Food is food, not landfill
Ever since we started delivering organic veg boxes in the early ‘90s, we’ve boxed up fruit and veg that’s a little bit… well… different.
What you want in a parsnip is personality. Stay with me.
Supermarkets are pretty keen on uniformity, in particular identikit, highly polished, picture perfect fruit and veg. Look through a supermarket specification and it’s all about shape, weight, size and appearance. There’s not a whisper about flavour.
But the most important thing is flavour.
We like things to be a bit skewif. We have wide specifications so farmers can send us as much of their crop as possible. Sometimes it’s the wonkiest parsnip that tastes the best. Real, natural food comes in all shapes and sizes, just like us human beans.
Odd shaped potatoes, rather large peppers, overly russetted apples… To get that, you have to farm properly and naturally, and not tamper with nature. Variety is naturally beautiful and it’s bonkers to let good food go to waste.
Although, it is inevitable that sometimes we do have some leftovers, and sometimes some veg isn’t good enough quality to send you.
So what do we do? Well, several things.
1. We make our lovely Abel & Cole Kitchen Pot Luck Soup with any good quality spare bits (which you can get on our website).
2. A few local charities, hostels and hospices get supper on us for a couple of nights.
3. And the stuff that won’t last another day becomes our lunch.
4. It’s a lucky day for the local pigs when there’s anything that we won’t eat.
5. Anything that the pigs won’t eat gets turned into compost to go back on the fields; the circle of veg life.
Some things are just plain silly. The Police Academy films, an example. Silly String, another. Unnecessary food waste, a case in point.
Love this
and so happy that you don’t waste anything. I don’t currently compost, as I live with my Dad and he doesn’t like the idea. One thing that I do is if I have things going soft and inedible, I throw them into my juicer and voila!! A new juice 
.
Glad that you wrote this. Hopefully it will make others more conscious about their own waste and what they can do.
Fridge soup is a great way of using up veg and good to eat. I also share my box contents with colleagues at work if I have more than I know I can eat. Waste not -want not.
So glad nothing gets wasted! Its so important and makes me feel even better buying Abel and Cole stuff
tastes good and is ethical…well done mr keith abel. U rock.
My husband and I really enjoy the organic veg and fruit in our Abel and Cole box. It’s healthy, ethical and very tasty. Since we’ve been eating organic fruit and veg we feel healthier.
Your recipes, hints and tips are great too. This week a friend gave us a pheasant. He was a beautiful bird, had been well fed and appeared to have lived a happy life. I’d never cooked pheasant before so used your Game Bird in a Loaf Tin recipe. The result was a delicious meal of tender pheasant. Thank you.
I’m getting to like Abel and Cole more and more. Having had my own allotment for years, and growing organically and with ‘companion planting’ (where the growth of one plant benefits the culture of its neighbour) I’ve driven my family mad with my insistence on naturally grown foods.
Now that I can’t work an allotment any more, I’m happy to find that I can still indulge my preference for unadulterated foodstuffs – courtesy of Abel and Cole
Thank you.
…And even better if there was commitment to these principles across all companies within the William Jackson Food Group (the owner of Abel and Cole, in case it’s not well known, http://www.wjfg.co.uk/features.php?id=172).
A perfect case in point was last week’s small & knobbly beetroot which I initially eyed with suspicion, but which turned out to be the most delicious I have ever tasted! Yippee for odd-shaped veg!
That was very amusingly put. I hope there’s enough leftover every day for your own lunch ! Glad that some gets sent to charities.
We had our 1st box last week and we were delighted with it’s contents. We can’t wait for this weeks delivery! As a family we like rather odd things, we are proud owners of sphynx cats and now also enjoy odd skewif veg. Love it
We actually enjoy challenging ourselves with leftover cooking! I can’t bear to throw anything out and so love to experiment in the kitchen. Best discovery so far – turnip chutney!
I am totally thrilled to get organic chicken carcass for making stock. A few years ago I asked a butcher what happens to all the bones when they cut off the fillets. He said it gets thrown away. He showed me a big bin load of carcasses with plenty of meat on them. He said nobody makes stock anymore. They don’t know what they are missing I say. I was over the moon when I got my box today and saw the carcasses – with plenty of meat still on them I might add – I’ll trim that off for an organic stir-fry! And I’ll make a heavenly stock. All for £1.99. Waaoow! What joy!