William Chong

Website: www.foodbox.co.nz; Ph: 09 265 1054; Email: orders@foodbox.co.nz; boxes from $32.

Most of you know I’m a pretty busy bloke. Between working, commuting, serving, tidying, writing, singing, dancing and sleeping, there’s usually very little time to do groceries on a regular basis. When I do it’s usually bleary-eyed after a long day, and I’m on autopilot through the supermarket aisles picking whatever looks colourful and edible. As many of you can testify, that doesn’t equate to fresh fruit and vegetables most of the time… (hint: soft drinks and chips are very colourful, and very edible!)

So when I got a flyer in my letterbox introducing foodbox.co.nz, I was intrigued. Basically the folk at this venture source whatever fruit and vegetables are in season around New Zealand, pack them into boxes, and deliver them to your door once a week. Little fuss, little use of airpoints to get your 5-plus a day (bananas are obviously the exception to the home-grown rule). They had an option for a once-off delivery, so I decided to try it out.

On Thursday we gather round and open our box. We’re pleasantly surprised – for $32 it’s bananas, kiwifruit, apples, pears, green beans, mushrooms, a head of lettuce, tomatoes, a leek, capsicum, onions, carrots, gourmet potatoes, and passionfruit. There’s an envelope with some quirky notes about the food we’ve just received. I like the trivia about where passionfruit comes from (answer: Spanish Jesuit missionaries in South America named the fruit as a symbol of the Passion of the Christ). They boast that we have got in our hands New Zealand-grown grapes, and include a recipe for a Moroccan cous-cous that can be cooked using the ingredients in our box.

It’s definitely not a replacement for all your shopping. You’ll still need to shop for meat, rice, milk, all your other balanced-diet necessities. And if you have Asian-cuisine inclinations, vegetables like bokchoy and Chinese cabbage may not be a regular feature. While you’re allowed to replace any fruit and veg you don’t like from your box, it’s still a lucky dip of produce that may not suit the guy that’s hell-bent on getting some papaya, or the gal who demands peaches come hell or high water.

But I give it two thumbs up because of one simple fact: I’m eating more fruit and veg. I won’t claim to now eat exclusively at home, but the guys at foodbox.co.nz give you this stuff in such a jovial, non-patronising way (take heed, Ministry of Economic Development TV ads) that you’re motivated to eat what you buy. And that equates to savings from the takeaways, the fast-food outlets, the pubs and restaurants. And the variety of fruit/veg we’re eating is definitely a plus. It’s a joy to try a passionfruit for the first time in my life, and to be given stalks of rhubarb and challenged to cook it in a meaningful way (I did a sugar-laden rhubarb crumble).�

Foodbox.co.nz can make something as mundane as your fruit and veg a present-opening, diet-altering delight.