Food & Company

Food, what more can I say... As some of you know ... I like food, good, fresh and organic (yes, I know, I am kind of "too much" when it comes to that last point). So why, the love for food? Except that I like the taste of good food, I like the atmosphere that comes with it. Sitting at a table with family or friends, sharing stories, ideas, jokes, anything. If I am by myself though, the taste of food becomes even more important (where are the stories, right?). Besides that, I care about my health and, in the end, also the environment.

Here is my weekly routine as far as vegetables for dinner are concerned. I pick up a bag with vegetables every Tuesday. For me, they are enough for a full week (including any dinner guests I have. I actually bring veggies with me if I go eat somewhere :-). The content of the bag is every week a surprise. I can check the Saturday before but I cannot pick and choose. It is what it is.

The vegetables are organically grown,seasonal and as local as possible. Where possible they come from the Netherlands (or furtherst Italy and Spain). If they come from outside the Netherlands, the transport chosen is the most environmentally-friendly (boat or truck). Note, that concerning that last part, I can only hope that they are sincerely choosing the most environmentally friendly way. The company that delivers the bags has contracts with a number of family and cooperative farms in the Netherlands and outside the Netherlands for the production of these vegetables. It also serves as a form of insurance scheme that what is produced will actually be sold.

The vegetable bag comes with a set of recipes and an explanation if it is a "forgotten" vegetable, a vegetable that was regularly eaten in the 50s and 60s but then got out of fashion (because it was too cumbersome to prepare or not appealing enough, for example). So far I have eaten five vegetables I had never eaten in my life. One (salsify roots/schorseneren - see picture) I had never even heard of.

Besides the fact that buying this bag with vegetables is good for me, the environment and helps to sustain local organic farmers, I like the surprise effect of it. The question every week is: What will be in it this week???

So here is what I will get this Tuesday:

Egg plant (aubergine) - which is the first time this season
Red onions - also first time
Radishes - also first time
Fennel (venkel) - also first time, and never cooked before ...
Endive (andijvie) - second time. This was in my youth my favourite vegetable!

I think that so far, in the past 9 weeks, I have only received five times the same vegetable (twice cauliflower, white cabbage, brocolli, alfalfa, and celery) which only shows how many different vegetables there are, even in winter! Are there any vegetables I do not like? Yes, so far, I had a problem with parsnips (pastinaak), another forgotten vegetable (see picture below), but a friend of mine suggested to make a parsnip soup and I guess, that worked (am eating my second portion tonight).

Cooking with recipes. Then there is a second aspect to it ... the cooking. I have never been a big fan of cooking with recipes (as some of you might remember, I would mostly prepare the same pasta sauce with loads of vegetables, healthy and easy). With all these different veggies, I actually have to cook with recipes as a lot of them, I am not used to cooking with and they don't all mix well with tomato sauce ... So I am spending time in the kitchen which, given the easiness of the recipes that come with the bag, and the fact that I can often cook for dinner guests, is not such a bad thing. Through all the cooking I actually become more creative in cooking when there is no recipe available and I discover new tastes!

Here is one of my favourite recipes so far:
Ingredients (serves 2):
11 ounces/300 grams celery (buy the fresh with actual leaves, not the pre-cut sticks)
2 tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic
2 ounces/50 grams pancetta or bacon in cubes (dobbelsteentjes spek)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (kaneel)
bit of olive oil

Fry the bacon, take bacon out and put aside. Fry the (peeled and pressed) garlic cloves in some olive oil. Add cinnamon. Cut tomatoes in cubes, add to garlic and cinnamon. Cut celery (including leaves) in cubes, add to mix and add a bit of water, then cover and steam all for about 5 minutes. Finally add the bacon and serve with rice. EASY! And the cinnamon adds a surprising touch to it.

You can try out the vegetable bag youself! In the Netherlands you can go to http://www.odin.nl/ and check where you can pick up your weekly bag in your neighborhood. Of course, you can also check around and see if farmers close-by offer the same type of vegetable bags. I might actually switch to the bag that the farm in Lanxmeer is offering (see my blog of two weeks ago).

If you are in the US, you can check the following website about community supported agriculture (csa). You can type in your zip-code and find farmers or cooperatives that offer this type of service. An even easier one for DC residents is organized by the Jewish Community Center on 16th Street. Check here While in the Netherlands you can pay week-to-week, in the US you actually buy shares for the entire (summer) season which means a bigger commitment ...

Of course, shopping at a your local supermarket or a farmers market is a perfect alternative if you want to pick and choose your own organic, seasonal, local and thus fresh vegetables.

Have a healthy and tastefull week!

Rose