Veg Box Newsletter 15th June: Gorgeous Courgettes

Headlines

Covid-19 Updates

You can read our company-wide pandemic statement here, and our biggest Veg Boxes update here. Please keep an eye on the newsletter for any further changes.

Summer Living: Cool Boxes

We don’t often have to prepare for hot weather here, but if you get your box delivered and aren’t always in to take the box indoors right away, it might be worth thinking about leaving a cool box out for your driver. Milk, tofu, hummus, and other chilled items can be placed inside, along with any leafy veg that’s prone to wilt in the warmth. A simple polystyrene box, or a larger insulated bag with one or two frozen bottles of water inside will do nicely. Just be sure to either drop us an email to let us know to leave things in there, or pop a note on the box for the driver.

Chilled Collections

If you collect your veg box from the shop, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve been storing some of the delicate leafy green veg in a chiller instead of in your veg box. This is just to keep it in tip-top condition even on the warmest days. Please make sure to consult the posters up in-store and add any chilled items to your box as needed. 

Seasonal Changes

It’s worth noting that as the seasons change, we’ll see more leafy greens in the boxes. These are pricier than root veg but might not go as far. If you dropped a veg box size back in root-veg-heavy autumn, now might be a good time to consider whether you might benefit from moving back up. The larger boxes always have more variety, too, so if you’d like to make sure you get the exciting harder-to-source veg, your best bet is the bigger veg boxes. To change veg box size, send us an email!

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

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The Nice Bit

It’s my strongly held belief that courgettes are one of the greatest vegetables. They grow well in the UK climate- even up in Scotland. They’re delicious, easy to cook, and, my favourite trait for produce, versatile. Let’s round up some recipes to turn the courgettes we’ll have now through to the other end of the summer into a myriad of meals. 

We’ve got courgette chips, courgette fries, courgette fritters with goat’s cheese, courgette fritters without it,courgette fritters that are vegan, and a courgette and mint frittata. We’ve got a courgette and bacon pasta, a courgette and italian sausage lasagne, a vegetarian courgette lasagne, a recipe where the courgettes are the pasta. There’s courgette risotto, tart, and pizza. Confit courgette, courgette daal, courgette subji. Sesame-ginger courgettes, garlic-soy-sauce courgettes. A courgette bake with ricotta and breadcrumbs, a courgette soup with cannelloni beans and stale bread. Courgette salads abound: with buttermilk, with mint and olives, with capers and sorrel. You can curry a courgette, or stuff it, or grate it.

I’ve probably made my point: whatever you most like to eat, courgettes can be included. They lend themselves to all sorts of flavours and dishes. You are a creative lot, so I can’t wait to see what you do with them. 

Good Food Fund

We’d like to say a massive thank you to all of our customers who are donating to the Good Food Fund, either through regular donations added to your veg box order, one-offs through Open Food Network orders, or through donations in store. At a period when so many people have experienced anxieties about food supplies, your donations are continuing to provide practical, meaningful assistance to those most deeply affected by food insecurity. 

The increased amount our customers have donated through this time has meant we have been able to give around £800 worth of produce each week to our existing partner projects,as well as some new additions, and we have also been able to provide £5k as a combination of cash and produce for the Glasgow Food For Good initiative, a multi-organisation project delivering food support across the city. 

As we continue to wonder, along with everyone else, what the future is going to look like, we just wanted to confirm that everything you donate is helping ensure the present is a little better for many of the most vulnerable in our communities, which we are sincerely grateful for – thank you, you’re all amazing.