This year’s theme is ‘Cooking for Victory’ in response to WRAPS “household Food and Drink Waste in the UK” report. The report shows we throw away 8.3 million tonnes of food and drink every year. Most of this is avoidable and could have been eaten if we had planned, stored and managed it better. This amount of food waste costs the average family in Britain £50 per month. And in these economic times, that’s £50 per month few of us can spare. What could you do with that £600 you’d save in a year? And if that’s only the average, then some of us are wasting a whole lot more than that…

We have made our own pledge, to publish this “handy guide to eating left-overs”, which we really hope you’ll:

1) find useful,

and, more importantly,

2) add your own ideas to, using the Comments field down there.

Alternatively, rather than adding your ideas here, why not add them to Mrs G’s website and put yourself in the running to win one of the two great prizes that she has up for grabs: a £50 LUSH voucher and £50 Natural Collection voucher!

Click through for the “Handy Guide to Eating Left-overs“

august to do list

As we hit the height of Summer and the soil is at its driest, do keep everything regularly (not sporadically) watered, using water from rain butts whereever you can. Many gardeners use “grey” water for watering, ie from baths and doing the washing up, although our jury is out on the advisability of that when you’re going to eat what you water…

Here’s the usual run down on sowing, planting out, maintenance and harvesting for August.

what are your food ethics?

There’s a risk that, when explaining you’re a (for instance) seasonally-focused, raw food, lacto-non-ovo-vegetarian, you’re going to get the kinds of raised eyebrows you see in certain coffee shops when someone at the front orders a tall, skinny, dry, double shot, extra hot, soya, vanilla cappuccino.

So which ethical food camps are there, which one are you in and why?  Find out.

cherry clafoutis

Cherry Clafoutis

August brings with it the last of the cherries, so make the most of them with this traditional, elegant yet amazingly simple French dessert.

eton mess

Eton Mess

Summer’s not Summer without Eton Mess … Make yourself popular with the kids by whipping one of these up whilst British strawberries are still abundant.

PSB, Tenderstem and Calabrese

Broccoli is a member of the brassica family, like cabbage.

The plant produces green flower heads on thick stalks. They are picked and eaten before the flowers bloom.

There can be confusion between these different types of Broccoli so let us try to help.

Click through for the low down on each type, including their different seasons, and ideas on what to make with each of them…

nature's WD40?!

Pretty much every weekday morning right now we’re mindlessly chunking up cucumber and throwing it into the box with salad leaves, peppers, spring onions, cashews, and mushrooms for lunch. Add a bit of black pepper, a splash of balsamic or even a tin of tuna and some mayo and I can be pretty sure we’ve saved ourselves from the pot noodle for another day!

But is there more to cucumber than salad? Is there more to cucumber even than tsatsiki? Cucumber side effects? Oiling your hinges? And is it possible that it can be cooked?! Read on …

squashes in the spotlight

We are close to declaring squashes our favourite of all the ingredients we write about. Maybe it’s the sheer variety of them in all their amazing ornamental shapes, sizes and colours. Maybe it’s their versatility for cooking savoury and sweet dishes with.

We also love that they all grow on plants from the Curcurbitacea family, and so are related to courgettes, cucumbers, melons and LOOFAHS (we don’t recommend eating these)!!!

Originally native to Central and North America, many varieties have since been bred to weather colder climes.

Their seasons vary according to type.

Here’s a quick guide to the differences between Summer and Winter squashes, with recipe compilations for each.

would you eat them?

Following on from the June feature on ethical egg shopping, this month we’ve collaborated with the good folks over at Farm-Direct to bring you some thoughts about the chickens behind the eggs.

Since the start of VegBox Recipes, we’ve been focused almost exclusively (and unsurprisingly!) on supporting you to eat local, seasonal, organic fruit and vegetables.

However, not all of our readers are strict vegetarians or vegans. So whilst it’s still true that one of the best ways of reducing your household carbon footprint is to switch to a vegetarian or vegan diet, if we’re going to eat meat, poultry and fish, or cook it for others, the natural choice would seem to be swapping quantity (especially ‘worryingly cheap’ quantity), for quality.

Read on to find out how to know what you’re eating, and for recipes to try with your ethically-sourced chicken.

** thanks to our regular reader, Steve-in-KL, for the photo of his “ladies”!

july growing checklist

The essentials this month are

1. keeping back the weeds,
2. regular early morning or late evening watering, and
3. ‘stopping’ your tomatoes and climbing beans.

There are also still seeds to be sown, especially if you are planning on being able to harvest your own food later on in the year, as well as armfuls of produce to start bringing in and trying out our recipes with.

Click through for the full July checklist.

in season in july

THIRTEEN new ingredients are coming into season – it must be July!

Click through to see the whole list and to let us know which you need help with.

Make sure you get the list at the very beginning of the month – sign up to the free VegBox Monthly Newsletter…