use all the fruit and veg from my organic bag this week

The French beans (Mum was right, I was wrong) went into a pasta dish tonight with chilli flakes, fresh thyme, garlic, walnuts and soft goat’s cheese. The last onion and all the tomatoes were turned into a fresh tomato sauce for a speedy dinner tomorrow, as I won’t get home till late – I’m on an urban design course at the library (don’t ask). There are two bananas left for my breakfast yogurt and mid-afternoon snack. The the other two went into a cinnamon-fruit compôte (posher than applesauce!) I cooked up out of the remaining apples and pears. I put it into cute pear-shaped ice-cube trays, and I’m thinking that it’ll be good to pop one or two fruit-cubes into a tupperware pot of natural yogurt in the morning and let it melt in time for lunch.

I’m astounded that this was so difficult. Even with vegetarian menus, getting through the big bag of veg has been tricky, and some of it – soup, mash, fruit – has wound up in the freezer. I don’t want to give up entirely on the organic bag scheme, but I might get in touch with the management and see if it can be rejigged and tailored more to a two-person household. Alternatively, more structured meal planning might work too, but I’m not prepared to take full responsibility for that and I’d like to retain some flexibility so, um, probably not. I’d much rather the suppliers change their ways.

Oh god oh god oh god, please don’t make me give up cheese for a week. It’s the fruit, dammit, the fruit. There is still a ton of fruit in the bowl, and it only looks slightly diminished because I got a new and enormous wooden fruit bowl off a lady from Freecycle. For some reason, the organic fruit seems to last a lot less time than non-organic – maybe it’s not blasted with radiation or something – and there’s no way one woman can eat this much fruit alone. There remains a couple of pears, about four bananas, and about seven or eight small apples which don’t grab me much. In the veg section, it’s going well. There’s soup and mash in the freezer, and enough lettuce for tomorrow’s sarnies, made with of Yeah, That ‘Vegan’ Shit’s astonishingly accurate mock tuna salad. Last night’s dinner was a sweet potato and bean curry cooked by my boy, so veg usage was out of my hands, but an onion or two disappeared, I think. I’m going out for dinner with workmates tonight, but tomorrow I will endeavour to use up those pesky broad beans (though my mum insists they’re French beans), possibly in pasta with pesto or something. I don’t know, it’s hard to cook stuff when you’re not sure what it is.

Technically, I don’t get my next veg bag till Thursday on my way home from work, so I have until then to use it up. Even so, that’s only one dinner left, and I have no idea what I’m gonna do about all that fruit except maybe go on a fruit binge tomorrow and Thursday. I’m damned if I’m gonna lose this challenge over a few manky apples.

My plan was slightly stymied by a Sunday lunch out today with parents and bro plus lass, but I’ve just turned all the remaining spuds in the house into mash, and bunged it in the freezer – there’s enough for for two meals for two. Then I cooked up a soup from a couple of onions and all the carrots and courgettes with a couple of oranges, plus lentils for thickness, and a vat of coriander. Enough for a light supper tonight following the lunchtime piggery, and at least one or two lunches in the week.

I cheated slightly and palmed off a bunch of cooking apples my colleague donated onto my dad, as he’s going through a wine-making phase. Now I just need to get through the rest of the salad and somehow trough my way through an enormous amount of fruit. Fruit salads for breakfast, perhaps, with a splash of yogurt.

I ate a spot of lettuce and a couple of cherry tomatoes in my halloumi sandwich, and some cucumber and spring onions disappeared into dinner. But I actually bought more fruit – strawberries and raspberries – with which to make a pavlova rather than use what we had already. Apple and orange pavlova just doesn’t sound as spesh.

I used up most of last week’s klingons with a massive salad of floppy lettuce, cucumber, spring onion and tomatoes, with (non organic) olives and halloumi cheese, with a zingy red-wine vinegar and olive oil dressing. Scrummy, surprisingly filling, and I felt virtuous as all hell (so I followed it up with a slice of my colleague’s leaving-do cake and two of her Ferrero Rocher). It’s amazing how much tastier the organic veg is. Even the cucumber had bags of flavour, and the tomatoes are like being punched by a tomato fist.

It’s really shocking how little of the organic vegetable bag we’re getting through each week, especially considering we eat veggie the whole time. God knows what we’re eating instead. I am pretty much the only fruit eater in the house, so I know where the fruit’s not going. It doesn’t help that, it being summer, the vast majority of the contents are salad orientated – as I’m the only one fond of salad, it doesn’t go into main meals, and my sarnies are pretty much the only destination for all that lettuce and the scrumptious organic tomatoes. The rest of the bag is made up of potatoes and carrots, neither of which we use much.

Have I just argued myself out of continuing on the veggie box scheme? No way. It’s just brought it home to me that I need to change my diet. If I can’t get my five a day in, I’ve no idea how meat-eaters do it.

So this week I’m going fruit and veg crazy. We’ve got some spuds, carrots, tomatoes, lettuce and courgettes left over from last week, as well as this week’s more of the same plus cucumber, onions and huge fresh broad beans in the pod. We’ve got bananas, pears, oranges and tiny malformed apples, as well as a ton of cooking apples my colleague gave me from her garden. The spuds and carrots can be mashed and frozen. The courgettes can be eaten with rice in one of my favourite dishes. The broad beans are, Nigel Slater says, good with pasta and goat’s cheese. The lettuce, well, some can go in sandwiches, but I hear lettuce soup is good. The tomatoes can join the lettuce in lunches, and go into a tomato sauce for pasta and the freezer. Onions I can always use. My parents and brother plus girlfriend are coming for dinner on Saturday, so a fruit salad or maybe even a pavlova-type thing might be in order. And my breakfasts this week will be overwhelmingly fruit-based.

I can do this. It’ll be fun! I’ll be awash with vitamins and my freezer will be full of summer sunshine. And if I don’t do it, my fridge will smell of old veg.