Our first local veg box

Since moving to the Highlands, I’ve been increasingly aware of how vital it is to buy from local producers and suppliers. One area we are particularly rubbish in is buying our vegetables from a local source. We normally do our regular food shop in Tesco where you can definitely find Scottish producers across a wide variety of items generally, but the fruit and veg department we always find particularly lacking in tasty fruit and veg which seems to go off quite quickly. We find Morrisons better in that there is a much wider range of fruit and vegetables which seems to last that little bit longer.

I had been thinking about trying a vegetable box for a while, but just never got round to it. However we are at the end of the month and I still had some cash before we were due to do a food shop,  so I ordered a one-off box from Scotgro, based a few miles away in Nairn.

It was £12 for a mini box (good for 1-2 people) which contained:

4 big leaves of curly kale, a punnet of plump brambles (or blackberries for the English!), a turnip, a head of romanesco (which we had never seen before!), a bag of potatoes, carrots and onions.

We’ve got plans for the following:

• Steaming or roasting the romanesco and carrots as side dishes for tomorrow’s Sunday lunch of sausage and bean casserole, with mash using up the leftover Setanta potatoes I got from Elizabeth in this weeks baking endeavours!
• using the brambles to top a baked cheesecake for tomorrow’s dessert
• flash-frying the kale tonight with some salmon and potatoes for a quick dinner

the onions will get used up throughout the week, as will the potatoes, but as for the humble turnip, we’re at a bit of a loss. What would you suggest – any good turnip recipes out there?!