I've been having a conversation with @brockolopolis about the organic box deliveries I get, and the answers to the latest questions were long enough for a post.

One question was about how much control you have over the contents of the box. The answer is that you have some control, but you don't have complete control. You can choose different sizes, for example, a minibox (enough for one person), small (1-2 people), family (3-4 people), large (4+) and super large (frightening to imagine). And you can choose different types of box - fruit only, mixed fruit and vegetables, only vegetables, just salad or just vegetables for juicing.

In addition, you can order extra things from the pick and mix menu of fruit and vegetables. This includes a bag of mixed fruit (between 7-9 pieces) and free-range eggs. I vary between the mixed minibox which carries six vegetables - potatoes, onions and carrots and three others either roots or leafy vegetables - and a bag of mixed fruit; and the nine box, which has nine different vegetables, and order a bag of fruit from the pick and mix menu.

Last week's Nine Box plus Bag of Mixed Fruit and Tomatoes from the Pick and Mix menu. The Nine Box had kale, spring onions, looseleaf red lettuce, little gem lettuce (not shown), courgettes, carrots, potatoes, kohl rabi and beets.

A Nine Box from a few weeks ago plus Bag of Mixed Fruit. This one had tomatoes, mushrooms, fennel, spring onions, celery, Little Gem lettuce, asparagus, carrots and potatoes.

Another Nine Box, this time with onions and Spring (collard) greens, plus fruit.

So you have a choice over the size and type of box, but the producer decides the content based on what is fresh and ready to eat. Apart from the English staples of potatoes, carrots and onions or spring onions, the contents will vary from week to week and between different box sizes (and probably between different boxes of the same size, depending what is available).

Do you sometimes get vegetables that aren't useful to you?

I was trying to imagine a useless vegetable, but I know what you mean 😊. Elsewhere, I've written about The Lettuce Situation where I had accumulated three lettuces, one each week. We don't eat a lot of salad, all of us prefer cooked vegetables, even if they are eaten cold, so I was a bit stuck until @mrscwin came up with some ideas.

The only other vegetable that I couldn't countenance when it arrived was celeriac. Vaguely wrinkled, mud encrusted and covered in matted roots, it looked like a shrunken head. I left it in the lean-to for a week and then it went in the compost bin.

You don't always get what you would choose for yourself. I probably wouldn't buy kohl rabi, left to my own devices, and I definitely wouldn't buy that many lettuces. Sometimes the quantities don't quite work - I might run out of onions or another week I don't get through the potatoes. Or at the moment, we are getting spring onions rather than cooking onions. But then I top up from a local shop.

Part of the joy for me is the anticipation and excitement about the box arriving and finding out what's in it. That's when I decide what meals we are going to have, and which produce needs using quickly. I've enjoyed researching new recipes and I'm learning new styles of cooking.

I may not get exactly what I want, but it seems to me that learning to enjoy what's available locally and in season makes for a richer, more satisfying life. I'm hoping my small actions help environmentally, I'm contributing to my local economy and I have more nutritious food. It's also less stressful. I don't have to go into those enormous mortuary supermarkets with their chilled air, full of things I don't want to buy, for one thing.