Friday 12 November 2010

Greener Monday - local food in Edinburgh

Greener Monday is a fairly new social enterprise in Edinburgh that offers a virtual farmers market. They haven online shop offering products made within 100 miles of Edinburgh. They even have a map showing the area this covers.

I was delighted when Greener Monday offered me a sample food box to review and even more delighted when it arrived yesterday. I haven't been able to try anything yet (as I was out for supper last night!) but it all looks wonderful, and was wrapped in a box tied up with a tartan ribbon that I can reuse in a crafting project and including paper packaging material. The food items are:

Devilish Tomato Chutney from Isabella's Preserves, Tayside
Damson Jelly with Gin also from Isabella's Preserves
Ola - extra virgin cold pressed rapeseed oil from Ola, Aberdeenshire (Ola is Gaelic for oil)
Cracked Black Pepper Oatcakes from the Handmade Oatcake Company in Perthshire
Shortbread from the Shortbread House in Edinburgh
Porridge premix (with apple, sultana and cinnamon) from Stoats in Edinburgh
Blueberry drink from Bouvrage in Alloa

I notice though that the blueberries in the Bouvrage come from Finland, which given that Scotland seems to have a lot of blueberries is a surprise and undermines the local provenance of the product. I think this is a perennial problem for processed foods. The product might be produced in one locality but that doesn't mean that all the ingredients are sourced locally. I think the other products are all made from local ingredients though, and so qualify for being genuinely local.

So we'll look forward to eating and drinking and making notes over the next wee while and I'll do the second part of the review when we've tried a bit of everything!

A note about reviews etc: I mostly review books and films that I've chosen (and paid for!) myself but am happy to review products or services that are sent to me. I've set up a new page with a short note about this. I am nowadays sent a lot of press releases, which I may use as the basis of blog posts if I think they fit nicely within the blog. I may even on occasion write a sponsored post (and yes that does mean there's one coming up!) but only where I really believe in what I'm being paid to write about.

The red text in this post links to websites where you can find out more!

7 comments:

Kelly said...

A virtual farmers market is a brilliant idea. I can see that being a fantastic idea for urban areas where people, like myself, find themselves to wrapped up in their lives to make it to a farmers market during normal business hours. There is an organic grocery store that I enjoy that I would like to see do something along those lines here.

d. moll, l.ac. said...

What fun, can't wait to vicariously try these delicacies. Perhaps Finland is closer than you thought.....

Forthvalley scribe said...

I noticed them at the Radical Book fair. A very interesting concept!

The Weaver of Grass said...

We are lucky here that there is a lot of local food to be had - we have the Wensleydale creamery on our doorstep and a good farmers' market too.

Anonymous said...

I am so glad you got this box, Juliet. A long time ago, I found a great recipe for oatcakes, and had forgotten about them.

Just went to look for the recipe-it IS a Scottish recipe, not from Scotland, but the northeast kingdom of Vermont, where Scottish families have settled.

Anonymous said...

That is a great idea - the virtual famers market. Disappointing about the blueberries.

RG said...

A Food box! Yummmmm