some lovely cuts of organic meat, cheeses and other products. However, the more interesting of said products tended to sell out very quickly and I have other sources for them anyway. And given my above point about enjoying the challenge of coming up with recipes with the ingredients to hand, I certainly wasn't interested in the recipe boxes.
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| One of my zero waste veg boxes |
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| Example of a different box |
Moving onto the wider topic of recipe boxes. I can't possibly write a blog about food delivery boxes without touching on this subject, because they are widely used and its not their fault that they're not of interest to me. I know a few people who have used Gousto, Hello Fresh and a myriad of other recipe services. I think that if you're not an adventurous cook and want to become more so, or if you're busy and don't have the time to worry about food shopping/planning dinners, then they're a completely fabulous service that continue to improve regularly. I also think that if you have specific dietary requirements, such as gluten intolerance, veganism, etc, and want to ensure you're getting the right nutrition, these are an excellent way to explore the meal options open to you.
I did have a brief foray into something like this, when I spent a few weeks ordering from Pasta Evangelists earlier in the summer. I think this is a brilliant concept if you love pasta and can't be arsed with cooking detailed sauces. Their deeply indulgent slow-cooked ragus were fantastic, and the quality of the fresh pasta couldn't be argued with. However, I'm not a big pasta eater and I prefer to make it myself anyway, so I stopped getting these deliveries after about a month. However, if the occasion arose where I was craving pasta and didn't have time to cook, I would definitely return to ordering from these guys.
I must admit that I'm also not using Riverford as much anymore, though they are on hand if I should desperately require a load of veg or something similar. However, I've gone off ordering vegetables in this way because the proportions aren't always right for what I want to cook. Currently, I'm using Abel & Cole, a fairly new discovery for me. A&C are a well established community who specialise in delivering organic foods from across the country. They're very similar to Riverford, but with a much larger range of products, particularly meats. The main reason I've started using them is because they have a huge range of game products, veal and some incredible cuts of pork and beef available. I've created some incredible meals, testing new recipes, for roast pheasant, pan fried partridge and saddle of muntjac. At this time of year, with the days coming to an end so early and no place to go, it feels like a great way to spend my time indulging in heart healthy meat and veg. Plus, I've seen Abel & Cole in real life, whilst visiting the Daylesford farm in the Cotswolds on a recent holiday. Daylesford are one of their suppliers and they really do create the most incredible food.
As with most food delivery services, A&C offer a discount on your first three boxes, with no requirement to sign up for continuing deliveries. They also have a wide range of products, from soups, to household goods, to Christmas decorations - you name it. I'm sure you can all tell that I'm a big fan!
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| My first delivery from Abel & Cole |
Coming onto the last but not least of the deliveries I've been indulging in - the wine box! This one is actually a bit of a cheat, because we've had a quarterly delivery coming from Majestic wines for about three years now. This is such a great saving - we get 13 bottles of wine that you don't normally find in the supermarket for about £100 per box - approximately £8/bottle. The convenience of the delivery partnered with the fun in tasting lots of different wines is perfect. And during lockdown, we've had a greater need of this service, so we've been able to order intermediary boxes at an even cheaper price (by choosing cheaper wines to go into them!). Once again, there are loads of different wine services out there - Laithwaites is another one that I've used from time to time and again they offer a great service and some truly tasty products. One particular benefit is that this has re-kindled my liking for a lovely buttery Chardonnay, something I had gone off based on past experiences.
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| Which to start with? |
By the way, one thing I should probably point out at this point is that if you don't have a good recycling service, you may struggle to get rid of all the cardboard that comes with these various boxes, particularly the drinks boxes. Food boxes are a lot better for thinking about their impact on the environment and are striving to bring down their associated waste products and remove packaging as far as possible. However, with products such as meat or fish, which need to be kept cold, there is naturally a lot more packaging that needs to be dealt with. Nevertheless, I think they're doing a really good job in telling us how to recycle all this packaging and I'm very interested in how the carbon footprint of this local delivery of food + packaging compared to the carbon footprint of international food imports to your supermarket.
A few other points I want to touch on. During lockdown, restaurants have struggled particularly badly and I've seen a big move to DIY home restaurant kits. I'm not going to talk about that today because I'm planning another post on this topic, but I did want to give a nod towards them and encourage you all to try them out if you're interested. This website is a good place to start if interested.
And finally, onto delivery boxes that I've seen advertised but have not yet tried. Would be very grateful for people's thoughts if you have given them a go....
- Flower subscriptions - this is currently top of my list for something to try. The concept here is that you receive a fresh bunch of flowers to place across your house once every two weeks or so. Very tempting because it's so lovely to have the view and aroma of fresh flowers, but I'm concerned they may get damaged in the post, be less fresh than they should be and die quickly, are overly expensive for what you get.
- Plant subscriptions - similar to flowers, but more of an ad hoc thing, where you get different plants delivered from a particular source. Similar concerns to flower subscriptions.
- Baking subscriptions - not something I've really explored as I'm not a keen baker, but I imagine there are delivery boxes out there that send you all the ingredients for different bakes. I would possibly be interested in one that's bread related, or perhaps Christmas related. Might explore...
- Sorted Food Club - again this is probably one for another post. Sorted are basically my Youtube Gurus. They're a group of hilarious mates based in London, who deliver a bunch of Youtube videos, podcasts, books, etc, aimed to simplify the art of cooking. I'm addicted. They have a food club that I've not yet joined, because it's delivered in the form of Meal Packs that tell you what to buy and how to cook things. I'm not sure it's for me, but I'm considering signing up to the free trial to see if I can be proved wrong.
Are there any other sorts of delivery boxes that I haven't even considered in here? Do tell if so!
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