Moorland Veg Box: organic fruit & veg delivery

Moorland Veg Box delivers fresh, organic fruit and vegetables direct to your door.

Based in the Staffordshire Moorlands, but also delivering around Buxton, Macclesfield, Ashbourne, Uttoxeter, Stone and Stoke-on-Trent, I recently tried one of their veg boxes.

Initially not sure if veg boxes were for me; I just might be a convert.

VEG BOXES & ME

The veg box concept has been around for a good while now. Alongside local box schemes, there’s a couple of big providers that have become household names.

However, despite having considered signing up for several, I’ve never actually done it.

Yes, the convenience of having veg delivered to your door is appealing. And if it’s local and organic, all the better.

But I think what’s held me back is the nagging doubt over whether I’d actually want to cook what I find in my box on any particular week.

So, when Moorland Veg Box offered to send me a box, gratis, it was the perfect opportunity for a test run.

WHO ARE MOORLAND VEG BOX?

Moorland Veg Box is the brainchild of husband and wife team David and Leonie Wood.

I first heard about them at a whisky night at The Old Mill in Leek earlier this year. We enjoyed a wonderful four-course dinner accompanied by fine whiskies specially selected by David, our expert for the evening.

Along with Leonie, David runs Distilled Events, creating bespoke events in the UK and abroad. Offering private whisky and gin tastings in your home and corporate entertaining, they’ll also take you on guided tours of whisky distilleries and whisky festivals.

Former owners of The Wine Shop in Leek, the pair began bottling their own whiskies with the launch of the Queen of the Moorlands single malt in 2005. Now bottling as The Moorland Distiller, their current range is Fraoch Mòinteach, Gaelic for ‘moorland heather’.

Both have huge experience in retail and the drinks industry. David has managed distillery visitor centres at Caol Ila and Lagavulin on Islay and was distillery manager at Caol Ila. Leonie was a manager at Kilchoman Distillery.

However, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown, like other businesses in the hospitality sector Distilled Events could no longer operate as usual.

From that, Moorland Veg box was born.

ORGANIC NORTH WHOLESALERS

Although Distilled Events activities may be curtailed for the moment, David says that Moorland Veg Box actually came about via a suggestion from one of his best whisky customers.

That customer is manager at Organic North Wholesalers. Based in Manchester, they’re the largest and longest-established wholesaler of organic produce in the north of England.

Organic North aims to source produce as locally as possible and in accordance with the seasons. Goods they do import are almost exclusively European.

A co-operative, they say “Organic food should not only be the preserve of the privileged. We were not set up to make profit and as a co-op, having no private shareholders allows us to keep mark-ups low, pay our staff well and settle our suppliers’ invoices quickly”.

Among Organic North’s customers are quality restaurants in Manchester and across the north of England. But with lockdown closing those restaurants, many switched to providing veg boxes to their customers as a way of keeping their own businesses going.

Approached by Organic North and, having a wealth of retail and operations experience themselves, David and Leonie took the opportunity to set up their own veg box scheme.

MOORLAND VEG BOX

Things took off fast. Within a couple of weeks of starting, Moorland Veg Box was delivering to 300 addresses every week.

While the initial flurry of demand for home delivery during lockdown has since subsided, David says that people now signing up to the scheme tend to be searching out organic veg and looking for the absolute best quality.

What you’ll get in your veg box will be incredibly fresh too. In fact, David and Leonie select what will go in the boxes even before the produce is out of the ground.

They decide what to include from a weekly list of items that are about to be harvested. They collect the produce the following week.

The veg boxes will contain 10 different types of organic veg and cost £18, delivery included. For £14 you can have a fruit box with 5 different varieties.

They’re also developing a series of add-ons to the boxes. I was pleased to see that free-range eggs from Sam’s Hens are among them as I usually have to wait until my bi-monthlyish visit to Denstone Hall Farm Shop to get these.

Both Organic North and Moorland Veg Box know that the provenance of food is important to their customers. So, after you receive your veg box, you’ll get an email telling you where your fruit and veg came from.

Helpfully, there’s also the odd recipe or two.

MY VEG BOX

First off, if you do decide to order from Moorland Veg Box, don’t be surprised if your ‘veg box’ doesn’t actually come in a box!

I was a little surprised to find, when the friendly driver dropped it off, that the veggies came in a couple of bags.

But don’t worry. The bags are degradable and fully compostable, so probably make more sense than the bulky cardboard box you might be expecting.

They also happen to be the perfect size for lining a kitchen waste caddy. This is where ours will go, then eventually into one of the garden compost bins.

Taking them indoors, I admit I was actually quite excited unpacking the bags to discover what was in there.

TEN VARIETIES

Inside, what I found was a beautiful array of veg, all looking wonderfully fresh.

The ten varieties included plenty of staples like onions, potatoes, cabbage and mushrooms plus spanking fresh lettuce, radishes and tomatoes.

I was hoping there’d be broad beans, a real seasonal favourite, and there they were.

Like most people, I suppose, what I didn’t want was a veg box full of obscure vegetables I hadn’t cooked with before.

But I was pleased to see there was a less well known (to me anyway) vegetable to try: patty pan squash.

And who could resist a bunch of beautiful, multi-coloured rainbow carrots, free from the plastic trays and bags found in the supermarket?

One of the things I had wondered about organic veg boxes was whether much of the produce had been shipped (or even flown) from far afield.

However, I was reassured having read Organic North’s website and there was indeed plenty of UK produce in the box. Primo cabbage from Yorkshire, Battavia lettuce from Lincolnshire, broad beans from Somerset, the squash from Cambridgeshire, carrots, Maris Peer potatoes and bunched radishes from Norfolk.

Like many of the mushrooms sold in the Britain, these came from Northern Ireland.

As David points out, there are relatively few UK farms that grow organic produce and most of it very small scale. So it’s quite a coup for Moorland Veg Box to be able to access so much.

USING MY MOORLAND VEG BOX

I couldn’t wait to start cooking with my veg box and first off just had to be those broad beans.

I love broad beans but they’re such a disappointment when they turn out to be old and mealy.

These broad beans were lovely and fresh though: tender after just a few minutes boiling.

I decided to make a salad with them, using some of the veg box tomatoes too.

The result was this Tomato & Broad Bean Salad with Salsa Verde (click for the recipe).

With crumbled feta over the top, it made a nicely summery dinner with salmon fillets.

Those striking rainbow carrots just cried out to be used too, so they were on our plates the next night.

Wanting to keep all that beautiful colour, I decided to use them raw in a salad.

With my julienne peeler I cut them into long strips. Then I left them for about an hour in an orange, honey, garlic, cumin and olive oil dressing. Just before serving I tossed through fresh mint & sprinkled sumac on top.

The orange dressing was adapted from my recipe for Vegetable Slaw with Orange, Honey & Mustard Dressing. For the carrot salad I left out the mustard but added crushed garlic and ground cumin instead.

Next was that patty pan squash, which I learned can be cooked in the same way as other summer squashes like courgette.

I decided to make a frittata for lunch, browning the slices of squash first.

Chopping up the big slices of patty pan, I mixed them with browned garlic, fresh mint from the garden, plus 5 eggs.

Cooked in a pan until the bottom was nicely set, I finished the frittata under the grill, adding grated sheep’s milk cheese for the last couple of minutes.

Although having a mild flavour, I thought the patty pan more interesting than the courgette. I also liked the way it still retained some bite.

Unlike some other bigger squashes, it didn’t seem especially watery either.

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A CONVERT TO VEG BOXES?

I admit I was initially sceptical about whether a veg box was for me.

Although I love to cook, and vegetables play a huge part in my diet, I’m used to choosing exactly what I want each week. Would the removal of some of that choice limit me?

Actually, what the top-notch produce did was inspire me even more!

Perhaps if I hadn’t already heard of David and Leonie Wood via Distilled Events, I would’ve been more hesitant to try a veg box.

But I knew, especially after tasting their whiskies, that they know all about quality. Even what you might think of as everyday vegetables, like potatoes and onions, radishes and mushrooms, look so fresh and tempting, I just wanted to get cooking.

Writing a food blog, and eating lots of vegetables, means that a box scheme will probably never fulfil all my veggie needs. But I think this quality produce could be a great addition to my kitchen.

So I’ve decided to start off by taking a fortnightly veg box and a fortnightly fruit box.

If you want to join me in becoming one of Moorland Veg Box’s new customers, call David on 07875 405 980, order via their online shop, send a message via their Facebook page or email moorlandvegbox@gmail.com

Highly Recommended.

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Disclosure

I was invited to try a Moorland Veg Box which was provided free of charge. However, as always, the opinions given here are honest and based on my own experience.

Where a product or service has been provided without charge then a disclosure such as this will always be included in the post.

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