Quiche and my very first harvest

I don't know about you, but grew up not liking quiche very much. Quiche was what our French teacher made us cook (yup, we cooked in our French lessons) when we actually couldn't cook or what I was served on family holidays in Belgium. It was always fatty, soggy and generally bleh. The fact that I've always hated everything with an eggy texture didn't help much.

When I worked in Düsseldorf, everybody would bake something for the others for their birthday, and I was in pieces when our 60-something omni accountant made a wonderful vegan quiche only for me. (damn, I must make the butter "chicken" seitan from that post again!)

So last week I was blessed with a giant bag of Swiss chard and we had 2 packages of silken tofu in the pantry for weeks (which my flatmate urgently needs for...something. Men.) and I had time to make pastry from scratch. On top of that, my first batch of baby salad leaves was ready to harvest. They made a whole tiny bowl full of salad, with a tomato thrown in - it's too cold in this country this 'summer'. The recipe I used was the basic quiche recipe from The Urban Vegan cookbook, except I threw in the swiss chard and some sun-dried tomatoes and also sprinkled some Mozarella Scheese on top.

Quiche verdict: I loved it and will be buying a quiche pan to make bigger ones, regularly.

This weeks veggie box brought me fresh mint, so I'm drinking lots of Morrocan-style mint tea :) My garden mint is doing so-so as the slugs love it. I didn't know mint had any natural enemies.
Also in this week's box: green peppers, lettuce, lemons, mushrooms, garlic, aubergines, broccoli, cherry tomatoes and a cucumber.


To be honest, I'm thinking about changing box suppliers or not getting boxes anymore at all. I get my box from Just Organic, based in Stoke Newington, so essentially, it's a local business to me. The guy who own it is a lovely chap in the early/mid-Thirties and he goes out of his way in terms of customer service. He delivers in the evenings and is just wonderful when we have complanints. But to be honest, lately I've had a lot of complaints. I know how to store veggies and I know that organic stuff doesn't last as long as supermarket pesticide-laden veg. But when you get a tomato on Thursday night, it shouldn't be mouldy by Saturday morning. The same happened with this week's aubergines and many many of their lemons :( I've never seen a mouldy lemon before I got their boxes.

Plus, while they don't air-freight, the boxes do not really show the change in seasons and I don't get to know what comes from which country.

If you live around London, have you got any recommendations?

Vernal Nosh

Yup, I learned the word "vernal" today. No idea if it's combinable with nosh though :)

Internet-free days in the office make you learn unusual words... work is funny at the moment because our phone and Internet connection is all messed up so we can't email orders, read our mail or look up at Wikipedia who Rostropovich and Skrjabin are or whether Brecht wrote any funny plays at all.

(talking about All Messed Up, Paul, if you're reading this, let me know you're still alive!)

Well, it's spring and my veggie box delivery makes me do a little happy dance in the office every Wednesday.

I didn't take a picture of last week's box but it had wild garlic and green asparagus, so I made wild garlic risotto with roasted asparagus!
An odd thing is that Germans love their white asparagus. It's nearly impossible to buy green asparagus here except for a few weeks in spring. Sadly, I love green and hate the pale fellow.

Saturday was Anne's birthday, and what do you make the co-workette with the bluest eyes in the world for her birthday?
Clafoutis! It was my first time baking with silken tofu and it worked like a charm, so easy and everybody loved it (except for the not-fruit-eating-no-not-even-in-cake-male)!
And it was pretty too... yes I actually baked something that wasn't butt ugly!

pre-baking:

finished:


And this weeks' box, containing apples, oranges, bananas, an avocado, swiss chard, onions, parsley, courgettes, and Rübstiel (similar to turnip tops).
I'm excited about the Rübstiel, I've never had it before but apparently it's a traditional green of the Rhine area.

Going local

... oh no, now she's on the local trip, too! Hey, it's the only New Year's resolution I made for 2009!
I think it's funny how definitions of local vary... when someone from the US says they're only buying from their state and the surroundings, that easily covers an amount of land that could swallow Europe. At least some of it.

Let's face it: living in northwest Europe, eating only local food would restrict me to roots and tubers for pretty much all the time except the summer months.
Anyway, I found a farm in Neuss that delivers to Düsseldorf (since I would never be home in Krefeld when a delivery guy came) and subcribed to their "Single" organic veg and fruit box scheme. Actually, the main reason I started this was not as much the local aspect but the fact that when I finally have time to go grocery shopping at the end of the day, both supermarkets and Bioläden (organic grocery stores) only have the icky fruit and veg left.
So for 12-15 euro a week, I might for example get:
Grühnkohl, a giant kohlrabi, jerusalem artichokes, chicory, parsnips, ginger, oranges, apples, bananas, the smallest pears in the world and the most gigantic lemon ever!

This week box held all of this:
beetroot, salsify (I've never cooked with it, any suggestions?), an eggplant, swiss chard, onions, 2 kiwi fruit, apples, pears and oranges again and a small, orange and un-irish sharon :)

Most produce is from Germany and the Netherlands, though there are some things that are from Italy or Spain, or even farther away.
I like that I can preview what's going to be in the box every Friday and change my order online and plan around what's in the box (which is brought every Wednesday).

Another local thing are these sweet German vegan blogs that I recently discovered:
Vegan Macht Glücklich
Schlemmen ohne "Muh" und "Mäh"

Back to organic

No food pics today, but I have a goal to share with you folks today.
I've discovered I spend way too much money on food at the moment and end up throwing away a lot of stuff.
As much as I like to cook for people, entertain and stuff my co-workettes with cookies, people can only eat until they're full.

And I have a very snobby thing to admit... though I am well aware that there are millions of people out there who don't have enough food and are even on the verge of starving... but I don't appreciate conventional food properly. I guess it's just that throwing out "cheap" food doesn't hurt as much as organic produce.

I used to buy 90% organic for quite some time but somehow lost track of it. So my vegan mofo aim is to return to being more eco-conscious, spend less and waste less.

So my plan is:
a) return to making a meal plan and shopping list - and stick to the shopping list
b) only buy organic OR local
c) buy fair trade, where available
d) buy non-organic/non-local/non-fair only if these options don't offer quality, good-looking produce, cost more than 2x than conventional (trainee here!) or are simply not available (e.g. it's hard to find chocolate chips in Germany at all, no way you'd find organic ones!).

How about you? What products will you only buy in organic (my rule is: everything I'm going to eat raw or grows underground must be organic or I won't touch it) and fairly traded (chocolate/cocoa, coffee, certain exotic fruit) and how much of your overall food purchases?

(and now the first weekend in more than a month with almost no plans and time to cook is beginning!)