A taste of honey

I have arrived. Yesterday I received my first ever organic vegetable delivery box. Precisely. Actually, it was my first ever vegetable delivery box. But it being organic, you can understand how I feel that my life is getting on for being almost complete now.

It felt like Christmas-time, especially as once I'd opened my 'present', I had to cook the dinner!

I signed up to this scheme some weeks ago. I’m not sure why (probably just my general pessimism), but I did wonder at one stage whether Danny and Miranda were going to be able to pull this off. Something in one of the emails Danny sent out maybe gave me the impression that they weren’t getting the numbers they wanted. Anyway, they did it, and what a great job they've done so far. Lots of lovely salad vegetables, plus a big bruiser of an avocado were packed away in the box. I was pleased to see that the box was sturdy and completed covered the contents (I had visions of the squirrels munching away at my tomatoes). It was also good to see that packaging inside the box had been kept to a minimum. As well as all the veg, there were bananas, oranges, and apples. And it was great to see apples that weren’t the size of footballs and impossibly shiny like the ones at the local grocery store.

Danny and Miranda’s delivery service is called The Organic Box. It’s based in Edmonton, Alberta, and it’s a new venture which I hope is going to prove very successful. I’ve signed up for a trial three-week period, with delivery every other week. I wasn’t too sure that my husband and I would get through all the contents of one standard size box, which is why I opted to receive a box every two weeks. But I now realize that that won’t be a problem - today's Wednesday and we’ll be lucky if it lasts out the weekend! The cost is $50 a week for the trial three-week sign-up, or $45 if you sign up for the full 13 weeks it’s offered for (another reason I opted for a box every two weeks instead of every week). I did the math before signing up, and I worked out that we only spend about half this sum a week on fruit and veg (hence the delivery every two weeks). So while it's more expensive than shopping at the local store, it does mean that I'm not buying (and eating) suspiciously shiny apples the size of footballs, and I do get all the heavy stuff delivered.

What I've tasted so far of the fruit and veg has been good. Maybe I'm raving about the box because it contained Jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes as they're called here), and last night was the first time I had tried them. And they were delicious! However, I think I should reserve judgement on the whole organic veg box delivery thing until I've eaten everything that was delivered.

Even so, although I’m an impoverished writer, I’m seriously considering signing up for the whole shebang: weekly delivery for however long they’re doing it. How can I go back now? As Smokey Robinson knew only too well, a taste of honey is worse than none at all.