Snowy winter wonderland
Minus 6 this morning when Chris set off on the delivery round. Brr. Because of the low temps, Chris was a bit later this morning as he decided to leave the van (packed with boxes) at the unit in case the veg froze overnight!
Chris is doing pretty well this week given he did a run on Sunday with friends that took him nearly 50km along the Clwydians in the snow! Charlotte and I had a lot of fun being support crew, glad they all arrived back in one piece.
Royal Oak in Ormskirk were unable to harvest the sprout tops we'd ordered for this week so we had kale instead. There were some other issues due to the cold temps but our amazing wholesaler Organic North put in the extra hours to make sure we got everything we needed. We are so appreciative of the work they put in every week to keep our business running as smoothly as it does. So many things happen behind the scenes that even we aren't really aware of.
In the field:
Unsurprisingly, we haven't done anything in the field this week other than harvesting salad (3.5 kg).
In the boxes:
This week:
Small - potatoes, carrots*, red onions, red cabbage, leeks, swede, cavalo nero, clementines
Regular - potatoes, carrots*, Bryn Cochyn onions, spring greens, salad/spinach, cauliflower, golden beetroot, celeriac, chestnut mushroms, bananas.
*Most of the carrots in the boxes this week are local ones, yay, we think this is pretty much the first time we've managed to do this. They were harvested near Abergele on Sunday so just spare a thought for the person harvesting as it was fairly chilly and a very hard ground! The upside is that they are Welsh carrots, the downside is that we spotted a few that were a bit dodgy - if you feel that a carrot almost feels a bit hollow we would recommend slinging it in the compost/food bin and not even trying to work with it (they are on the small side so you have lots).
And next week, for the Christmas boxes we've ordered the following, and of course more produce will be available in the shop next Thurs and Fri (10-1) for you to top up if you need to:
Christmas Small - 600g potatoes, 500g carrots, 500g onions, 500g parsnips, 350g sprouts,
1 x portion kale, 500g beetroot, 600g clementines, a small bag of salad.
Christmas Regular - 1kg potatoes, 600g carrots, 600g onions, 650g parsnips, 400g sprouts,
1 x red cabbage (approx 600g-1kg), 400g leeks, 800g clementines, 1 x swede (approx 600g), Savoy cabbage, 600g Harlequin squash.
Don't forget you can order store-cupboard extras here to be delivered with next week's box if you can't get to the shop.
In the shop:
All of you who wanted mushrooms last week when we'd sold out - fear not, we have loads in this week so please come and help us get through them.
Roots: Bryn Cochyn potatoes (can sell these in 7.5kg sacks too), onions, carrots, parsnips (some), beetroot (golden and red) from Abergele, giant mooli and turnips, celeriac, swede, sweet potato
Brassicas: Cauliflower, red cabbage, spring greens, cavalo nero, sprouts.
And.... leeks, chestnut mushrooms, palermo peppers, tomatoes (Spanish), lots of squash (Harlequin, uchi kuri, mashed potato, butternut), maybe some chard and salad.
Fruit: Navelina oranges (first of the season for us), clementines, apples, bananas, lemons, limes (we're going to make lime pickle!).
Also eggs, sourdough, Pentrefelin milk and all the bits in our online shop.
For next week in the shop we've got similar to this week, with some celery too. Chris says please don't buy your Christmas veg from the supermarket! :) If you want to pre-order anything or check what we have please email us and we can help.
We still don't know if we'll open the shop between Christmas and NY, it depends what we have left after we close on Fri 23rd.
In the kitchen:
This lentil cottage pie is one of our winter faves, worth sharing again.
We also made this celery and tomato gratin last week and it was surprisingly tasty! (the picture doesn't do it justice) - used parmesan and cheddar instead of Gruyere, creme fraiche instead of double cream and large (not cherry) tomatoes.
have a great week, stay warm and...