Food, glorious food

Recently we've been making rather a few changes to the way we get our food.

There are reasons for this. First of it's about trying to source food as local as possible. Growing your own is fine and well, just that the space we've got is not going to feed a mouse through the year (and living in the west of Scotland is not conducive to high yields). So the next best thing is trying to source food from within Scotland.

Another reason for changing our food shopping habits is an attempt to reduce packaging and waste. Buying in bulk or without packaging is rather hard if you get your food from the supermarket, even if you try your best to go for minimal packaging, bulk and cardboard before plastic.

I'm not quite that person yet who takes her own containers to the shops (this is mainly a space thing - I can hardly cope with the containers for freezing food I cook, space is precious around here).

So what's our solution? Well, there's two even. And the great thing is that it's something that can be done everywhere really without much effort.
Number one on our list is getting a vegetable bag from an organic and local grower (local in Scotland means east coast, really, the west is too wet to yield crops that actually taste nice. We can grow tatties and cabbage and turnip and rather a lot of beetroot, anything tasty and you need more sun and less rain). To reduce food miles and expense further, we've joined a food co-op. This means that one person coordinates orders and payments, receives the goods, and the members (who are all local) pick up on the delivery day. In return, we get wholesale prices, and the farmer has a guaranteed income throughout the year. There are currently 12 members to our food co-op and a like-minded restaurant serves as the drop off point for the bags so that they can be picked up all day and evening.

Second up is another kind of food co-op. This time it's about wholefoods that come in bulk. Again, there's the benefit of wholesale prices, plus the price advantage of buying in bulk. The system is similar: The food is ordered centrally, delivered centrally and picked up by the members. Our local provider is very amenable to food co-ops with the only condition being that there is no wholefood provision locally. All the admin is down to the members, so each members copies their shopping list from and to an excel sheet and it is then compiled by one volunteer, delivered to one volunteer. In our case we all turned up at the delivery address to sort through the order, one person on the computer, one emptying the boxes and putting food on piles, an one person keeping the kids entertained. It took the better part of an afternoon, but it was actually fun - very sociable and the kids loved it too. As the food comes in bulk, you wouldn't place an order on a weekly basis but it's more like quarterly, and it probably takes some experience to get the quantities right.

With both food-coops, the advantage is also that you get to know a few people near you. So you save money, reduce your carbon footprint, move the money you spend on food to local producers or green suppliers and get to make friends, which may well translate into stronger local communities. It's all good.

And it's so easy to set up, all it takes is a willing volunteer to pull together the order, someone with a bit of a head for numbers and maybe an ability to use excel. Plus another person willing to be the delivery address and opening their house to the chaos of sorting through the order (not as much of a chaos as I imagined). And Bob's your uncle. Free, yummy, local food that doesn't cost the earth.

Food choices

One of the bestest things ever about maternity leave is that it gives you a change of routine. Ok, that can be a good or a bad thing, but let's just look at the bright side. Just before Snowflake was born, I tried to make a few changes. Follow up some of the stuff that I wanted to give some more attention to but never managed in the work/family rollercoaster of my working mummy self.

There are lots of changes I'd like to make, things I'd like to explore and there's more than I can manage. Always more. But rather than get upset about not being able to do it all, my attitude is to try what you can and not be discouraged if it's not happening.

One big item on the agenda was food. The reason for it being that food as we consume it is mass produced with a rather high input of fossil fuels into its production. An unsustainably high input of fossil fuels. Which really means that things will have to change at some point, but there's no harm in making changes now, and reduce our own carbon footprint a little bit.

So rather than buying all my food from the supermarket (I do, I admit, and my main shopping still comes from one of the major UK brands - as I said, you try to make changes, one step at a time and guilt tripping is just not on the menu), I thought it was high time to source some food locally through an organic box scheme. That would be in addition to trying to grow food which, if you follow this blog, you know I'm not particularly successful in. Let's say there's plenty of room for improvement.

The one I went for is an interesting and commendable initiative: Southside Foodshare. It works in two ways, by using an existing organic vegetable box scheme (The Whole Shebag, based in West Lothian) and reducing food miles by having a central distribution point. The vegetable box bit I'm sure is nothing new: It supports local producers and produce, organic and low carbon impact ways of growing food, and by doing so it offers local farmers a way to sustain themselves without being dependent on the dictatorship of supermarkets. Southside Foodshare adds another dimension to it: working with the producer, it offers a cheaper service by organising a central delivery. It's also more flexible because I can pick up at a time that suits me, rather than having to be in waiting for the delivery at home. So the Whole Shebag only delivers to one location, and people who have signed up pick up the bag from this location - less time and driving for the producer, cheaper for the consumer. It's a simple but effective idea, and could easily be organised in many locations where there is some demand for vegetable boxes.

So every week now on a Wednesday, I pick up my goody bag of local organic fruit, vegetables and eggs from the Glasgow South pick up point. What's more, having the vegetables, it encourage me to cook more, to cook more from scratch, and to try out new recipes and even new vegetables. The spuds are the tastiest I've had in a very long time - suddenly plain tatties become very attractive again. I love the newsletter that comes with it and tells you a bit about the week to week life on a Scottish farm, while sharing a few recipies and most usefully how to cook those unusual vegetables that are not in our staple diet (it'll be a first for chard and calabrese this week). I love my weekly trip to the pick up point (it's not that close for me, but involves a walk through the park and I can always combine it with other destinations in the southside of Glasgow).

If you think this is a good idea, why not set something up in your area?