Early last week we received a huge box of fresh foods sent by my darling brother and sis-in-law, A & J from a company called natoora located in Italy. They sent a box last year from the same company so I couldn’t wait to open it to see what we got this year!
Last year was cheese, canned tomatoes, sauces, lemons, pasta, and some jarred items, just to name a few things. This year was all fresh foods! There were two plastic boxes of herbs, one containing bay, thyme, sage and rosemary; the other had coriander, flat leaf parsley, mint and basil.
There were artichokes, which earlier today, I removed the hearts and bottled them in oil.
Amalfi lemons, leafy clementines, a box of exotic wild mushrooms and some giant garlic bulbs! And I mean giant! We weighed one; it was about 93g / 3.3 ounces! That’s a pretty hefty sized garlic bulb. They must have some mean fertilizer in Italy!
And a lovely wedge of Taleggio Cheese.
There was also some fennel and baby plum tomatoes on the vine, a container of mozzarella balls and purple sprouting broccoli.
Once we opened the box and put everything out on the counter, I felt like I was on MasterChef: The Professionals, when they let them come up to the tables and pick out anything they want to use to cook a dish!
What do we still have left? Lemons (there were 9 of them! ~ they’ve been working very nicely in my martinis!), clementines (got 6 of these), a few tomatoes, fennel, most of the herbs, a few of the mozzarella balls and about half of the cheese. I’m currently trying to root some of the thyme and rosemary; it’s worked before, let’s see if it works on this!
I used some of the mushrooms, herbs and garlic the first night we received the box in a creamed chicken dish. We really had to use the shrooms fast as we didn’t want them going bad. We did manage to use about 98% of them, whether it was in breakfast, lunch or dinner.
We’ve thoroughly enjoyed everything so far and all I can say is that this is a Foodie’s Dream Box! I would never ask A & J to send a box again next year, but I can always hope! 😉
Thank you, A & J! Love ya!
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