Well, we're still getting our weekly Riverford box delivery (vegetables). We thought long and hard before going for Riverford, but although there are some food miles involved they do try to justify them all - and we take them at their word. It does come a bit pricier than non-organic: I reckon we spend about £4-£5 a week more than we would do to get the same items in the supermarket. And we do have to top-up with supermarket vegetables which are mostly not organic.
I was sceptical at the start as to whether there'd be a flavour advantage - but there is! Others may not believe me, but I say the taste of their carrots especially is superb! For years I've got rather blasé about spotlessly clean supermarket carrots as being watery and insipid, but these - which are supplied with all the mud on, but a quick scrub in cold water reveals the gorgeous orange colour - are excellent. The nearest approximation is probably the carrots sold
sablé in France (I think that's the word) still coated in soil. But that's rare in British supermarkets. Other things in the Riverford box are also better tasting than the supermarket stuff - probably excepting the onions. They're having a bad year for onions it seems.
Some things that turn up in the box don't work out though. One week they dumped a head of raddicio on us. This was something we'd never tried before, and, try as we might (and we dowloaded several cooking techniques off the internet) we couldn't make it palatable. We gave up on it. Also we got a bit overloaded with swedes during the winter (I did get to like swede more than I used to, though, in consequence). One or two went bad on us before we got round to using them. More fuel for the compost bin therefore.
End of Riverford plug.
One good thing about organic food business, it gives the Little Englanders in our midst something to sneer at. If it weren't for the Organics they'd have to take it out on some other sector of the food business, like, say, fruit'n'veg. Best give them an obvious target! Bit like cyclists really: if there weren't cyclists around to be the target of a vitriolic hate campaign, they'd have to take it out on other road users, such as (horrors!)
motorists...