Looking out into the porch and seeing this week’s veg box perched on top of the recycling bin never fails to give me a flutter of excitement. The Riverford delivery person doesn’t wake us, slipping silently in and out of the gate in the early hours. I know what the box contains ahead of time but unpacking it on to the kitchen table - and taking my weekly veg pic - is a labour of love. Occasionally I spot something living, a curled up caterpillar, a tiny earwig. A dusting of soil or even small clumps of earth remain on the wooden surface as I pack the veg away. It doesn’t all look perfect - in a supermarket it would be labelled as ‘wonky’. When I was growing up all veg was wonky.
My Mother-in-law AP insists enjoys going supermarket shopping twice a week. I tend to plan our menu a few days at a time so I can put something on her list. It’s very little as we buy most things from local suppliers (more about this soon).
I love coming up with the meals we’ll eat, not from a blank page but based on the contents of the veg box. It gives me an excuse to leaf through my cookbooks. It usually starts with an ingredient; looking in the index, say for courgettes, and finding masses of ideas as a springboard. My books start to pile up, stacked open for reference at various recipes.
I’m planning to post a round up of my veg box every month. It’s a commentary on the seasons through food. If you’re in a different part of the world this won’t align with what’s in your veg box, garden or market but perhaps they’ll be some inspiration. The comments section is where we can all chat about what we’ve eaten this month. As always I’m enthusiastic because behind all good food there’s a great story.
So here’s my first round up of the seasonal, organic veg we received this month and some of the things we cooked, shopped for and ate:
Veg boxes
Summer veg was still abundant in August. Runner beans from the garden and veg box, tender green beans, courgettes and baby spinach. Even though the sun failed to shine most of the time, salad veg - lettuce, radishes, spring onions, cherry tomatoes were welcome and just needed a wash, chop and slick of a mustardy dressing. A few Padron and sweet mixed peppers were singed on the barbecue. Hints of autumn came in the later boxes - sweetcorn, butternut squash and kale (I do love the brassicas).
What will be around in September? Harvests change year to year (mainly due to the weather) especially when farming in harmony with the seasons and nature. Looking back in my veg diary to 2022 there seems to have been a lot of sweetcorn in our veg boxes as well as broccoli, chard and cabbage - my favourite vegetable. I’ll let you know next month.
Picking
I returned from my Mum’s with a bagful of tomatoes and a cucumber. She’s a brilliant gardener. KP is a novice and looks at her harvest wistfully. We visited some friends in Dorset and came back with green beans, fresh eggs and a big bunch of rhubarb from their community small holding. My herb bed is overflowing with marjoram, oregano, different types of thyme, chives, rosemary, sage, fennel mint and borage. Most are in flower, interspersed with nasturtiums (flowers and leaves edible) which the bees love.
Cooking
My daughter FP came to stay and cooked a lot of delicious vegan food. She was great at knowing what was in the fridge and planning round the veg box too. It was more than just cooking, it gave me a proper break. As I much as I love to cook this was a real treat. I’d usually have more recipes to share but she doesn’t use them, just creating dishes of aromatic, spicy food which she puts before us.
We don’t eat much meat but we’d eat even less if AP didn’t crave it now and again. She’s great to cook for otherwise and will eat anything spicy - rare for most people in their 80s.
A good friend came over on the first Sunday so I made a roast chicken. I stuffed it under the skin with flavoured butter - mashing in some herbs from the garden, lemon zest and garlic - and KP put it on our Ninja Woodfire Electric BBQ Grill and Smoker (although without using the latter). It takes less than an hour to cook the bird until it’s crispy and golden. New potatoes, a big green Batavia lettuce salad with tomato and sumac salad (Ottolenghi) were great with it. It meant we could spend time walking up to Brentor Church and nattering rather than a lot of time in the kitchen.
We had roast lamb on the following Sunday with masses of veg cooked by FP including runner beans and courgettes with lemon, green beans in tomato sauce, roast parsnips (out of season I know) and carrots with a carrot top pesto. Rhubarb and custard for pudding. This Jamie recipe is my stewed rhubarb inspiration with less sugar, no ginger and no water. My foolproof recipe for custard coming soon.
Pointed cabbage comes in a generous amount and keeps well. We quartered and roasted some, shredded it into a stir-fry and softened it in the sauce of a sausage casserole.
I loved these cumin-roasted carrots with honey-lemon dressing and goat’s cheese from Persiana by Sabrina Ghayour, sprinkled with nigella seeds and White Lake Longbow. I combined the spinach linguine roasted tomatoes, garlic, chilli & breadcrumbs recipe from Riverford with charred tomatoes, onions and peppers (I used Padron) from Ottolenghi Test Kitchen.
Our few apples from the garden (an off year after the last bounty) and mounds of luscious blackberries from the hedgerows (where they are abundant) were softened with sugar under pastry in a rather glorious blackberry and apple pie (with custard obvs).
Some friends, who lived next door when I was growing up, dropped in for lunch. On Instagram Anissa Helou debated what should be called hummus and what should not. I used our homegrown beetroot to make muttabal from her description. Our guests arrived early! I’d managed to make part of a recipe for Turkish bread and roasted vegetable salad from New Feast by Greg and Lucy Malouf. The peppers, shallots, tomatoes were roasted and the lovely dressing out of roast garlic, fried capers, lemon juice and sherry vinegar was complete. But the courgettes, alas, remained on the counter! Dan Lepard’s walnut and red wine loaf wasn’t ready either but the white bread was warm and ready for butter (both baked using recipes from Short and Sweet using Matthews Cotswold Flour). Tamasin Day-Lewis’s bacon and mascarpone tart (from Art of the Tart) stole the show as always.
Variations of the next meal are all over Instagram and TikTok because it’s so simple. Deb Perlman of Smitten Kitchen can always be trusted and her Baked feta with tomatoes and chickpeas recipe was excellent. Use masses of herbs (I did a fridge sweep). Leftovers of this with and pepper dish stirred together and warmed through were fantastic the next night. I roasted the forgotten courgettes, stirred in Pelagonia Aivar and popped them under the grill topped with Parmesan. Really good.
A homemade Victoria sandwich cake made to a family recipe appeared very briefly too.
Eating out
My favourite food event of all time was back after the COVID furlough - The Tavistock Cheese Fair organised by Country Cheeses. I’m going to dedicate a whole article to it but if you can’t wait here’s a post I wrote on my blog years ago (excuse the photos - cringe).
A brief trip to Cardiff for the rugby included finding a precious table free on a Saturday night (the city is wild) at Bacareto. A relaxed café bar inspired by the bàcari of Venice which serves cicheti and piatti - Venetian-style bites and snacks and larger plates designed to share. Slightly haphazard in a welcoming way with good food - perfect after an underwhelming corporate dining lunch. Planning to return here and to milkwood where we had a Sunday morning breakfast (make sure you book - it’s very good indeed). KP’s still raving about the Breakfast Bhaji Bun!
We had supper at the wonderful family-run Dartmoor Inn which has a separate vegan menu and welcomes dogs, so pleases the whole family. Big Pan Parties supplied an enormous helping of tartiflette topped with huge slabs of melting Brie. It was very welcome as we sat outside, wrapped in raincoats to watch a comedy version of Pride and Prejudice.
Some of the best coffee in Plymouth is from Jacka Bakery (they’d already run out of their delicious bread, it’s so good). We balanced on metal chairs on the pavement, people-watching while sipping our brews under glorious sunshine (rare this month). A nice snack lunch was at Rise & Grind served by two sisters, Sophie and Molly Chiswell, who had started with a caravan at festivals and progressed to a very nice place on the harbour (which they renovated from an old boathouse, concrete shell).
Go and see Baskery if you can - three Swedish sisters who are incredibly talented musicians. Like I did, at Stannery Brewing Co sipping kombucha, with vegan food by the Hedgerow Hound even better.
All images are taken on my phone and some in artificial light (not good for food). This food is for eating and sharing (and not getting cold!)
So those were my edible highlights of August. I’ll report back next month about what we’ve bought, cooked and eaten. And how about you? When I lived in Dubai, there was a dearth of local or regional fruit and veg due to the heat - with the exception of mangoes from India and Pakistan. I miss their juicy sweetness so much.
Let’s put our elbows on the table and chat - please share your August food stories below.
P.S. My name’s Sally and I’m a keen eater. The way food is grown, made, sourced, cooked and eaten - and who’s does these things - fascinates me. I want to know more about everything from farming to foraging and how to cook the perfect omelette as I believe that behind all good food is a great story. If we are all a bit more connected and mindful about our food and where it comes from, we can change the negative impact our current food systems have on the planet too. Draw up a chair, grab a cuppa, put your elbows on the kitchen table and join me in a conversation about food (and life).
P.P.S. These are early days of my journey on Substack. Like the early days of blogging, I’m learning how it all works as I go along. The images aren’t quite right but I got to the stage where done is better than perfect (I’m not good at this!) and reminding myself that I’ve now learned what not to do in many ways!
I’d love your feedback. Do you like a lot of pics - and is the gallery format good or annoying? Would you prefer the veg box info and what to do with the contents in one post and the rest in another? Is there anything else you’d find useful?
So much to digest here (sorry!) Firstly, I didn’t used to plan our meals. I would just see what I felt like every day. It drove KP mad. We were near the shops and I bought my veg from the farmers market in Dubai once a week. Now I live with AP who has to know what we’re doing, far out in the countryside and with a veg box I’m much more planned. It does change but there’s a framework going forward. I’m amazed that I’ve got used to this. I’m very spontaneous and your description of travelling zingarata style is something I’d love to do, especially across Europe or even just in U.K. Getting to know a country through food, especially how changes in culture have affected it, really appeals to me too.
Thank you for your kind words about my veg drawings. I’m trying to do more - using my new moon intentions inspired by Leyla.
Really appreciate you reading this and for your lovely interesting comment.
I loved each word it’s surprise me that in ur family there is a sort of “scheduled” menù.
Yes I know that’s it’s a normal and useful thing, it’s just that I change the recipes once or twice like few minutes ago I started thinking: “I will cook a spicy soup with a lot of veggie” and only few sec later I was cooking gratin veggie.
There are so many ways to cook veggie that it’s impossible get boring by them.
I really love ur drawings are simply awesome!! 😍😍😍 your daughter was so nice to cook for u I love spicy food spices are great for our body.
And what a wonderful August do u had, so many colourful dishes and wonderful experiences I would love to visit that place once and of course the fair of Cheese?? There is something better than cheese?? I could easily spent all the day at that fair.
Last August we had a “zingarata” I talked about it once in Leyla’s Substack, zingarata or in Eng “Gypsies style” it’s when u travel without knowing where u will arrive and how many time u will stay out from home.
We picked the name from an Italian movie called: “amici miei” in the movie there are 5 friends that enjoy time together, they also organise some jokes and sometimes one of them said: “I feel a gypsy today” so he is joined by friends and they travel together without a destination.
Thanks this way of travel during the yrs we visited a lot of place; this yr we decided few days before my holidays to take the car and see where the flow would take us.
So we reached Swiss and Alsace two countries really particular. In Swiss we went in the canton of “grigioni” where people talking for the 10% in Italian the other talking in French, Germany and in dialect. So having a conversation was difficult but very funny my brain felt like the ball of a pinball 🤣🤣
Alsace was a revelation it’s in France but once was part of Germany going even further back in history was invaded several times. In fact in the restaurant u find France and Germany dishes for me was really amazing. I love seeing how the invasion of people from other countries in the past had an impact on the food.