This week I took a “preview” delivery of gorgeously fresh and mostly* very local fruit and veggies from new Perth business, The Local Grocer. It’s not available for orders until next week – I happened to have thrown an embarrassingly small amount of money at the business to help them start-up via the hot new(ish) concept of crowd funding – so they let me order a week early. They also asked me not to publicise their website until next week but I just couldn’t wait so please don’t tell on me.

It is chockas! The fruit and veg are fresh, cold and crisp and the local ham…lovely. It came at about 5.30pm so I whipped out a few ingredients and threw it together to make a ham and vegetable risotto.

It was all locally fabulous with a handful of frozen peas because the kids love them.

The box was $70 and will easily feed the five of us for the week. My box is a conventional box; the organic box is $90. I will have to supplement a couple of things – we eat a lot of apples here and we also have a beetroot, celery and carrot juice (Juice-Plus! we call it) each morning so need big quantities of those.

You don’t have to order a seasonal box. You can just pick and choose exactly what you like and in any quantities. I wanted to check out the seasonal box to see what is actually seasonal right now, and also to see if it would suit me as I like the idea of one-click ordering (are you getting how lazy I am yet?).

If you live in Perth and you’re interested in supporting Greg and Mary Winning and The Local Grocer you can jump on board to order as of next week. Just don’t tell anyone or give it away that you had a sneak preview this week, promise? It’s our little secret.

*While the business is newly growing, there are a few items that need to come from interstate. They plan within a couple of years to be 100% local. It’s a work in progress, as with any good idea.