Eating the Seasons

Just to let you know

2008-05-12T13:58:00.003+01:00

That I was playing around with Wordpress over the weekend and have decided to move over there permanently. It is much more intuitive to use and allows you to have more of a 'mini website' which I am keen to experiment with as I am currently beavering away at a few articles and fact sheets/tips that I'm hoping to use with FOE.

Please update any bookmarks/links to http://sproutingbroccoli.wordpress.com.

The management apologises for any inconvenience caused. ;-)

You win some, you lose some...

2008-05-08T16:51:00.003+01:00

Ta-da!!!!

I am proud to report that after MONTHS of trying and ending up with everything from slightly warm milk with a tablespoon of yoghurt whisked through it to a globby ricotta-type mixture that was okay on pasta, I have finally managed to make yoghurt and end up with something resembling yoghurt. Looks like yoghurt, tastes like yoghurt, smells like yoghurt.

I have exorcised my yoghurt demons.

And the initial capital expenditure (item: Thermos flask; quantity: one) should have been recouped by November! (Though that's not counting the additional benefits of owning a Thermos flask. Money saved by making yoghurt: 35p/week. Having proper loose leaf tea on the 7.56 to London Waterloo: priceless.)

I very nearly danced around the kitchen when I realised it had worked. I am not a total abject failure when it comes to yoghurt. =D

However, my Grant loaves were an abject failure. I was getting all lyrical, thinking of the wartime women working 12 hour factory shifts and bringing up children alone rejoicing over this bread recipe that took about 10 minutes to prepare, and I forgot to keep an eye on the kettle and the water got too hot and then it killed the yeast. I tried to repair the damage, but despite a token rise overnight, they then cooked too quickly and I basically have flat bricks of bread.

Ah well. You win some, you lose some....

I knit... I garden... That's about it....

2008-05-07T09:42:00.007+01:00

Damn, I thought I was just going to be compiling glossaries today so I was all set to go and work outside, but I've just had a transcription come in, so looks like I'll be stuck indoors with the world's most ginormous wasp instead.

Spent the weekend at the bf's mum's house as she is moving and we had to help clear the garage and loft. I did my best to save as much as I could from landfill, but things still crept into the skip when I couldn't make a convincing case for putting them on Freecycle. Including a perfectly usable single bed and a bike, repairing which would have been cheaper than buying a new one. I did manage to salvage (for my own use) several plant pots, an old wooden lavatory cistern and a hanging basket for growing things in, plus a beautiful wicker picnic hamper (which the bf immediately placed in the loft, as the ugly free M&S cool bag donated by my parents is 'practical') made by the bf's grandfather and a pair of curtains, and the bf found some apple juice that was three years out of date that is now in a demijohn in the downstairs bathroom, bubbling away.

I have also acquired a desire never ever to move and never ever to hoard things I don't need. Books and CDs are going on Freecycle as I write this. It's hard, though, to work out what to get rid of. I have so many CDs and books that getting rid of the two I might feasibly not like much seems like a very small drop in the deep, stormy ocean of decluttering. One birthday card takes up very little room, so keeping them seems innocuous, but assuming I'm lucky enought to have 60-odd more birthdays, that's a lot of cards to keep....

My sock is driving me mental! I keep knitting about three rounds and then discovering I've gained a stitch, not being able to figure out where, having to unpick it all because it's messed up the ribbing and hurling the four-needled sock monster at the wall shouting, 'No! No! No! I'm not knitting you any more!' I mean, going barefoot isn't that bad....

I am having more success with the cardigan though. It looks more or less like half a cardigan! I've been preening and feeling proud of myself since it started getting big enough to be recognisable.

Peas and beans are out in the garden and still alive, but being rather recalcitrant and not climbing the canes. Planted some salady greeny things yesterday and will pot on tomatoes later today. I also think I saw some peppers coming through. And some wee potato shoots are poking their muddy heads above the soil. Hurrah. I also weeded one side of the garden in deference to suburbia and not having to spend a month sorting it when we move out.

Oh, and I've been reading 'Animal, Vegetable, Miracle' by Barbara Kingsolver and it truly is inspiring. I thoroughly recommend it. I really want her life now - write fiction, grow vegetables, have entrepreneurial children who run their own egg business...

The sad state of local politics

2008-05-02T11:04:00.002+01:00

Well, how about a little rant for a Friday, eh?

Walking back from the polling station yesterday evening, my bf turned to me and said, 'I didn't realise there wasn't a Green party candidate here.' (I have trained him well, muahahahaha....) I scoffed and said, 'I didn't realise there was a Lib Dem candidate or a Labour candidate.'

Now, I'm a bit of a leftie. I don't really ally myself with any particular party, but I general fall somewhere between what Labour should stand for and what the Lib Dems stand for. I readily admit that the kinds of changes I am looking to see in this country are waaaay beyond what any actual politician would be prepared to put in their campaign literature, but I'm pretty realistic and would be happy to be swayed by a convincing candidate, especially in the local elections: in a general election, although you aren't really supposed to, I would tend to vote for a party and a Prime Minister, but in the local elections I would tend to vote for the candidate I felt most confident in. Overall, though, I generally believe that public services are in principle a good thing, I think we need to do more for the environment, I think the gap between the rich and the poor is too wide and I'd love to completely overhaul the education system.

So, I was looking forward to all the candidates coming around and asking me what issues were on my mind so I could grill them about their ideas for making Wokingham a more sustainable, resilient and environmentally-friendly place, about how they would follow up on the suggestions FOE gave them and if they would please stop concreting over everything and get rid of all the cars.

Now, I work from home and am usually in most evenings, so if anybody had come round canvassing, I would have known. We had leaflets shoved through the door by the Conservatives, UKIP and the BNP. Labour and the Lib Dems didn't even bother to do that, let alone actually try and talk to me. It never even entered my mind to vote for UKIP or the BNP, and I didn't really want to vote for the Tory candidate because a) his environmental policies were rubbish (basically: environmental issues begin and end with waste and recycling, and we couldn't ever have alternative weekly collection, never, never, never, never) and b) all the material we've ever had from him has contained a big whine about how little funding the Borough gets from central government compared to..... councils where there are more poor people. Now, there is a genuine issue about how basing it on averages means the worse off in overall richer areas are even worse off than they would be in poorer areas where there was more central funding, but do they talk about this? No, it's just 'poor us, aren't we hard done by, never mind that that's how local government funding works or that the reason we don't get as much is because we're all well-off and don't need it' - it's like saying, 'Oh, poor stockbrokers, they have to pay more tax than nurses and bin-men.'

So I didn't want to vote for him either.

And so since I knew nothing about the candidates representing the two parties I might have swung between or their policies, I was damned if I was going to vote for them.

So, ladies and gentlemen, since people died so that I could have the right to vote and I did not want to dishonour them by allowing apathy to win the day, I am ashamed to say that I spoilt my ballot. I voted for all the candidates and drew a silly face at the top of the paper for good measure.

Bikes, socks and the promise of nettles

2008-04-29T16:36:00.003+01:00

I have just taken delivery of a swanky, curvy, RSI-vanquishing ergonomic keyboard courtesy of the folks at the day-job, so please excuse any typos. It's taking a while to get used to and is a bit like typing with one finger.

Seedlings continue to take over my living room. I'm kind of bored of talking about it now, but the peas are hardening off well and I let them stay out in the rain this afternoon for a while. I don't know if this was good or not, but I thought they might want to get used to it before living outside. I wanted to plant them out this weekend, but we have to go and help the bf's mum sort her house out before she moves (read: shift all the cr*p he refuses to throw away from her loft into our loft) and I don't know if I want to be away for two nights while they're all on their own in the big wide world... Gawd, I'm so pathetic. And demonstrably not bored of talking about it, clearly.

I've ordered loads of compost too, and this is a turn-up for the books: not only is Wiggly Wigglers' organic, peat-free compost cheaper (including delivery) than the bog-standard stuff from the hardware shop at the end of the road (which is exceptionally useful in a crisis, so I'm happy to pay a bit more to support them and cover the running costs of an actual physical shop in an area of extortionately high property prices) but also cheaper than the bog-standard stuff at Wyevale. In fact, Wyevale is more expensive than the hardware shop. Economies of scale my *rse.

I have also acquired a bike on freecycle. Hurrah. It needs a clean and a new saddle, but it might have gears that work, which is a massive advantage over my current old banger.

Last night was the first meeting of Reading's first ever sock club. Well, I assume it's the first, anyway. 'Sock club?' I hear you ask. Yep, four of us from the knitting group have decided we want to learn to make socks, so I now have some scary dpns (why does the wool not fall off them??) and the world's most gorgeous wool. Mmmmm.... Wool.......

Which, given that Sharon says that learning to knit socks is the single most useful thing you can do against the apocalypse, is very appropriate, I feel. I'm not normally one for taking part in challenges that people put on their blogs, largely because I have several ongoing challenges of my own, in addition to the general hassle of living and trying not to centre all of that around the internet, but this one is largely food related and is flexible enough so that it's likely to fit around what I'm doing anyway. So I'm in. I have pledged that I am going to do two of the following things every week (thus by definition including a mandatory non-cooking one):

Plant something
Harvest something
Preserve something
Prep something
Cook something
Manage your reserves
Work on local food systems

Hmmm... This week, therefore, I am going to plant some more herb seeds (I can't face peak oil without four varieties of basil, y'know) and pick some nettles and have them for lunch.

Sod resilience; eat Spanish omelettes

2008-04-27T09:56:00.003+01:00

Well, I was going to write a post about Grangemouth oil refinery closing, the hike in food and fuel prices and resilience and relocalisation, but I can't be bothered. The long and the short of it can be summed up by two anecdotes: one of the hospitals I spoke to during my hospital food project last year after the town was cut off by snow and the food from the centralised NHS supply chain couldn't get in, so they had to buy food in the local shops instead, and everyone also thought the food tasted better and was healthier (who'd've thought it); secondly, when we first heard the fuel protests of 2000 were going to happen, we stopped at every petrol station on the way home from school, every BP garage, every supermarket, and none of them had any petrol, and it was only when we got to the tiny garage near our house (after dithering about it because it didn't seem likely they'd have any and if not it was an unneccesary detour) that we managed to fill up.

Ooh, we're now having a thunderstorm and lots of rain. I don't think my seedlings will be going outside today.

Yesterday was gorgeous, though. We went on a wild food walk at a park in Bracknell in the morning, which was quite interesting but a bit odd, as the person who was supposed to be running it hadn't turned up, but instead of going home, a group of us went anyway as someone knew a bit about it. She promised to take us out looking for mushrooms in the autumn, but whether she'll remember to email two total strangers in six months time is anyone's guess.

In the afternoon, I put some potatoes in and sat in the garden doing important research, trying to work out where I'd put things. I'm dependent largely on containers this year, but I noticed that one side of the garden gets a lot of direct sunlight and the other is much shadier. I wonder how you'd do a proper crop rotation like that: surely at some point you'd end up growing peppers against a north-facing fence and lettuces in direct sunlight.

For supper, we had a great Spanish omelette, loosely based on Jamie Oliver's frittata in the Jamie at Home book (which I bought last week with a book token from Easter) only with less chorizo and more greenery and a bit of goat's cheese on my half. And most of a bottle of red wine.

Ooh, I just saw lightning. I'm going to get away from the electrical device now. ;-)

Potatoes for Victory!

2008-04-22T22:44:00.002+01:00

I really wish, when I confidently declared to Scientist Boyfriend the other day that, in the light of rising food prices, climate change, peak oil, the GM issue and biofuels, it was my moral duty to grow potatoes, that I had remembered that the bin I was going to plant them in* had harboured some pork bones for a couple of months. Of course I remembered as soon as I went out to inspect its potential potato-growing capacity. Oh yes, they'd smelt so bad I'd put them out there instead of in the kitchen one as the bins weren't going to be collected for another few days. Well, I can tell you, two months later on, that really would have been the lesser of two evils. Yeurgh. Maggots. Yeurgh.

My seedlings are coming on nicely. I have actually potted on the Brussels sprouts and the peas (I accidentally decapitated a sprout... I'm a bad mother...) and the peas' roots were SOOOO long already. I will now have to consult my gardening books, my forums and my dad and learn what to do next. I think it is that strange thing known as 'pricking out'. Or 'hardening off'. I wonder if there's a difference. Some squash and pumpkins are coming through, and even some of the butternut squash seeds that I saved from a squash from the farmer's market and kept in a mug over the winter cos I never got round to roasting and eating them are maybe, possibly, starting to possibly think about germinating.

Ruddy peppers resolutely not though.

The bf finished his exams last week. We walked an hour through the forest to get to the 'village' down the road to get to a celebratory curry and everyone thought we were nuts. At the weekend we put a big vat of chardonnay (mmm...) and stout (erm...) on to brew, which basically meant we spent the whole weekend washing up, and I tried to fix my bike and bent half the cutlery drawer getting the tyre off and then it turned out to be the valve not a puncture, and I'm actually tempted to get a new bike because that one is so rubbish I almost resent spending any more money on it. I had to get the back wheel replaced (or something... the bf did it while I was at work and he didn't really know what he'd spent £40 of my money on) and that was almost the worth of the bike. There was a 1930s ladies' bike for renovation on Freecycle, but I didn't get it. Meh.

I've splurged and bought the Jamie at Home book, because I'm actually warming to Jamie Oliver (even if I say it through gritted teeth) and we're having courgette carbonara tomorrow.

I've also bought a bokashi bin. I have come into some money - not very much money, not enough for a smallholding or anything fun: enough for a woodburner maybe, but not for a Clearview - and since the world is going to hell in a handcart, I thought that as well as whacking some of it into savings and praying it didn't get swallowed by the banking crisis monster, I should invest some of it in sustainable things, so some of it is on the way to various useful charities and some of it earmarked for the furtherance of backyard sustainability.

I bought compost-related items.

With free seed potatoes.

My mother, who spent countless holidays and Christmases quietly tearing her hair out while my father and his father and sisters discussed chitting and ericaceous compost and carrot fly over the breakfast table, is close to disowning me as it is. She was only wincingly enthusiastic about the seedlings. She fears I am lost.

I didn't tell her how excited I was about getting grow-bags.

Free seed potatoes though. Don't care if it is a bit late, I'm so enthusiastic about potatoes saving the planet I had potato salad for lunch instead of pasta or a sandwich. Get me and my reducing my grain dependency.

* This plan may be scuppered by the fact that bins tend to lack drainage and it doesn't seem polite to drill holes in the bottom of someone else's property, even if it is your contribution to alleviating the food and fuel crisis.

Things I have been reading lately

2008-04-21T16:13:00.004+01:00

Some interesting things in the news today:

Exposed: the great GM crops myth from the Independent.

A good article by Michael Pollan (of 'The Omnivore's Dilemma', a truly excellent book, fame) in the NY Times on the merits of individual action. The bit on the second page about specialisation is really interesting.

"Because the climate-change crisis is at its very bottom a crisis of lifestyle — of character, even. The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us (consumer spending represents 70 percent of our economy), and most of the rest of them made in the name of our needs and desires and preferences.

"For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we’re living our lives suggests we’re not really serious about changing — something our politicians cannot fail to notice."

"Here’s the point: Cheap energy, which gives us climate change, fosters precisely the mentality that makes dealing with climate change in our own lives seem impossibly difficult. Specialists ourselves, we can no longer imagine anyone but an expert, or anything but a new technology or law, solving our problems."

"Going personally green is a bet, nothing more or less, though it’s one we probably all should make, even if the odds of it paying off aren’t great. Sometimes you have to act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can’t prove that it will."

Good point, Mr Pollan. I'd better go and make some yoghurt.

Fabric won't bite

2008-04-20T10:48:00.004+01:00

Seeing as I am making such good progress with my antique sewing machine and my new suit, it seemed like a perfect time to lecture you all on why making clothes is really, really easy and everyone should do it. =)

Blogging is an odd fish. I can spend ages constructing a post about the moral case for fighting climate change and nobody says anything, and then I can scribble a few lines about my greasy hair and provoke a flurry of comments. You're an odd lot, you lot. ;-)

The thing that has provoked most interest and comments has been my dressmaking course, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest (given that this was how I felt) that it's because it's the kind of thing that everybody really wants to do (cos it's useful and you get to play around with pretty fabrics and have clothes that fit you) but that seems horrendously complicated and nobody thinks they can do. My granny used to 'manfully' make clothes for my mum and auntie (as my mum put it), but never really enjoyed it, and my mum presumably learnt some things at school, but her dressmaking skills extend as far as sewing on buttons and (after much pleading) taking up my trousers. The most useful thing she passed on in that regard was that sellotape is a foolproof alternative to that invisible hemming.

So my maternal lineage singularly failed to teach me anything of much use in the sewing department and my school was even worse: my mum had been told at 13 that she was 'too bright' to do domestic science to O Level and made to take Greek instead. This seems to be the way education has gone, and my academic hothouse of a school didn't even bother to try to teach me anything useful. We were the first year group to have cookery replaced by IT (no room for both), but that was okay, because we were all going to get 10 GCSEs, 4 A Levels, a place at a top university and a decent job, so we could just pay other people to grow and prepare our food, mend our clothes, repair our electronics and clean our houses.

Ah well, peak oil kinda b*ggered that plan. Never mind.

I'm also a funny shape. Having an immensely robust sense of self, I've decided that I'm actually quite a healthy shape. I don't have any problem with my hips or my chest, I quite like them, in fact - I have issues with my knees, and I think my arms are too skinny, but overall, my problem is with the fashion industry that says we shouldn't have breasts and hips. Or that if we do, we shouldn't be short. Seriously, after years of finding that any trousers that fit around the hips are several inches too long or that any shirt that closes is too baggy around the shoulders and tummy, I just cracked. I will not be dictated to by corporate fashion houses about what shape I should be. For anybody who rolls their eyes and asks if our grandmothers chained ourselves to the railings outside Parliament only for me to start baking bread and making clothes, I say this is an act of defiance and empowerment in the face of disposable fashion, the sickening attitudes towards women's bodies you see in the media and our culture of dependence on corporate giants who want to tell us what shape we should be, what we should wear and think it's okay for 9-year-old Bangladeshi girls to make it for us.

Whoa, okay, that was a big side-track. Where was I? Yes, you lot were interested in my battles against 23 years of ignorance and a sewing machine.

I even had a specific request for help. Natalia wrote (way back in March, sorry Natalia - it was on an old post and I'm afraid I didn't notice it for a while):

Hi everybody :)
I'm trying to find a place here in New York City to take some sewing classes. I could go to FIT or Parsons and take some CE, but I have two problems: 1. I'm learning english, all those words are new for me and 2. it gives me panic that somebody shouts me again because I can't understand what they are trying to tell me, trust me! I had an experience of: Don't you understand me? once and I felt like... terrible... Some suggestion to begin? as soon as I feel confidence about what I'm doing I'll go straight to FIT with a big smile. Please :)

Now, I'm a very long way from New York City, so I can't really help you on finding a class or a teacher, but I can tell you, and everybody else who seemed impressed and faintly awed that I was learning to make clothes (you know who you are ;-) )

don't be scared.

There, I've even written it in a non-threatening colour.

Firstly, I'm English, have a degree in linguistics and have worked as an English teacher, and all those sewing words were totally new to me too. When I got my sewing machine, I got some books on dressmaking out of the library, even quite promisingly titled books such as 'Dressmaking Made Easy', and was totally baffled, it seemed like a foreign language - selvage? darts? yoke?

I thought maybe I could handle curtains (they're square and they don't have hips or breasts or anything), so I got some more books out of the library, again called things like, 'Soft Furnishing for People who Really Haven't a Clue.' Yeah, right. I couldn't mitre corners when I started reading, and I couldn't when I finished. In fact, I only have a hazy understanding of what mitred corners are and I still hang blankets over my windows at night.

Books, people, are not the way to go. While I contend that a moderately intelligent and extremely patient person could probably teach themselves to knit with a good book of beginner patterns and the videos on Knitting Help, I think if you want to learn how to use a sewing machine to actually make things, you really need somebody to show you what to do. I know that I was incredibly lucky that my teacher was so enthusiastic and inspiring. My mum said to me, 'Well, you'll probably make a cushion cover, and then an apron, and then an a-line skirt,' which sounds to me like a 1960s home ec course, and it was nothing like that at all! Right from the off, we were told to make things that we wanted to make. One girl had done the course the previous term, had never sewn before that and had designed a jacket from just a picture in the People Tree catalogue finished it a few weeks ago. It looked amazing!

I know that having a teacher you don't get on with is really scary, but I think that in this day and age, most people who have 'traditional' skills (like making clothes, knitting, home-brewing...) are just very pleased when someone shows an interest in learning from them. They're probably quite used to the fact that most people haven't got a clue what any of the words mean. Well, in my experience anyway. Granted, some teachers might seem a bit jaded after years of being incarcerated with ungrateful brats and following a dictatorial curriculum, but most people who teach evening classes generally do it because they're really passionate about whatever it is and are keen to help others.

So - don't be frightened to take classes. I really think it's the best way to learn how to sew, and it would be a shame if you let one impatient teacher put you off learning for life.

One thing I would suggest is not buying a commercial pattern. Not to start with, anyway. Seriously, you'll open this envelope and get loads and loads of tissue paper, which you cut into shapes that don't look like they'd fit together in any way, then you'll pin them to the fabric and they'll tear and they've got all these little symbols and marks on them that are supposed to be some kind of code for how to make it fit over your individual lumps and bumps..... If you have someone who can explain what it all means and when some of the things they recommend in the instructions are unnecessary it makes it a lot easier.

To start with, I'd suggest getting a selection of clothes out of your wardrobe. Basically, all clothes are made up of a number of 'panels' of fabric, with about 1.5cm extra around the sides which are the bits you stitch together (the seam allowance). You draw these panels on paper (or get a commercial pattern where they've done that for you), then pin the paper to the fabric and cut them out. This isn't particularly complex - the trick is in being really careful. I'm a particularly neurotic person, so I was good at this part. =) Oh, and have a separate pair of scissors for cutting fabric - if you cut paper with them, you'll blunt them.

Go to your wardrobe and dig out a selection of clothes. Find some jeans and some tailored trousers and compare the backs. You'll probably notice that jeans have two long panels for the legs and an extra piece between the tops of the legs and the waistband. That is the yoke. Tailored trousers will probably have some darts in (seams that don't hold bits of fabric together but are just there for shaping).

Look at a variety of skirts and notice which ones are more complicated. The pink skirt I made was very simple - big panel at the front, big panel at the back (both the same size) and short bands to line the waist. More fitted skirts might have more panels or a separate waistband.

Once you start really examining your clothes in detail to see how they fit together, it might all seem clearer. If you like, I'll post some pictures of this later in the week and see if I can find some way of showing it all visually, as it's much easier to grasp then, but the bf is currently asleep in the bedroom so going and digging around for clothes might be a bit mean.

One easy way to make patterns is to find an item of clothing that already fits. Once you've identified the panels, get yourself a tracing wheel

and some paper (preferably 'dots and crosses' paper, but any tracing paper would probably do)

and draw round the panels, using a pencil for the edges of the garment and the tracing wheel to trace the other seams. I promise it won't destroy your fabric (though maybe best not to use it on silk or something). Hey presto, lots of bits of paper that you can use as a pattern for making something! (If you're really brave, you can now go and buy designer clothing, copy it, make it yourself and then take it back.)

If none of this makes any sense, why not try looking at this blog. Not only will it make you really enthusiastic about making clothes, but she also did a great series of videos entitled 'Things to know before you sew' that you will find if you search her blog for 'things to know'.

And, Natalia, she's even based in New York. Maybe she could recommend a class or a teacher.

Civilisation

2008-04-20T09:25:00.001+01:00

Just saw this over at Powering Down.

Wildlife gardening???

2008-04-19T16:55:00.005+01:00

Oh, oh, oh, I don't understand. *stomps foot and throws organic gardening book at the wall*

We keep getting visits from neighbours' cats in our garden, I've seen at least two different ones. Now, cats might eat or at least deter the rat in the compost heap... but they might also eat and deter birds.... which are useful, because they eat things that might eat my vegetables... so I should feed them.... but I should also protect my seedlings from them because they might eat them instead.....

And comfrey... Comfrey can be used to make comfrey tea to fertilise plants, but it's also taking over my garden and apparently if you pluck bits off it, it only goes back stronger.

Are birds good or bad? Do I want the cat or not? How can I get rid of the rat? How do I make sure I have the right amount of comfrey to be useful without it choking everything else? How can I encourage 'good' wildlife into my garden without the 'bad' wildlife wreaking havoc?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.

And... breeeeeeeeathe.....

Sometimes I'm not surprised people reach for Roundup and slug pellets.

Though I suppose my wildlife neurosis is part of the 'must... control... nature...' thing. Maybe the trick is not to panic.

Elephant-spotting

2008-04-16T09:13:00.004+01:00

If anybody listened to the Today programme this morning, at about 8.30 there was a discussion on rising oil prices, during which Roger King (Chief Executive of the Road Hauliers Association) said the following:

"The government should establish a benchmark, say $110 a barrel for fuel, and every time it rises above that, reduce the element of fuel duty to give the opportunity for a more stable transport cost within the UK.

We cannot go on like this. If the fuel price is going to rise ever higher, then there is going to be a very, very substantial problem for the whole of the UK and we need some kind of government intervention, I think now, because otherwise we are facing a real crisis.

...

Transport is at the bedrock of our modern civilisation... We have got to contain the rising costs of that element in our society, otherwise the consequences are going to be substantial. We cannot go on facing ever-increasing oil prices without somebody adopting a strategy to accommodate the worst impact of this, we cannot just leave it to the market."

Now, I'm not an economist, so I don't really feel qualified to comment on the suggestion of stopping taxing oil after a certain amount (aside from a gut reaction that we want people to drive less, not more, and to be less dependent on oil, so making it more affordable is only going to exacerbate the problem, or at the very least only ease it in the short term - but don't take me as an authority on this, please!), but while I was listening to this, I wanted to jump up and down pointing at the huge elephant that had just lumbered into the room.

Okay, so it was refreshing to have such an honest, frank acknowledgement on the Today programme of just how much oil underpins our society and just how vulnerable we are when it gets more expensive: these are things we need to talk about very loudly. However, to quote Crude Awakening, "they aren't making a whole lot more dinosaurs these days".

Maybe our strategies for accommodating the worst impact of this could be something other than scrabbling around trying to prop up our oil-dependence with short-term fiscal measures.... Maybe? Anyone?

A whole village that grows its own food!

2008-04-15T08:13:00.001+01:00

Look! An article in the Mail that doesn't make me want to scream and tear my hair out!

Hair update

2008-04-14T21:47:00.002+01:00

Well, for those of you who don't frequent the SSish forum, the day I started using my new, solid, handmade, polar bear-saving shampoo bar, I also conditioned my hair with avocado oil, which turned out to be something of a disaster.

I clearly used far too much, though it didn't look like much, combed it through my damp hair and waited for it to dry. About four hours later it still hadn't, and I was supposed to be going to London that evening to go out to dinner in some swanky restaurant with Scientist Boyfriend's swanky friends who work in the City or are studying Art History and my hair looked like it would actually drip off my head... Ew, ew, ew. Now, I'm not generally ashamed of my eco-warrior ways, but there are certain times when, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, you really don't want to go out looking like a greasy hippy.

I panicked. I went and rinsed it at least three more times, with increasing thoroughness, thereby totally negating any environmental benefit of me not using my old shampoo, still to no avail, and after a slightly edgy post on SSish managed to get it a bit more presentable through the judicious application of large quantities of vinegar (is there anything vinegar can't do??).

Anyhow, I gave up on the avocado oil, but kept on using the shampoo and my hair carried on being greasy and disgusting, and yet also dry and flyaway at the same time. Weirdness. Then last week I cracked and used my old shampoo cos I was so fed up of it, and it went back to feeling nice and manageable again, but this morning I used the solid shampoo and my hair is still nice and manageable. Now I'm wondering if it just took a LONG time and a lot of nasty shampoo to get the avocado oil out, and the solid shampoo will be fine from here on out, or if once the nasty shampoo wears off it'll be back to greasy and weird....

My weekend and a wee quiz thingy

2008-04-14T16:36:00.004+01:00

Another long break between updates, apologies folks. Wrist been hurting again and don't want to totally knacker it and end up not being able to work, knit or stir cake mix, so have reluctantly had to cut back on blog and forum activity.

Busy weekend, what with the gardening course and the Creative Living meet; both were lots of fun and I've met lots of very interesting people. I wish I could show you some pictures of the garden I was at on Saturday: in the middle of suburbia there's an oasis of biodiversity. She had a little area outside the house with a small lawn with an apple tree on it and a pond, which would be a lovely place to sit with a drink in the summer, chickens at the bottom of the garden, a veg plot with raised beds and even a polytunnel tucked around the corner! And flowers all over for bees, butterflies and general aesthetic appeal. It was amazing - so immensely productive, but not self-consciously utilitarian.

The CL meet was also good fun. Lots of good food and good conversation, I had my knitting rescued when I dropped stitches, I acquired a bar of soap, various other people who didn't have to take trains home acquired various other beautiful things and I drank rather a lot of damson vodka, forgetting I'm only 5'2.

Got home to find that Scientist Boyfriend had marinaded some chicken legs in mixed herbs, including lavender, and put self-raising flour in my sourdough. Chicken was rather pleasant (it's very trendy, at the moment, eating flowers) but the sourdough is looking distinctly sorry for itself and splodgy. Better than last time I went away, though, when he killed all of my plants.

Soooo tempted by all the herbs on the Tamar Organics website atm, but I don't really want to buy lots of packets of seeds when I'll only use a handful to grow one perennial plant. Hmm. *ponders* Maybe someone on a forum will go halves with me.

--------------

From Lucy over at The Smallest Smallholding:

What Was I Doing 10 Years Ago?

I was in my 3rd year at secondary school, probably choosing my GCSEs. I think I'd just discovered my passion for languages and cherry tomatoes after an exchange to France during the Easter holidays.

My To Do List for Today/Diary of What I Actually Did

Very little of interest. Caught up on various blogs and forums after a weekend away, proof-read something for work and trawled through some other documents to dig out technical terms for a glossary.

The bf and I are going to roast a chicken for supper, have it with salad and roast potatoes.

Snacks I Enjoy

Ooh, I love little dips and things. Hummus and tapenade especially. Also love olives and dried mango. And M&S chocolate buttons - they're yummy!

Things I Would Do If I Were A Billionaire

Quit my job and buy loads of books and yarn!!

Hmm, thinking about this seriously, it would be my opportunity to really invest in the things that could see us through the transition to a post-oil/low-carbon economy, and by 'us' I mean both my immediate family and my community.

Somewhat selfishly, I think the first thing would be to buy a smallholding somewhere, or at least a house with a big garden and scope for pigs nearby. We'd get a woodburner/aga and some hens and plant an orchard.

I'd use the rest to either make donations to worthy causes or set up a worthy project and start an apocalypse-resistant business of some kind. Either something foody, planty or textiley, or buy loads of land and rent it out for allotments/start a community orcahrd. Or all of the above, I suppose - as I said, it's a lot of money. I haven't really figured out the details yet, but I would want to donate to or start some kind of environmental/sustainable project, preferably funding an economically self-sustaining one through start-up rather than just giving out a load of handouts.

Three of My Bad Habits

I moan and rant about things without actually doing what I can to make them better.
I don't really take responsibility for money and finance and stuff and I let the bf do all that.
I often start drinking and then forget I'm only 5'2.

Five Places I Have Lived

Born in Solihull, then lived at the bottom of a valley in Northumberland for a long time. I moaned at the time, because all my friends lived miles away in town, but I yearn for it now. I was at uni in Oxford and loved all the libraries and the covered market. In Wokingham now. I've not really lived anywhere else for a long period of time, but I have spent stretches of a few months in Paris (as an au pair), Eldoret in Kenya (as a primary school teacher) and in Lome in Togo working for a women's organisation.

Five Jobs I Have Had

I was in charge of ordering jam, displaying cakes and sorting through vegetables to take out the squishy ones at a farm shop in Northumberland. I also had to price kippers, which is probably partly why I haven't eaten fish for the last five years.
I spent a summer trying to find ways of engaging teenagers in learning English. I showed them Garden State and tried to explain what cricket was and created elaborate lesson plans around Motown and Coldplay.
I worked in my college library taking every single book off the shelves, scanning its barcode and possibly moving it.
I worked as a support worker in a variety of homes and day centres for adults with learning difficulties. Shockingly undervalued and underpaid work, and I'm sorry to say that drove me out of it once I realised speech therapy was an unlikely long-term prospect.
I now give myself RSI typing up corporate jargon into reports, minutes or transcripts. I occasionally get to make the kind of interesting, challenging decisions language professionals have to make, but often it's just correcting CEOs' terrible grammar and cutting out the word 'actually', which is vastly overused.

Five People Who Write Interesting Blogs That I’d Like to Tag

Hmm, there are lots of people with interesting blogs. I can't choose any in particular to tag, but I shall use this and the award GTM nominated me for last week as an incentive to instead contact some of the people whose blogs I read but who aren't on my blogroll and ask if I can link to them too. So no specific tags, but I will enter into the spirit of it by drawing attention to other blogs I like!

Erm...

2008-04-11T08:16:00.001+01:00

I've just heard on the radio that politicians are annoyed about the SFO dropping that BAE arms case and said the judges 'ignored the wishes of ministers'.

Erm.... now, I may be wrong, but isn't that the point of 'rule of law'?

Photo-fest

2008-04-04T16:55:00.011+01:00

Just pictures of plants, pretty much!

These are my seeds. And the chilli plant. (Not pictured, scraps for the compost heap.)

This is the parsley that's been growing on my kitchen work surface. It's by far the most appetising thing I've grown from seed yet!

Note the last ever plastic milk bottle to be seen in my kitchen. Got proper old-fashioned ones now, please rinse and return.... (Not pictured, huge pile of washing up.)

These are the garlic cloves I just shoved in a spare pot. They seem to have shot up. Weird.
Note the tasteful pot. Classy, me!

These are my blueberry plants which arrived this morning.

Look what I got off Freecycle! A window box! From a lovely, lovely man who had a friendly dog and a garden that gave me a glimpse of what mine could be like if I was allowed to do anything exciting with it. Productive and attractive, with lots of bird feeders. *dreams*

He also gave me lots and lots of small plastic pots, which I'm going to start some other things off in. Except I haven't got a round tuit yet.

The window box is planted up with valerian (smelly insomnia tea), salad burnet and soapwort. I anticipate the soapwort with glee. It sounds intriguing.

Also non-plant pictures:
my cushion, my latest attempt at yoghurt (which has actually turned into something other than milk, but I think it might be ricotta) and the lime schnapps I've started, after finding this wonderful website: www.danish-schnapps-recipes.com. I want to do almond schnapps now. Mmm. Need cheap vodka. Trip to France, anyone? =)

De-chemicalising the house, part two: cleaning products

2008-04-04T12:24:00.001+01:00

Spring, ladies and gentlemen, has sprung.

How do I know? Because I'm not wearing any shoes!

I gather the weather tomorrow (when I'm going to be outside waving cardboard planes around in the market place to convince Gordon Brown to include aviation in the Climate Change Bill) is going to be mingy, but for today, I have dug out my flip-flops and flung open the windows and am trying to forget that I only had three hours' sleep last night. Blimmin' work. And sourdough. I just flopped into bed and remembered it needed more flour and water stirring into it so had to get up. Quite why I felt it was so urgent when I was getting up in three hours is beyond me, but I suppose it stopped the jargon swimming around in my head.

So, appropriately enough for spring, here is the long-awaited post about my cleaning habits.

It should be quite short, we have a small house and we're lazy, so cleaning is pretty minimal.

Here is my kitchen cleaning cupboard:

Again, there are many mainstream, petrochemical-filled products, largely inherited from the bf's old student house. Yep, the other housemates moved out, leaving a box full of unfinished cleaning products, because, obviously, just buying new ones in their new place was easier.* So we swiped them! Then I decided I didn't want them, I wanted vinegar instead.

Vinegar is fab stuff. As well as stopping me smelling on a daily basis and (more or less) sorting out my hair after the unfortunate avocado oil debacle last week, it can also be used as fabric softener and as surface cleaner.

And in salad dressing.

I have a little spray bottle which I bought in the hardware shop and have now invested in a huuuuge bottle from Summer Naturals (bulk buying = less packaging and fewer pennies).

Lemons are also good. The bf will be nagged until August to get me a lemon tree for my birthday, when I will be able to grow my own in the sitting room. Self-sufficient in lemons. Awesome. So, lemons, as well as being good for (blonde) hair and salad dressing (and cheesecakes and and making lemonade), can be used to descale your kettle, and I scrub any particularly persistent stains on the hob or work surfaces with them too. They have a myriad of other uses too, I'm sure.

Bicarb is another good cleaning product, and has successfully got some red wine out of our carpet.

The only products specifically bought in bottles for cleaning that I use regularly are toilet cleaner, washing-up liquid and washing powder. As we use up the stuff we have, we've been replacing them with Ecover or Bio-D products, although I'm not entirely happy with Ecover's rolling five-year rule on animal testing, and there is still the packaging issue, as I can't find anywhere nearby that does refills. Grr.** The washing up liquid, floor cleaner and toilet cleaner have all worked fine, but there was a small quality control issue with the laundry liquid didn't get things clean.***

On the basis that using solid soap, flakes or powders is better than liquid (doesn't require so many preservatives) and I wanted something that actually worked, we went for some Bio-D powder. It seems to get things cleaner, but left some white powder marks on the bf's black shirt, and he sulked and wants something else. (However, he still doesn't get to choose the next lot, as I refuse to take advice on laundry from someone who doesn't separate whites from colours unless you stand over him and threaten to move to a bedsit in London if he ruins your white bra.)

I also bought some borax, but I don't know what to do with it. I'd just read about it and thought it sounded useful.

Anyway, I have to toddle off and pick up some plant pots from someone on Freecycle. Maybe I should have thought of this before I eased open the ancient, creaky sash windows. Hmm.

Ooh, and GTM nominated me for an award, which made me feel very grown up, and I will come back later once I've had a proper think about who to pass it onto.

* One of his housemates was a nut, though, and properly anal about cleanliness. She'd tidy the
sitting room up and leave all your things in an outraged pile outside your door, and then you'd be taking an important phone message for her and couldn't even find a pen. I shudder to think how she'd have reacted if we'd wanted to clean things with lemons.

** The ever-wonderful Wiggly Wigglers offer refills. I think you have to buy from them in the first place, though.

*** Let's just say, I've never had a problem before with stains from that time of the month, but since I've been using Ecover, I've ruined quite a lot of underwear, a pair of pyjamas and a pair of jeans.

Chatter

2008-04-03T10:19:00.004+01:00

http://www.savagechickens.com/blog/2008/04/commercial-break.html
Very funny cartoon!

Well, the gardening course finished earlier than I'd thought, so I'll leave it a teensy bit early and get to the meet-up late.

Went to knitting on Monday, and got the big hole in my cardigan sorted out. Hurrah. All back on track now. On Tuesday evening I went out for a walk and found a suprise field that I didn't know was there, and a little path through some trees. Last night I had a friend over for supper, which was nice. I did pork with olives, braised in tomatoes and red wine and we set the world to rights over the rest of the bottle.

Sourdough is still sitting by the radiator, in its third stage now. This evening I get to add more flour and water, and in a month or so I might be able to add some salt. Looking to fire up the oven sometime in 2012!

In the excitement of the publication of the Self-Sufficientish Bible and Andy and Dave appearing all over the media, there has been much talk of allotments, so I emailed the council and found out I'm now 22nd on the waiting list, which is a vast improvement on 65th!!! I was told it would be about 6 months to go, and I hope it is six months, because by all accounts autumn is a good time to take over a plot, especially if it's covered with weeds. I explained all this to the bf the other night, and was impressed with how much I'd learnt about gardening just from forums, blogs and books. I mean, I know you can't really learn much about growing things other than by doing, but I've absorbed a lot of background knowledge nonetheless.

None of my blimmin' seeds have germinated yet, though.

I have about four posts in draft form, but am madly busy with work. You'll probably get a flood of them tomorrow afternoon!

Like blimmin' buses....

2008-03-30T22:00:00.003+01:00

.... are fun things I want to do with real people. Harrumph.

One of the forums I post on is having a meet-up the weekend after next, which I wanted to go to, but due to money being tight and the bf having exams, it would involve me basically being a big pain in the bottom and potentially scrounging lifts and somewhere to sleep off someone(s) I don't know (otherwise I can't go, in which case this is entirely academic). But it would be sooo much fun: skill-sharing/workshops, barbecue, evening in the pub chatting, actually meeting people I've 'known' for a while....

BUT I just got an email about a one-day organic gardening course happening just down the road from me. I think it's run by the lady on Freecycle whose eggs we bought last summer (must start doing that again, her hens have probably started laying again now). Aside from the significant financial advantages (it's much cheaper than the train fare alone, and the proceeds go towards a local food co-op), an organic gardening course for beginners would be SO useful right now*, and I also feel that actually going out and meeting other people in my area is, in the long-term, more... what's the word?.... sustainable? useful? in line with what I envisage for the future?... than meeting people who are scattered across the country. I mean, the internet is a great tool for meeting like-minded people, and, dear lord, I would have gone nuts without it since I left uni, but it's not the same as having people nearby you can chat to all the time. I feel like I should 'invest' in that over going to Dorset. (If nothing else, I might need them when the oil runs out ;-).)

I then said to myself, 'Hey, just listen to what you want to do, don't get bogged down by what you think you 'should' do. And I really don't know. I want to do both equally. Meh.

What should I do???

----------------

Had a busy, 'green' weekend. I actually used my treadle sewing machine yesterday!! I made a real, live thing that I can actually use!! Well, it's a cushion, and the foldy-over bit where it closes is a bit rubbish, largely because I didn't measure it or plan it in any way, shape or form (cut it out back when I was fiddling around with the machine in January and didn't know the first thing about anything) so it's a bit 'amateur', but my sewing machine works!! Hurrah!!! I will photograph it tomorrow and show off to all and sundry (as part of the post on sewing that I've promised you for so long!).

We did Earth Hour, in spirit, because the bathroom light is broken and won't turn off. We didn't go into the bathroom between 8 and 9 p.m. though. As I understand it, it was more about making a statement than about trying to calculate electricity use reductions or anything. Instead we had an argument about peak oil over a candlelit dinner. Oh fun. Think it's all okay now though. Must stop being crazywoman.

I also turned the compost heap, as part of my springtime rat-discouragement programme. Nasty thing's been stealing my compost, and while I accept that in an area of high human population density, like where I live, there will be lots of rats, and that deterring them from the compost heap is a somewhat Sisyphean task, I still have a totally irrational objection to the fact that this one's on my patch and eating my carrot peelings! I also don't want it pissing all over stuff and giving me diseases. Or decamping to the house next winter. Hmm.

Today, the weather was gorgeous and sunny. I can't believe this time last week it was snowing. I wanted to go out with the conservation group (I've been busy every Sunday this year, give or take a couple when the weather was mingy) but due to mammoth disorganisation on my part, I contrived to miss them at the station. I wandered around Reading for a while, hoping I could get into Waterstones at 10 and reserve my copy of the Self-Sufficientish Bible, but it didn't open till 11, and I tried to have a wander along the canal, but found myself wandering around an industrial estate, so I went home.

I then tried to mend my bike, which has had a puncture since I left uni. I couldn't find my bike pump. Thwarted again.

I then decided to varnish the wine boxes I intend to grow things in. I ran out of Ronseal with a few panels left. Yet again, thwarted.

I then planted some flowers in the spare pot in the front garden. I also dragged the bf out for a walk, exploring Holt Copse, one of the few parts of Wokingham left that hasn't been built on, which was very exciting but rather muddy.

We had a stir-fry with kohl rabi in it for dinner. For a vegetable that looks so amusing, it really doesn't taste very interesting. I bet people used to grow it just to keep themselves entertained during the long winter nights.

I did the next part of my sourdough, adding some more flour and water. I do that again in about two days... then a few hours after that... then again.... and again... then I get to add some salt.... and some time in about 2012 I get to start pre-heating the oven. We're putting another ham in to brine tomorrow, too.

And then I made the bf clean the kitchen floor while I came on the internet.

* Some of the garlic in my veg rack had started sprouting, so I yanked the spindlier parsley out of its pot (there are two boisterously healthy ones just next to it) and popped the garlic in instead. I have no idea if this was sensible, I can't remember where the garlic came from and it's probably cheap Chinese garlic that won't be very well adapt to the climatic conditions of, er, my kitchen. I'll probably get sod all in the way of garlic, and I bet the rest of my parsley will now die just to spite me. Ah well. Nothing ventured.....

Goods 4 Girls

2008-03-29T18:12:00.005Z

This is basically just a plea for money - but in a good cause. I wouldn't normally write about charities and try to part you from your hard-earned dosh, as really it's up to you what you do with it, but I would like to draw your attention to this amazing and inspiring initiative!

In the USA, there were some adverts recently by companies who make disposable tampons and sanitary towels to donate freebies to girls in Africa who would otherwise miss school because of their period... Which is a fine and noble gesture (probably :-S ) but in many of these areas there are no landfills or programmes for dealing with solid waste, and most rubbish is burnt. The synthetic components of the pads and tampons, plus the plastic packaging, will emit pollutants when burnt, nor will the products (except possibly cotton tampons) or packaging biodegrade. I've visited several countries in Africa and you can have it on good authority from me that the last thing most places in Africa need is more half-burnt plastic lying around!

Goods 4 Girls are sending out washable, reusable pads, which (as they generally have a waterproof barrier) would allow girls to carry on attending school and doing regular activities more than with rags or newspaper, which is what many use at the moment. The aid organisations that Goods 4 Girls are involved with will ensure that the communities where pads are given out have adequate water for washing the pads.

Also, as these pads last for ages, unlike disposables, it doesn't create ongoing dependence on companies and aid organisations to continue meeting girls' monthly needs, and also doesn't create a situation where the girls get accustomed to using disposables and then have to buy them once they have outgrown the school programmes. (Nestle, anyone???)

You can find out more about the project from their website http://www.goods4girls.org, and also find out how you can help - you could give money directly if you like (through Paypal is probably easiest unless you're in the US), but you can also buy one or more pads (many of the sellers will donate an extra one for every four or so bought to donate; also, some of them are on etsy, where you can use Paypal) or make your own and send them. (As the charity is based in America, atm they want you to send them there rather than directly to the organisations in Africa as this makes shipping, imports etc much easier.)

Crunchy Chicken, who started this whole thing off, recently wrote on her blog that demand is far outstripping supply at the moment, so if you would like to donate anything at all, I'm sure it will be much appreciated.

Oh, and don't forget Earth Hour at 8 p.m. tonight.

A little vitriol for the weekend

2008-03-28T16:02:00.003Z

I knew this would happen. I knew it! I'm only on page 14, as well!

I'm sure I've told you countless times about the issue of the Independent I saw in a newsagent's last year sometime. The Independent newspaper, for non-British readers, had (or maybe has, I haven't read it in a while) a deliberate policy of being hard-hitting with the climate change news, and frequently had headlines such as, 'We're all dooooooomed!!' or, 'The polar bears are all going to die!!!' or, 'Our raving incompetent politicians have failed us again and the planet is going to become one big desert!!!'

Leaving aside the reasons why this approach isn't the best one to take in any case (the Transition Towns Handbook, as quoted in a review here, sums it up rather well):

“Environmentalists have often been guilty of presenting people with a mental image of the world’s least desirable holiday destination – some seedy bed and breakfast near Torquay, with nylon sheets, cold tea and soggy toast – and expecting them to get excited about the prospect of NOT going there. The logic and the psychology are all wrong.”

I was further struck by the utter incongruity of the advert at the top of one of these copies of the Independent, which had a headline about, I think, how at the very least 80% cuts in emissions were needed:

Free inside: 16-page motoring supplement.

Huh? What? Motoring? In cars? Running on petrol? Pumping CO2 out into the atmosphere?

Yes, Mr Newspaper, man. Very consistent.

Anyway, I generally esteem the Guardian more highly than the Independent, and, to their credit, they do seem to take climate change and 'ethical living' seriously and, further to their credit, they have also progressed beyond the 'shout louder and louder about the numbers and see if anyone listens this time' approach. But, having only got to page 14 of the Climate Change supplement from last Sunday's Observer Magazine, I have seen adverts for:

MacBook Air
No7 for men products
Golf GT Sport
some swanky shoes
Sony flat-screen TV
Chrysler 300C

and there's an advert for a Lexus on the next page. They're not even pretending. No 'This car is pretending to be green,' and no 'This computer is really energy efficient.' Just bare-faced advertising for more, energy-consuming stuff, slapped onto the page opposite an article about how great life would be if we cycled more. Mixed messages? Missing the point? I mean, I know they have to make money so they can publish this stuff, but if they're going to tell us we need to change our expectations and aspirations, shouldn't they be setting an example? Making it easy for us?

I feel like the last bastion of sanity in the mainstream media has let me down.

I'm going to email them immediately. Who's with me?

Few things

2008-03-27T10:43:00.005Z

1. Earth Hour.

This Saturday (March 29th) between 8 and 9 p.m. It's a bit like e-day, except it's only an hour and I'm actually going to do it this time. Here's a bit about it from the website:

On March 31 2007, for one hour, Sydney made a powerful statement about the greatest contributor to global warming – coal-fired electricity – by turning off its lights. Over 2.2 million Sydney residents and over 2,100 businesses switched off, leading to a 10.2% energy reduction across the city. What began as one city taking a stand against global warming caught the attention of the world.

In 2008, 24 global cities will participate in Earth Hour at 8pm on March 29. Earth Hour is the highlight of a major campaign to encourage businesses, communities and individuals to take the simple steps needed to cut their emissions on an ongoing basis. It is about simple changes that will collectively make a difference – from businesses turning off their lights when their offices are empty, to households turning off appliances rather than leaving them on standby.

Even if your city isn't taking part (surprise, surprise, mine isn't) you can still take part yourself and find something fun to do in the dark. I'm torn between a candlelit supper and a candlelit bath, both of which will require energy to heat the oven or the water, though, which seems to defeat the purpose. Hmm. Candlelit salad?

2. Today I am going to plant some seeds. (I know some of you started ages ago, but I have no propagator, no greenhouse, a cold house and only limited amounts of indoor space anyway.) I'm sick of winter. Sick, sick, sick of it. Sick of cabbage and parsnips, sick of the house being cold, sick of having to wear tights and I want to wear my new skirt that I made! It's a little bit sunny outside, so, dammit, I'm going to pretend it's spring. March this year came in like a lion, stayed like a lion, got more liony and is now looking a teensy bit lamblike outside. In fact, in my weekly missive from the veg box, the Italian lady who half runs it said that when she first arrived in England she couldn't understand why English people talked about the weather so much, but she now realises that if anywhere else had weather that was half as interesting as ours, they probably would talk about it more too! (We had dinner with the bf's dad at the weekend, who lives in Spain, and he was complaining that it was 'only 14 degrees in Malaga'.)

3. My shampoo soap arrived this morning and I have used it for the first time. My hair is currently covered in avocado oil and a large towel, so I can't report back on it yet, but I've cracked and decided to pour the nasty, chemical-filled stuff down the sink and recycle the bottles anyway. I know, such a waste, but I just don't want it on my hair any more!

4. I've made a starter for sourdough bread. I love sourdough bread, and I suddenly went into a baking frenzy last night. We've run out of salt, so I was experimenting with herb mixes in my normal bread dough (had some for breakfast, it tastes slightly tomatoey, and still in need of salt... hmm....) and was clearly seized by rampant bread enthusiasm. Anyway, there is a small lump of flour, milk and water in a bowl by the radiator, where it will remain for another two days. I shall keep you posted. I'm not expecting to get the hang of it immediately though.

Going to make some saffron buns today. Saffron stems been soaking overnight - I'm clearly going for 'things that take a long time' atm. Slow living, an antidote to the day-job....

5. I've ordered some reusable pads. My Mirena has made my periods so light, I've been wearing pantyliners instead of using my Mooncup a lot of the time, and now I've finished my stash of bog-standard Always ones, I've decided to get some washable ones. I hear you can use the water you soak them in on the garden - anyone care to suggest that to the bf? ;-) (The same bf who refuses to pee on my compost heap, even though it's great for the compost heap AND apparently a rat deterrent.)

And tomorrow, I really will write about getting rid of the chemicals in the kitchen and why sewing isn't as scary as you think it is. =)

"When I'm in the flower garden, I just speak hen..."

2008-03-26T22:52:00.002Z

Thought this was great! Trailer for a film about young farmers in America.

M&S bags petition

2008-03-25T22:02:00.003Z

M&S recently announced that they were going to start charging 5p for plastic carrier bags, which is, of course, excellent, BUT it would be even better if they stopped giving them out altogether. So, a very organised person on INEBG set up a petition to ask them not to supply carrier bags, which you can sign by clicking on this link:

http://mrratty.wikidot.com/inebg-petition:ms-carrier-bags

Thank you.

De-chemicalising the house, part one: the bathroom

2008-03-25T13:01:00.001Z

Scientist Boyfriend being, more specifically, Chemist Boyfriend (he did a masters in something to do with hydrogen fuels), whenever I talk about there being 'chemicals' in things, I usually get a withering look and a reminder that, technically speaking, water is a chemical. Therefore, I would like it to to be understood that, for the purposes of this post and the following post on cleaning products, when I refer to 'chemicals' I am referring to synthetic chemicals, probably derived from petroleum, which I have decided I don't want in my house any more.

Why not?

What's wrong with these things? Well, working from the general principle that when deciding what to put in my body I tend to go for stuff with short ingredients lists, composed of things I could source myself, grown with ecological sensitivity and sustainability in mind and bought with as short a chain as possible, it seems sensible to apply it to the things I put on my body too.

I have next to no understanding of biochemistry and how these things actually work, whether these things are actually bad for us, but in the interests of sustainability, I can confidently declare that I would far prefer our remaining petroleum reserves to be used to synthesise, say, insulin for my diabetic granny, or hormones for contraceptive pills to keep the population at a sustainable level and allow women a greater degree of independence, than for making oven cleaners, conditioners and anti-bacterial soap.

Anti-bacterial soap is fantastic stuff; I love the fact that people who might need to operate on me at some point will be using anti-bacterial soap. But (unlike a story told to me by friend of mine who had her knee stitched up by her boyfriend's mum (a surgeon) using a large glass of wine as anaesthetic) I don't tend to operate on people on my kitchen table very often, and I firmly believe that a bit of everyday dirt is good for the immune system and can easily believe that a lot of asthma and allergies are a consequence of too-clean houses (not all, of course, but a lot).

Purely anecdotally, my skin is also much softer since I've been moisturising with hemp seed oil
and my mirror sparkles after a clean with white vinegar and newspaper (and no, it doesn't leave smeary newsprint marks on the mirror).

Therefore, since I can by and large clean my body and my home with other things, there is no reason why I shouldn't try and wean myself off petroleum-derived, mass-produced products, not to mention the packaging/waste issues.

Where am I now?

I still feel bad throwing perfectly good shampoo or cleaning products in the bin, so I'm slowly working my way through what we already have in the house.

This is my bathroom cupboard:

As you can see, I still have plenty of mainstream, petrochemical-filled products, but (which is more encouraging) most of them were gifts. Aside from toothpaste, face scrub and hemp seed oil, I haven't bought any toiletries in about a year.

The long-term goal is to use as natural products as possible. (Sadly, I don't think there's an eco-friendly substitute for Jolen bleach. I hate that I use it, for various reasons, but I can't face giving it up yet, at least while my job occasionally requires me to meet people, be confident and look smart. If you want to harangue me about it, please take it up with my mother, who gave me a massive complex.)

Soaps and shampoo

On a daily basis, I use a face scrub from Lush, which is made from things I could source myself if I had the inclination to make it, and moisturise with hemp seed oil from Innocent Oils. I use solid soap instead of shower gel, although just bog-standard soap I got as a gift, but still use nasty mainstream shampoo. I will go over to solid shampoo and conditioner once I've finished the remnants of a some Herbal Essences 2 in 1. Switching shampoo is a big wrench, I've been using this one for five years - in fact, they briefly discontinued it and when I first saw it again I stockpiled about five large bottles cos I liked it so much! Funny how when I first started using it I loved the flowery smell, now it just smells artificial and chemical.

However, I have just ordered some shampoo soap from the Barenaked Soap Company, because I was enchanted by all the beautiful-shaped soaps (so shallow!), although I was tempted by this one as well. I'll try it next time and compare them. I'm going to try conditioning once a week with avocado oil (or olive, or hemp) as suggested by this video. I mean, if a proper model can do it, it can't be a filthy, hippie thing, can it, now?! =)

I'll also look into shaving soap (or even go back to just using normal soap!) but I don't think I'm ready to give up the razor and use a blade yet. Or go wild and hairy.

Other products

I also use cider vinegar as deodorant, just applied with cotton wool pads (which are then composted). I'm going to cut up an old T-shirt now I've run out, though. I can't remember where I read this tip, but nobody has complained about the smell yet! It comes in a recyclable glass bottle from the supermarket and is very cheap. I recommend it.

I have some muslin for making into face cloths (I bought them to wean myself off those disposable Olay face cloths, which I loved) but haven't got round to hemming them yet. Maybe I could get some pinking shears instead. According to Glamour magazine, muslin is supposed to be a good exfoliant.

The most plastic-intensive thing is toothpaste and toothbrushes. I used some charcoal-based toothpaste from Lush, but it was sooo expensive and I used it so quickly I simply couldn't justify it. I will get some herbal toothpaste, I think, but it still comes in a plastic tube. I'm also going to try making some from bicarb and peppermint oil - will experiment and post the recipe if it works. Various bloggers in America use the Preserve toothbrush which is 100% recycled, but it doesn't list any stockists in the UK. I could use a wooden one, but even I balked at paying £4 for a tooth brush (I know, I know, so inconsistent).

Carlo Petrini quote

2008-03-25T09:45:00.001Z

Came across this in an article on Grist, a quote by Carlo Petrini (founder of Slow Food) which I loved:

A gastronome who is not also an environmentalist is an idiot. An environmentalist who is not also a gastronome is, well, sad.

Holiday

2008-03-23T00:02:00.006Z

Just got back from a lovely week in Devon. The whole county seems to be full of farm shops, small towns with thriving local shops, farmer's markets, pubs serving local food and friendly people in aforementioned shops and pubs who actually have time to talk to you! Oh brave new world, that has such vegetables in it!!

We did lots of walking towards the beginning of the week when the weather was nice, skulked around in tearooms towards the end when the weather was rubbish, the boy drank lots of local beer and I developed a profound taste for elderflower wine, we played a game of Scrabble and got rid of all our letters three times in total, went to the Eden Project where the bf refused to buy me a lemon tree for my birthday (although my birthday is in August, so he may have had a point there....) and had a big Talk about where we wanted to live and what we wanted to do there. (I mean, we've already had the Talks about wanting to stay together barring unforeseen circumstances and possibly, at some point in the distant future, have a sustainable number of children and bring them up to tread lightly on the planet; and I've had the Rant about my soul shrivelling up and dying if I don't live nearer some mountains and much further away from so many motorways and shopping centres; but I fear thrashing out an agreement on a ballpark area of the country might be a lengthy process. I want to be nearer my parents, he wants a greater variety of fish than you can find in the North Sea, apparently. Hmm.) We have returned home with enormous quantities of cheese and cider.

We made pizza from scratch tonight. I collected the veg box from the lady down the road (I went and introduced myself to my neighbours and tried to rekindle some community spirit) and we discussed what we wanted to have for supper. The bf suggested being really lazy and having pizza, to which I replied, only semi-seriously, 'What, take-away or making one?' And then he found himself kneading dough, and I found myself reducing a tomato sauce, and now pizza has been added to the list of foodstuffs, along with hummus, beer, bread and jam, that we're now condemned to making (or paying through the nose for) if we want the 'real' version, which is all we're willing to settle for. Oops. I really mustn't start making pasta or mayonnaise till I've quite the day-job.

Off to visit his parents for the next couple of days, but will write something about 'Sewing for Dummies' later in the week. Dressmaking course finishes on Tuesday, so I'll have to actually fix my sewing machine belt (again - I fixed it once already) and develop some degree of autonomy. A couple of people have been asking me for advice about it all (me?! advice?!) so I'll try to oblige. ;-)

And now I'm going to go to bed and read 'The Transition Handbook' and think further on what
the bf and I were talking about earlier - investing for the future. He works in pensions, but I was trying to convince him of the merits of my scheme: buying hand tools and donating to the Working Horse Trust or something similar! Having read too much John Seymour, I've come to think how lovely it would be to have a pony and trap that could bring you home from the pub at closing time.... I know nothing about horses, however. This is one of my more far-fetched schemes.

Snug and warm and bookless

2008-03-10T11:57:00.002Z

Curses! We had a lovely sunny interlude and I was going to go and pick up my package from the post office, which I assume is the Transition Towns book, which I am soooo looking forward to reading, but I ended up writing screeds on SSish about how we aren't, in fact, all doomed that I missed the calm window and now don't want to go and get it because the wind is getting up again and it's peeing it down. Bit of a nancy Home Counties storm, compared to what I'm used to, but there's no point getting wet when I needn't. Blanket, outside, blanket, outside... what would you choose?!

I was trying to explain to the bf that storms like 1987 happen ALL THE TIME up north and in Scotland, and does he remember the great storm of 1994 (or 1995) in Northumberland when there were cyclones and hailstones that killed livestock? No? Huh? Why's that then? Oh, yes, it wasn't anywhere near London, so it didn't get on the news, and we just got on with it.

Grump, grump, grump.
=)

Thank you!

2008-03-09T14:27:00.003Z

Oh, I meant to post this when I actually hit 1,000 visitors, but I was busy being corporate and, well, busy, but I get a tremendous egotistical satisfaction out of watching my visit counter go up, and lots of these recent posts have comments, which is even more exciting.

So thank you, all of you, whoever you are for stopping by and listening to my rantings and ravings. I appreciate it a lot. =)

Craftiness

2008-03-09T13:43:00.005Z

I want a storm! Not a cold! My cold cleared up, then came back again the next day in the other side of my head. Weirdness. Now the other eye looks puffy and horrid.

Here is a picture of my finished skirt. I know I have such a weird expression on, but you can see the skirt fine! I was so proud when I finished it and it fitted... Woo! Getting quite into this making clothes thing now... cut out all my bits for the jacket I'm making next and done the interfacing, though not cut out the dress as I need my teacher to help me take in the waist (curse being on the boundary between the two sizes which are in different pattern envelopes... luckily I have a robustly healthy attitude towards my body and rather than complaining about being too curvy for my minimal height, I've decided the narrow-minded (no pun intended) fashion industry is at fault... there's nothing wrong with me, so it's not my fault I can't find clothes that fit...). I'll get some lining tomorrow and cut that out in the evening, and go along to my class ready to sew!

Also starting to knit a cardigan, which looks complicated but is basically just a combination of knitting, purling, yo and k2tog. Bought some needles in the mad-and-extremely-cheap charity shop and, after getting frustrated that the ones I needed were given in metric and between two UK sizes, which was all they had (I see a theme emerging here) and rejecting some 3.25mm ones because they were pointy at both ends, I've now noticed I actually needed double-pointed ones. Bah. Hope they'll still be there tomorrow. There were four, too, so I could actually figure out how knitting in the round works and knit some extremely fine socks.... Bought some lovely alpaca wool from the lady who runs the knitting group who has a market stall in Wokingham now. I can get non-acrylic wool without getting on a train! Hurrah! All I need now is a fabric shop and I'll never have to leave....

When's this storm coming, eh? Eh? Blue skies, trees only waving gently? Huh? I want my storm! I spent all morning putting bricks on anything in the garden that was likely to get blown away, and moving all my plants out of harm's way, but also out of the way of direct sunlight.... Harrumph.

Milk!

2008-03-05T13:08:00.006Z

Woohoo! I've just negotiated a doorstep delivery of milk!

It is a bit more expensive than the stuff from Waitrose (54p a pint rather than 38p), but it comes from a local farm and local dairy (details to follow, apparently!), they do non-homogenised semi-skimmed and it comes IN GLASS BOTTLES that they take away and reuse. The deliveries will always be before 6.30, so there won't be a problem with it sitting out on summer days when we're both at work. Apparently we can also get other dairy products and fresh juices, which is great; currently the bulk of our supermarket shopping is dairy - milk and yoghurt regularly, cream/creme fraiche occasionally and cheese when we can't swipe it off the bf's mum - fruit juice and dry goods (rice, pulses etc). We currently don't have the cupboard space to do bulk orders for dry goods, although I'd like to in the future, but we only need to shop for those very occasionally, so by getting milk (and possibly other stuff) delivered, I can probably halve the amount of time I spend shopping by not needing to go every week. Hurrah.

And glass bottles! Glass bottles! Is it weird to be so extraordinarily excited by this prospect? We can recycle the plastic ones, but recycling plastic isn't as good as recycling glass or metal (can only be done once, or maybe twice, and then it goes into landfill anyway, whereas glass or metal can be recycled again and again), and it gets re-used first, and, as we all know, reduce and re-use come before recycle....

I'm sure milk tastes better out of glass bottles, too...

This is the most exciting thing that has happened to me all week, I'm quite clearly a nutter..... =)

Hubris, nemesis and vile brandy

2008-03-04T23:08:00.003Z

Well, that'll teach me.

I was extolling at length the virtues to the immune system of living in a cold house and eating organic (or at least properly grown, i.e. local, fresh, more nutritious and tastier, so I eat more of them) vegetables, and now my nose is red and sore and I can't breathe through my left nostril. Pride has, on this occasion, indeed come before a fall. Harrumph.

I'm also trying to work after lemon and honey with a generous slug of cheap brandy, which is, er, interesting while typing!

Boring and conventional

2008-03-01T22:48:00.003Z

Yes, I've been terribly boring and conventional this week. Wittering into the ether has taken a back seat to work and socialising. Tut tut. Saw friends from my gap year last weekend, went to the theatre with a friend from uni, went to London for work on Wednesday (and got back depressingly late, I don't understand how people can do that every day) and went to my old choir's concert on Thursday, missed the last train and ended up stranded in Oxford overnight. Busy, busy - I feel exhausted, but also quite exhilarated.

I've finished my skirt, which fits! Yay!! There was a bit of kerfuffle with the machine, and I had to be helped a lot with the fiddly finishing bits at the end, but, yay, I have an item of clothing which I more-or-less made myself from a pattern I more-or-less designed myself and I've used a sewing machine for the first time. And survived. I'm going to try and make this dress and jacket next. It looks rather complicated - I opened up the envelope and promptly found myself swimming in bits of tissue paper, and I have no idea how to put them together into something vaguely resembling an item of clothing - but I can have private tuition for only slightly more than the cost of a class, and being one-to-one it would be much better value too.

Photos of finished skirt to follow when I'm feeling less lazy and can be bothered to find the cable.

The chilli plant is thriving on the windowsill, although the coriander has died, unsuprisingly. Bloddy plant. The parsley is doing well: the leaves have gone from indeterminate round ones into ones that look like parsley. (Again, I'll post some photos when I'm not merging into the sofa.) The mint looked a bit peaky, so I took the scissors to the dead bits and gave it a good water, and it seems to have perked up (if I ever have a gardening problem that cannot be solved by more watering, less watering or cutting off dead-looking bits, I'll be scuppered). I swapped some pea seeds for a veritable cornucopia of seeds from someone on SSish and will soon be experimenting with washing things using liquid from soap-wort. (Muahahaha, come peak oil, I will be the least smelly person in Berkshire!) I'm going to start varnishing the wine boxes for growing stuff in now it's March, though I'll need a few rain-free days.

I've read Heat by George Monbiot and found it mostly inspiring. He does a good job of pointing out the inefficiencies in the system: how shockingly insulated most of our houses are, how much carbon could be saved even by supermarkets delivering everyone's food instead of people buying it themselves (without even changing farming practices, so think what could be accomplished there over and above the transport! what if we all had organic mixed farms that delivered meat and veg in their local areas?!), how easily the transport system could be improved. He also does not shy away from confronting some of the attitudes that have got us into this mess in the first place and that are stopping us getting out; there's a wonderful passage about how we don't think about Bangladesh being underwater when we turn on our kettle or drive to work, but these things cost lives. I'll copy it out next week. It sounds better when he says it. There's also a tremendous analysis of the car=freedom mindset (which, as a smug non-driver, had me nodding in support), and he cites a report which reckons that 40% of the journeys we drive could be done on foot or public transport at the moment, 40% could be if sufficient adjustments were made to the transport infrastructure and only 20% are essential. Having grown up in a teeny village in Northumberland, I'm not sure I wholly agree (far more than 20% of my parents' journeys are essential, although I suppose, again, food deliveries, public transport and lifestyle changes e.g. sending my brother to a state school with bus transport or home-educating him could help reduce that) as it's very dependent on where you live - this is just the broad average figure the report came up with. I suppose if my parents have to drive more, we can drive less, but we have to use gas, and they can heat their house with wood, and grow more veg and keep chickens...

However, I don't see how the effort required to fix these inefficiencies, the fact that we just have to accept we can't fly any more and starting to walk everywhere or rely on centralised public transport or commercial deliveries isn't a major cultural and/or personal change of the sort he claims in the introduction we won't have to make because technology will save us and we can more or less keep our lifestyles..... Too much faith in renewables, too....

I'm currently reading The Revenge of Gaia and finding it impenetrable and depressing. I've defected to The Dice Man which is utter filth, but intellectual filth, so it's okay. ;-) I will get through Lovelock, though.

I have a cunning plan for the FOE group, which I will share in due course.

Actually, reading back, I'm not sure I am so boring and conventional after all.

I might post some recipes later in the week along with the photos. We've been eating very well lately.

One more quick rant.....

2008-02-22T15:45:00.004Z

.... then I'm off for the weekend!

I know I shouldn't talk about work, but this made me sooooo angry I had to vent, and I'm not going to name names. I'm working on a presentation for businesses about preparedness and one of the questions for consideration regarding climate change was whether or not air-conditioning systems could cope with prolonged periods of hot weather.

Ummmmmm...... Yes, really identified the nub of the problem there, haven't we?

Not whether air-conditioning systems were necessary when most buildings have windows.

Not whether air-conditioning systems might be contributing to global warming.

Not whether working from home is better for your carbon footprint than working in an office.

Not whether having us all in air-conditioned boxes propping up the consumer economy might be unsustainable and bad for the planet.

Nope.

Aaaaaaaaaargh. Think OUTSIDE the box, people!!! We do not live a vacuum!!!

And, having completed and probably exceeded my rant quota for the week (though I did talk about seeds as well), I am heading off to the Big Smoke for a reunion with gap year friends, bearing a vegetarian curry for my friend who has recently given up meat for environmental reasons and a plant for the friend whose floor we are crashing on (and who couldn't face improvising an extra, vegetarian curry after only having just got back from holiday yesterday).

As of next week, I shall be a wage-slave again instead of a freelancer, for the duration of paying off my student loan and saving up for my five acres and cow (so until 2070 then!!) and though I'll still be at home most of the time, I should probably at least give a respectful nod to normal working hours and not being on the internet the whole time, and so updates may get a tad less frequent. Boo, hiss, vive la revolution and all, but needs must...

At least I'll be on PAYE and will no longer have to wrangle with the Tax Office....

Delia, love, what are you doing?

2008-02-21T18:21:00.003Z

Oh, Delia, you silly woman!

I admit, I have never found you particularly inspiring, but I have at least always respected in you what seemed like a very sound attitude to food and diet*, and been grateful for the 'How to Cook' books, in which you explain for the novice how such things as caramelising sugar work, where other recipe books leave you foundering in a hot, toffeeish mess.

If I could be bothered, I'd go and get the aforementioned egg-boiling-for-beginners books and quote them, but life is too short (I have some potatoes to peel) so you'll just have to trust me that they say things like, 'Don't eat strawberries out of season - they're rubbish,' or 'Local, seasonal vegetables are tastiest and most nutritious,' or, 'Making your own bread isn't rocket science and even busy people can do it.'

And now I find out that, apparently, people who can't afford free range chicken or organic vegetables should instead buy things like instant mashed potato and Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire puddings, even though if you bought potatoes, flour, milk and eggs, you'd probably save enough money to buy the free range chicken.

Harrumph.

Yes, we all have days when we have neither time nor energy to peel, boil and mash potatoes. I long for the days when I am no longer the indirect stooge of big business and can spend 40 hours a week in the kitchen instead of at a computer, but until then, there are going to be nights when I am too tired, cranky and, quite frankly, lazy to cook anything remotely fancy. On these nights, I do not reach for sauces in jars or pre-prepared ingredients. We are not such snobs that we do not keep these things in our house** (we don't make our own pesto or mayonnaise, for example, or yoghurt, because I'm a cretin), and we have the odd take-out and the odd pizza from Waitrose, but, honestly, just because you're busy doesn't mean you have to eat processed crap. What's wrong with a poached egg on toast? A salad with oil and vinegar? Some pasta with olive oil, garlic and chilli, followed by some fruit? Even a marmite sandwich?***

It certainly is not a 'get out of jail free' card for compromising on the quality or ethical provenance of ingredients.

Or are we as a nation so hopelessly incompetent that even boiling an egg is beyond us now?

* The 'Dieters, please stop berating me, I'm not saying you should eat puddings with double cream after every meal, but when you want to treat yourself occasionally, and there's nothing wrong with that, here is a recipe' was, I felt, particularly inspired.
** Though we don't have tea bags or instant coffee.
*** I fully accept there are other sorts of sandwiches which are also nutritious and simple, but Marmite is the absolute laziest I can think of, as spreading is easier than cutting cheese or ham, for example.

Seeds of hope

2008-02-20T12:06:00.003Z

Is that title totally naff? Probably, but I can't think of another one and I'm hungry.

Today was a grim and foggy February morning, but I still made good on my resolution to drag myself out of bed and use the shower when the hot water was already on, rather than stay curled up under the duvet, get up into a cold house then fire up the hot water mid morning. I know, I know. Hardcore. =)

I said goodbye to the bf, dithered around drinking tea and reading forums and blogs, and then heard the postman trying to push something large and rustly through the door. I bounced over to see what it was, and was humongously excited to see it was my seeds and my John Seymour book. Hurrah! Little shards of spring and sanity in a wintry world. Also, I just love the concept of a seed company that gives you advice on seed saving. Love it.

And, appropriately, I then got an email about the Victory Garden Drive. You can read about my 'companion planters' here (and see a picture of me looking distinctly clean and un-gardener-like!!). I'm sooo fired up with enthusiasm now, and wish there was something I could go and dig.

Ooh, and I've started washing up with my dishcloth, and it's GREAT. So much better for getting inside glasses than a flimsy sponge.

First knitting group meeting

2008-02-19T11:18:00.002Z

I trekked into Reading last night to knit. I was a bit late as the train was delayed, and then couldn't find the school it was held in, but made it eventually and had SO MUCH FUN. Everyone was really chatty and friendly, and someone sprang up as soon as I arrived to make tea to my exact specifications (she also helped me pick up some stitches when I dropped them later), and we talked about how people look at you funny if you knit when you're under 60, and there was home-made cake and scones and all sorts. I've now finished my second dishcloth, although it's considerably smaller than the first one and one corner is smaller than the rest, as I ran out of yarn. Bah. I also get a discount on yarn after I pay my subs, and there may be a talk by someone in Newbury who dyes her own yarn at some point.

Yaaay!

Seeds (and other things)

2008-02-15T15:01:00.003Z

Right, I have finally done my seed order. Having no greenhouse and limited indoor space, I needn't have been in such a hurry, but all my forum friends with polytunnels are ordering seeds, so I felt left out. =)

I didn't need that much, having managed to swap things on various forums and received some as my SSish Secret Santa present (I STILL don't know who it was from....) but I wanted some beans and peas (got some dwarf peas which should be happy in a box) and then I bought some tomatilloes on a whim. I don't even know what they are, apparently a cross between my two very favourite things - lemons and tomatoes. Sounds mighty peculiar. I was intrigued.

Oh, and I bought 'The Fat of the Land' because it seemed really hard to get hold of and the Real Seed Co had it for £9. Yay!

And a chilli plant. On ebay. On a whim. I must go and repot it before it gets dark.

I've also been discussing my potential new job and beavering away explaining how commuting is going to a) take 3+ hours of my day and b) cost nearly £4000 a year, and these are not good things, and have been slowing increasing the working at home quotient. Phew.

I love working from home. I probably spend about as much time working as I would in an office, but if I was in an office, I'd be subject to the peculiar, stringent double-standard custom of, 'if you have nothing to do right now, sit around at your computer and look busy, your time is MINE and I want you here till 5 dammit; but, yeah, tomorrow, can you stay till 6???' As it is, when there's no work (or if I'm super-efficient and don't spend all day blogging) I can go for a walk, or bake, or read or something. Or I can choose to go out in the garden when it's still light and make up for it by working in the evening. I can go to the farmer's market. I can make meals that don't require any more chopping or preparation than what we'd eat if we did it at 6 pm, but because they can sit in the slow cooker all afternoon are about half the price.

I know that there is a point at which it is more economical to work less for cash and more for your own needs, and we do aspire to that. But it requires more land, or at the very least more soil, and I have a student loan to pay off. Realistically, we aren't there yet. And I thought I was going to have to cut back on a lot of what I can do on that front (and a lot of what makes it easy - not possible, it's possible to be green while working 9-5, but it's not easy - to be 'greener') but it doesn't look like I will after all. And into the bargain I get a bit more human interaction every now and then, a job that requires more thinking and less monkey-work (so less RSI!! hurrah!! - okay, it's not total monkey-work, monkeys can't punctuate, but it can get repetitive) and the odd trip to London to combine with meeting friends and going to the theatre.

We got a good veg box this week. Parnsips AND purple sprouting broccoli (of which I am, as you may have guessed, a big fan), and a bag of salady things. Mmm. Leafy. Parents coming this weekend, so they can help us eat stuff up. We have a surfeit of carrots. Our massive bag of farm shop potatoes that we bought in October is also going a bit soft and sprouting like no-one's business. The bf is meant to be picking some tires up when he gets something done on his car so we can grow our own potatoes this year.

Oh, and, bizarrely, this week SSish appears to have turned into a gun-toting, baked-bean-hoarding, hardcore survivalist forum! Rather amusing really! I tried to point out that investing in your local community is a quite effective form of self-preservation (albeit a more challenging and less adrenaline-fuelled one than stocking up on ammo) but everyone thought that made me a loony idealist who thinks we should all just sit around and sing 'Kum ba yah' and nothing nasty will ever happen. Oops....

Heathrow expansion

2008-02-15T09:37:00.003Z

If you haven't already done so, could I make a quick plea for you all to go to the Department for Transport website and fill out the public consultation form about the Heathrow expansion (preferably saying you think it's a terrible idea ;-) ).

I know it's very long and involved, you'll have to read the summary of the report and comment on the individual bits of it, so you might have to set aside 20 or 30 minutes or so, but it's very important that people who are concerned take the time to do this as well as just signing petitions (although you can do that too), beceuase it makes a much stronger statement when you are prepared to sit down and give a well-thought-out response. The Stop Heathrow Expansion group are also keen for people who don't live in the areas directly affected to voice their opinion, as, again, it makes a much stronger statement and makes it much harder to dismiss the objections as nimbyism - the effect of the increased emissions will be global after all.

The government claims to want to act on climate change, but is already set to miss its target of reducing CO2 by 20% by 2010. According to the BBC (roughly a year ago), the transport sector contributes 26% of UK carbon emissions, of which aviation was responsible for 70%, but regardless of the exact numbers, there are two very good reasons for not increasing aviation capacity:

We are running out of oil.
We need to start reducing CO2 emissions NOW and not encourage activity that will produce more.

Even George Monbiot, proponent of the intriguing theory that we can cut emissions by 90% without even noticing any impact on our quality of life, admits that there are no two ways about it on this one and we simply have to stop flying.

There's a rally at Central Hall in Westminster at 7 pm on the 25th for those who are near enough and feeling a little more hardcore.

The consulatation closes on February 27th.

Cinderella, you SHALL go to the craggers meeting...

2008-02-13T11:41:00.002Z

Unfortunately I missed my dressmaking class last night, because I slept sooooooo badly on Monday that the thought of pushing myself to make my deadline as well as going into Reading to get a pattern and fabric (without which I'd have been sitting twiddling my thumbs at the class) and then going out and having to operate machinery with pointy bits just felt like too much. As it was, I was asleep by 9 anyway, so probably just as well!!

I'm regretting it now, though, as I've just found out that next week is half term, and having carefully arranged my holiday so as to be the week after the last class, I now discover I'll be missing the last one too. Bugger. V disappointed.

Still, every cloud, eh? It does mean that next week I get a triple whammy of knitting group, asking awkward questions about consumer goods at the CRAG meeting and going to see 'Crude Awakenings' in Bracknell. In short, a week of, 'aaargh, we're all dooooomed - let's knit!'

An excellent philosphy, I feel.

Ooh, and the organiser of the knitting group is going to start selling yarn at the market in town in March. Finally, proper wool without having to get on a train! I feel my budget taking a hit....

Suggestions please!

2008-02-12T20:04:00.000Z

Having signed up to this Victory Gardening malarky, I'm looking for good gardening websites, so if anyone has any tips then please let me know! I'd like to know more about permaculture too - from everything I've read, I can't tell the difference between 'permaculture' and 'common sense', so I'd love to be enlightened!

Typical

2008-02-10T22:31:00.000Z

Suburban library online catalogue:

Sorry, your search for FOOD NOT LAWNS did not find any records.

*sigh*

Really should be 'Food not patios' these days.

Am calling loads of books on permaculture and radical economics to the local library from all of the country, and when I renew the River Cottage Cookbook (from which I have been curing bacon) I am going to order loads more things: Timeless Simplicity, Affluenza, The Shock Doctrine, Peak Everything and some more fabby Joanna Blythman to follow on from my rant on INEBG about supermarkets and the totally fallacious 'we need cheap food for poor people' argument (which I might copy and paste over here, but you're probably sick of me banging on about it). I've been so good and not bought them on Amazon. *preens*

Yes! I'm digging for victory!

2008-02-10T21:46:00.000Z

Victory over global warming, that is.

This is awesome! Sign up!

http://www.revivevictorygarden.org/

http://victorygardendrive.blogspot.com/

Somewhat cheered

2008-02-10T11:25:00.000Z

Scientist Boyfriend being away last night, there was no-one to distract my from my very important and ironic task of using up valuable energy resources by reading about peak oil online waaaay into the night. I'm turning into a bit of a peak oil nut atm. I am working my way through this blog, as it is really thought-provoking and well-written, and I encourage you all to take a look. Sharon, along with some other brave people, has started the Riot for Austerity, a fantastic and inspiring project where people agree to cut their emissions by 90% (that's based on the average US consumption, so we Europeans only have to do it by 80-85%.... only.... hah)* to the level recommended by George Monbiot to constitute both a fair share and an amount needed to avoid the most catastrophic effects of global warming: that is, not only is it going to avert total catastrophe, but everybody on the planet can live the same way, rather than the fact that most of us are peasant farmers balancing out the few of us that have cars.

The aim (as well as obviously living in a more sustainable and equitable fashion and leaving the planet in a usable condition for our children and grandchildren, which is commonly accepted to be the only sensible way forward) is to prove to government leaders and other naysayers that, actually, it is possible for us to do this, we can make these massive cuts. All the arguments that it's too difficult and we aren't ready and we can't change our lifestyle too much so we need to wait for solar are, effectively, disproved by the fact that relatively normal people can go from average levels of consumption to our fair share and still blog about it. Awesome.

Now, I've been aware of this for a while and have resisted signing up, mostly for bad reasons: I can get a bit head-in-the-sand about the drawbacks of living in rented accommodation and use it as an excuse not to do any more. When we move somewhere we're planning to stay for a long time (and get pigs and have an orchard), even if we aren't buying, we'll insulate the loft thoroughly, install greywater harvesting and get a woodburner, preferably one that heats our water and that we can cook on, but to be brutally honest, I am not so dedicated (and solvent!) that I am going to do these things in someone else's house when we don't expect to be here more than a couple of years.

My other main reason is that the bf comes from the sort of family where you get bought a car on your 17th birthday, the heating is on 24/7, muddy vegetables are too much like hard work, you shower every day, gardens are purely decorative and maintained by someone else, nothing ever gets mended and having a gadget in the kitchen specifically to peel new potatoes is completely normal. Now, I love his family to bits and they have been nothing but good and kind to me, and as green issues come more into the mainstream, they seem to be taking notice, but nevertheless, he grew up in a very consumption-heavy (I nearly wrote consumptive, but that isn't what I mean!) environment and he's been very good to put up with me this far. I don't want to mention composting loos or cloth toilet paper or going off-grid too early on in the process and risk him running screaming in the opposite direction. I may need him in the future to chop wood or feed the pigs, dammit. ;-)

He has gone to visit friends this weekend and even though he's staying over so he could drink and still drive home,

So, yeah, I have (somewhat voluntarily) reached a brick wall in my personal emissions reduction, and am now just doing what I can to learn skills and do research for the future.

However, the Riot for Austerity has a handy calculator, which avoids some of the shortcomings of normal carbon footprint calculators that I was blathering on about the other day. Firstly, they say you should include the carbon you produce at work, while acknowledging you have less control over it than at home. Hurrah. Consumer goods also come into it. Double hurrah. I think they have a rule that if it's something to help you reduce further, you get a 50% exemption provided you actually use it, and the same for buying local or sustainable consumer goods: so if you buy a water butt or some solar panels and use them, some of the carbon cost is discounted because of the savings you'll make in the future, but it doesn't give you total carte blanche to go and spend £400 on clothes made of organic cotton you'll only wear once, a la the rather troubling 'green consumer' movement.

Now, I had a quick play around using some very rough figures, mainly that I spend hardly anything on consumer goods and most of it this year has been on sewing bits and pieces, that I've worked out our electricity consumption is about 35KWh between us a week, we barely use the car and are committed 'locavores' of the highest order.

And, well, it turns out that my consumer spending, transport, diet and electricity use are already pretty much within the recommended guidelines!! I don't really consider myself deprived in any of these areas, so that is a good, good thing! Sure, I can do more to lower my impact on the planet, but I needn't feel as despondent as I did about my brick wall.

I am fully aware that while I well on the way to becoming a sustainable person in these areas, my gas usage (for heating and cooking) is probably only slightly below average if at all (we keep the house cool, but cook a lot) and our household water usage is probably also pretty average. I've gone from daily showers to showering every other day and washing in the basin on the other days, and nobody has complained about the smell yet, but the boy showers daily, and after experimenting at uni with not flushing the loo as often and finding it just made the loo mingy and the bathroom smell, I decided it wasn't, on balance, worth it. Composting loo and greywater harvesting in the future, yes. Half-measures in the mean time, not in this area. I should calculate our water usage and actually go outside and check the gas meter, really. It's sunny, I have no excuse.

I really want to build a hay box cooker for the now-soaked ham this afternoon now.....

* Actually, I should clarify: you don't have to reduce your personal emissions by 90% (or whatever) of what they were, it's 90% of the US average, so if you're already at 40% of the average, you don't have so far to go.

Crossing over to the dark side....

2008-02-09T23:58:00.000Z

Okay, that's really weird, I was signed into my other Gmail account (the one with my real name on ;-) ) and then came over here and was signed in under my hippy Gmail account. Doesn't normally happen, and I usually end up posting about composting loos on my 'normal' blog by accident, and then logging into my main email for work after procrastinating by posting on here and finding notifications about private messages on forums.

Life's tough, isn't it?.....

Anyway, the reason I wanted to post again this evening was because I've finally left behind any shreds of conventionality.

I can't explain it. Momentary madness caused by the bf's absence and the knowledge I could fill the house with all sorts of mad things before tomorrow afternoon? Maybe. Sheer refusal to admit that my house is small and live within its limitations? A definite possibility. An opportunity to good to pass up? Indubitably.

Let me make it clear that, while feeding my burgeoning interest in knitting and sewing, I have not lost sight of the small house thing. My knitting and sewing-related detritus have, until now, happily dwelt in one side of a fairly small cupboard. I even posted two balls of wool off to MrsL to be knitted into blankets for donkeys when it became clear one ball wasn't enough for a project and I'd progressed beyond the stage of needing to knit squares and triangles to practice increasing and decreasing. While I believe in frugality and (to a certain extent) hoarding, I do not want to turn into my grandpa, who has, according to my Granny's latest estimations, around 180 undergarments, packaged and unused, in his cupboards, and the headrests from a Renault he owned in the 1970s in the garage because you never know when they may come in useful. This is the curse of having lots of outbuildings.

But, tonight, checking my email, I noticed an ad on Freecycle: black bin liner of fabric, some offcuts, would suit quilter or toy making, some larger pieces, maybe suitable for children's clothes.

(No, I'm not pregnant, don't actually want to make toy's or children's clothes, but.... I could make shopping bags and a quilt. Mel has been posting about quilting lately and while I won't make amazing ones overnight, some of it doesn't look that hard.)

I fear, people, I may be developing a 'stash'.

Fortunately my self-help group has already welcomed me with open arms.

Colds, pigs and committed literature

2008-02-09T19:48:00.000Z

I'm sure I'm tempting fate HORRIBLY here, but I normally get a string of epic colds throughout the winter. (I mean epic - it goes straight to my eyes, which start streaming and swelling and I can't see to concentrate on anything.... I don't have to be that ill to be incapacitated, and that's if I'm lucky and don't lose my voice!) This year - with the cold house, organic veg box, better quality and less quantity of meat, whole milk and being out in the fresh air a lot more - I've had one cold. ONE. And I was only really ill for a day.

We ordered half a pig from someone at the farmer's market and I picked it up on Thursday. Well, when I say 'picked it up', I turned up with all my bags, anticipating having to make three trips to get it all home (curse those days when not driving makes it harder to make the environmentally friendly choice!! I feel so conflicted!!) and the butcher wouldn't hear of it and insisted on us carrying the crate between us back to my house. I'm only about 10 minutes away from the town centre, but still, I was very touched! We got a fair few funny looks carrying it through the streets of Wokingham, too.

Anyway, it was safely installed in our kitchen, and I then promptly ran out of freezer bags. Bearing in mind that our kitchen is fridge-temperature at the best of times and the bf would be back before the heating came on anyway, I put the bags on the cold floor and hoped for the best. I had the deadline from hell and now think I'm developing RSI in my wrists. So, yes, he came home with some freezer bags, made dinner, placated my deadline-induced-wrath with a lovely Merlot, listened to me rant extensively about how the 'we need cheap food for poor people'* argument is a load of old codswallop, and then helped me bag up the rest of the pig.

Tomorrow, we will have been going out for three whole years.

I asked him, when he crawled into bed on Thursday night if, had he known back then that he would have come to bed at 1 a.m. after having mopped the floor and put half a pig in the freezer, he would still have asked me out.

Probably just as well I fell asleep before he replied.

Anyway, I met my deadline, spent the rest of yesterday wandering around in the sort of haze you wander around in after having had about 5 hours' sleep, wrote a big long pretentious post giving some kind of context to the Auden poem yesterday (other than that it's just FAB) and then realised it was Beckett not Sartre who'd said 'bon qu'a ca' (it's all I'm good for) when asked why he wrote, which totally ruined the whole thing.

The long and the short of it is: I am going to ask my local paper if I can write a green column for them. Now, I know, this isn't the most useful thing I can do to help the environment, but given my recent revelation that we also need community action and political action and I can't just sit here knitting dishcloths and growing parsley (or at least I can so long as I stop moaning about other people - if I want to moan about other people not being green I have to do everything to help them be green ;-) ) I felt it was my duty to help 'spread the word' in whatever way I could, and seeing as I am not really good enough at knitting and gardening to teach other people, don't really know anything about cloth nappies and only marginally more about compost to be one of the people who goes around promoting either of these on behalf of the council, don't have children so can't run anything at their school, and am neither a climate scientist or a petroleum geologist and so have nothing to contribute to the scientific debate on climate change and peak oil (there's still a debate???), it seemed like a small way in which I could possibly, possibly have some influence, and if nothing else, when I want to start pursuing a writing career with more vigour (bring on the RSI!!!) it'll be something on my CV that makes me look proactive and compassionate.

Almost finished my second dishcloth, but ran out of cotton, so had to unravel it and make it smaller. Glad I did it on the bias now. There's something so satisfying about unravelling knitting, it almost makes it worthwhile when it all goes wrong.

Right, dinner, methinks, then an evening of sporadic work and forum browsing. I was distressed to think that in an effort to avoid getting full-blown, career-threatening RSI I might have to cut down on forum time and blogging. Noooooooo!!!! I did spend all of today until about 4 pm with the computer resolutely off, but I knitted instead, so I don't know if that counts. Hmm.

* Apparently someone in his office who claims she can't afford to buy organic or free range spends £60 a week on food, just for her! We spend between £20 and £25 for the two of us, we reckon.

A poetic interlude

2008-02-08T15:32:00.000Z

September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out.
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow,
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work',
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair
Show an affirming flame.

- W H Auden

Doing my bit for the bumblebees

2008-02-06T21:34:00.000Z

Those of you who remember my resolve to do my bit for biodiversity in an urban garden, may have wondered what had happened to the dream of creating an 'island' for wildlife alongside my intensively farmed salad-in-boxes programme that I outlined a few days ago. Fear ye not, I haven't forgotten the plight of the bumblebee or the loathed-but-on-balance-better-than-tarmac grey squirrels and giant pigeon! I have, however, got two large pots that were at the house when we arrived, in which I am going to plant some flowers (marigolds?) and some lavender in a pot already. I have decided to put the flowers into the pots, as I reckon future tenants might enjoy the flowers after we leave - then I get to do my bit for biodiversity after I've up and gone!

Stepping out into the big wide world: community action (and a rant about carbon footprints)

2008-02-06T16:20:00.000Z

Well, by some miraculous coincidence we have managed to get our electricity consumption down this week. Only by just over 1KWh, and it's probably because we've not done any washing or hoovered or something scummy and lazy like that, but, well, think what we could do if we actually tried.

In spectacularly ironic fashion, even for me, I'm now tempted to start a spreadsheet and track it throughout the year which is, of course, going to use far more energy than just writing it down in the diary and doing the maths in my head would do....

Also picked the demijohns up okay on Sunday and I luxuriated in the bath for a long time reading the home-brewing book from the charity shop, wondering idly if parsnip wine or beetroot wine would actually taste nice and if I should perhaps stockpile cartons of grape juice concentrate instead to see me through the post-peak transition.

Monday was the FOE meeting and I really, really enjoyed it! I have been in two minds about the whole FOE endeavour, partly because of some general reservations I have about the mainstream environmentalist movement, and partly because a lot of what I've got from being on the national mailing list seems to suggest that if we all emailed our MPs a lot and changed a few lightbulbs here and there it would all be okay. (I'm not sure these don't overlap quite a lot now I come to think of it. Or maybe if I had a different MP I'd be more inspired.) However, we need personal action, we need community action and we need political action, and I'm very good on the personal action front (aside from the dried mango, hot showers, imported wine and excessive amount of time I spend on the computer) and very bad at taking any approach to the other two other than sitting around using energy to power my computer to wail about how nobody understands me in this consumerist hell and the government aren't doing anything about it. It's like being 17 again in some ways.

So, yes, I am forging links with people in my community and have already been put onto the local council's biodiversity forum, another more local and less time-consuming conservation group (I've been rubbish about going out lately - people keep visiting on Sundays) and the local CRAG group.

Now, carbon footprints are one of the ways to get me riled about the mainstream environmentalist movement! It started when I began working from home. Go to any carbon calculator and fill it in and you'll notice that they all disregard a) the carbon you produce at work and b) the energy cost of anything you buy. I work from home. This means my transport footprint is virtually nil (I occasionally walk into town to the farmer's market or Waitrose or get the train into Reading to buy sewing bits, and even more occasionally get the train to Newcastle to visit my parents), but I appear to use a lot more energy in the home than some people, merely because I occasionally have the heating on for a boost around lunchtime (after having put on my gloves and wrapped up in a blanket) or because, as I stated earlier, I need the computer on virtually all day. And drink a lot of tea. If I was in an office, the heating, air-conditioning, computer and kettle would all be the responsibility of the office.

Now, I know that it is very easy to change your energy use at home and the fact that we're constantly being reminded to turn our mobile phone chargers off when not in use or to only boil as much water as we need implies that there probably really are people who still do these things (who are you???) and it is very difficult to change a whole office, and you can't be held personally responsible for the amount of printing you do, the fact that the air-conditioning is on all the time or the fact that the office is lit overnight in the same way as you can be held personally responsible for, say, leaving your telly on standby. But to ignore the fact that us all running around doing these jobs and propping up the consumer economy isn't a big part of the problem (unpalatable as it might be) ignores the fact that it's gone way beyond the stage of tinkering around with lightbulbs and we need to reduce our emissions by 80% FAST and that is more than likely going to involve massive cultural change: voluntarily if we do it now, less so if we wait till Berkshire is underwater badly enough to destroy the Thames Valley corridor. (Maybe we could start growing rice instead....)

Also, I'm doing this dressmaking course, and the other day I had to press the hem of my skirt. The energy used and carbon produced by that ironing counts on my carbon footprint. If I bought a skirt in Pr*mark, it wouldn't count on my carbon footprint at all, except for how I got there. Come to that, the energy and carbon associated with heating a microwave meal would be less than with cooking from scratch (less still if you got a take-away and ate it from the carton with recyclable plastic cutlery so there was no washing up to do), but globally, it is terribly bad for the environment if we all eat ready meals and fill our town centres with take-aways, and much better for the environment if we all cook from scratch using local ingredients. And yes, we do all need to eat way less meat and dairy, especially intensively produced meat and dairy, but the carbon footprint calculators often fail to take into account that eating a small amount of local, grass-fed beef once or twice a week, say, isn't that bad and that saying 'vegetarian diet good; meat bad' is really a rather simplistic way of looking at it that glosses over the positive impact that farming could have on the environment if done sensitively.

Now, my job props up the consumer economy as much as anyone's. In fact, I gave up being a support worker (socially useful and necessary) to effectively serve big companies like BP because it was better paid and I have a lot of debt, so, please, don't think I'm blameless here! The onion soup I can make from local onions or the salad crops I can tend because I'm at home all day and can work flexibly (i.e. I can garden or go to the farmer's market during the day and then work in the evenings) probably don't make up for it, and if I start commuting to London in order to earn even more money to pay off my student loan a bit quicker and save up for my five acres and a cow then, well, you have every right to shoot me if I start eating more ready meals as it'll surely be counterproductive even if I do knit on the train!

The point is that my impact on the environment doesn't just occur in a vacuum. I'm part of a big, complex social and economic network and that network (i.e. the West!!) is a big part of the problem. Saying that I can carry on making a living out of a system that ultimately uses and exploits the environment, rather than acting as part of it, and yet make the changes necessary to avert disaster is a rather disingenuous and, I feel, unhelpful way of looking at the problem. I'm not saying we should all give up work tomorrow - that really isn't an option for most people - and we have to make compromises: my dream of living a low-carbon, sustainable life is in part dependent on my paying off my student loan and having some savings (and I get to spy on the corporate world while I'm doing it, muahahahaha). Furthermore, if you tell people that changing lightbulbs and cycling to walk are making an impact and are valuable, worthwhile things to do (which they are =) ) then the net impact of everyone doing it is still overwhelmingly positive, and if people start to feel more empowered, as well as healthier and happier, maybe they'll get enthused about it all and look for ways to go further and engage with the more complex, less 'cuddly' aspects of it all.

Okay, so I'll let the carbon calculator people off the hook about work-carbon for the moment, but really, people buy all sorts of cheap, plastic rubbish that they don't need and writing in big letters 'STOP SHRINK-WRAPPING COCONUTS AND BUYING FLIMSY ACRYLIC JUMPERS, WE NEED THAT OIL FOR AMBULANCES' in prominent places would be one of my preferred methods of combatting climate change and slowing down peak oil. Shopping is another of those controversial environmental issues, and I'm extremely sceptical about the 'ethical consumer' movement, but replacing one essential product that you are already buying (i.e. shampoo or toilet cleaner) when it runs out with an alternative that doesn't come from petrochemicals can only be a good thing. If I was designing a carbon calculator, it definitely wouldn't give any points for buying 'ethical' non-essentials, but a bit of consideration for reducing the impact of your toiletries and cleaning products would come in to it. And just buying less.

Maybe a question along the lines of:

Do you consider shopping a leisure activity?

a) Oh, yes, definitely, buying new consumer goods is the only way I can validate myself as a human being.
b) Well, I'm a normal person with a normal job, so I occasionally need to buy smart clothes, but I get them from People Tree or charity shops when I can.
c) Well, I like farmer's markets, chatting to the guy in the ironmonger's and fondling yarn in John Lewis, but out-of-town retail parks are my idea of hell on earth.
d) I am totally self-sufficient in food and textiles. What is this 'shopping' of which you speak?

Ohhhh, I so want to write my own carbon calculator now (one which, by necessity doesn't involve numbers, as I'm inept in that area) but I really need to prop up growth capitalism this afternoon...

How did I get here? Oh yes, carbon calculators and the CRAG group. Yes, I wanted to go along to the CRAG group and ask them about this in person and then decide if I want in, but it clashes with sewing, and the main thrust of my argument is that frugality and self-reliance come before bickering about CO2 emissions!

Another exciting thing that came out of FOE was that (actually two things) another 'newbie' came along, a chap who used to have a smallholding in South Africa and has trained with Be the Change, a fantastic-sounding organisation who train people to give hard-hitting yet inspiring presentations and seminars which then inspire people to take action in their own communities. We get a sneak preview next month and then (if it's good ;-) ) we're thinking about hiring a hall somewhere in town and having a public viewing, possibly coinciding with 'relaunching' the group! I think it would be a timely move, and it's exciting to feel that I could really be involved with spreading the word and making changes on a local level. I might even write to my MP some day too! ;-)

And we talked about compost. And someone else said, 'The idea that supermarkets offer choice is a total illusion.' And I got asked if I could think of any foodie type campaigns that we could do. I couldn't, at least not anything practical that I could come up with a working model for and promise to dedicate the necessary time to (suggestions??) short of writing, 'Well, I could think of at least ten good reasons' on the ASDA: 'Why pay more?' adverts.

Anyway, I came home all inspired and enthused which is a good thing.

Oh, and I was about 6 inches away from finishing my skirt (hem is actually quite neat, mind, aside from one tiny bit) and then I was thwarted by the silly machine - couldn't get it to pick up the bobbin thread and wasted ages trying to get it to work, even though I'd done it about 10 minutes previously. Grrr. Sooooo close to finishing too.

And now I really am going to go and perpetuate our unsustainable consumer economy. Hopefully I'll be done by dinnertime.

Home-brewing - the proof of the pudding

2008-02-03T13:21:00.000Z

When we told people I'd bought Scientist Boyfriend a home-brewing kit for his birthday, we had a surprising number of negative responses, mostly from people who'd tried to ferment a load of stuff in a tub in the garage as spotty teenagers and drunk it before it was ready. I'd like to think they weren't the final authority on home-brewing, and I was careful to buy a good quality kit, recommended by seasoned home-brewers and with all correct equipment included, along with easy to follow instructions, but still, the number of people who said, 'Ugh, it'll stink the house out, you know!' or, 'Ugh, it'll explode and stain your walls, you know!' or, 'Ugh, home-brew tastes of cat's urine, you know!' had caused a seed of doubt to lodge itself in my mind.

Anyway (after testing it periodically during the fermentation process - for research purposes, you understand), the beer has now finished and is being drunk, and I am proud to say that it hasn't smelt at all, it hasn't exploded and it definitively does not taste of cat's urine! In fact, it tastes of beer.

Scientist Boyfriend, real ale enthusiast extraordinaire, says that I am no authority on the quality of beer, as my only forays into beer-drinking involve Kronenbourg or other bog-standard lagers, and only abroad (bugger all else to drink in Togo!), hence I am obliged to point out that, to the conoisseur (and to me, actually, give me some credit), it has a distinct chloriney aftertaste because we didn't add a Campden tablet to it and just used tap water as it was, for the very good reason that we didn't find out about that until afterwards.

But, all things considered, it was a remarkable success for a first effort, is eminently drinkable and is promising for the future....

... So later today we are picking up 8 demijohns and assorted wine-making bits from someone on Freecycle. Elderflower season here I come! When peak oil hits, we'll still be able to get sozzled!

Reducing electricity consumption

2008-02-03T12:37:00.001Z

There's currently a challenge on Downsizer to try and reduce your energy consumption. On the plus side, this has prompted me to get off my arse, find the meter, read it, record it and keep and eye on what we're using, which is something I've been meaning to do for months.

On the other hand... I have to take the third reading this evening and I haven't done anything to reduce our electricity consumption apart from get into the habit of checking everything's on standby every night, which fell by the wayside rather when we moved in, as Scientist Boyfriend scornfully said it didn't make that much difference. While I broadly accept his point that the biggest household energy draws were cooking and heating and everything else is rather incidental, I now see this more as an incentive to start researching solid fuel Rayburns and Clearview stoves now so that when we eventually buy somewhere (or have a lease with more freedom to do stuff to the house) we can get them sorted immediately, rather than as an excuse to ignore the little red light on the telly staying on overnight.

But other than that....

Well, we don't have a tumble dryer, a dishwasher, or a microwave; we never use the toastie-maker any more; we have energy-saving lightbulbs in most rooms and are replacing the old ones as they break; we often have candles on in the evening instead of the lights; I know I have the computer on far too much (most of the day unless I'm out), but I need it for work - as a freelance, I often get offered jobs at the last minute and being a recent graduate and not having yet moved into a barter economy, I do need the money, and while I print out translations and do them with the computer off (is firing up the printer and using paper any better? I do print on both sides...), I have to do all the transcriptions on the computer and often have to do translations in 'real time' in Google docs, so someone can proof-read it simultaneously, not to mention often needing the net for research*. We try and be economical with the oven, i.e. time bread and cakes to go in at the same time as dinner, but it's a small oven with only one shelf, so there's a limit to how much we can do on that front. We have a wind-up radio that we take around the house with us. We always make sure the washing machine is full when we use it and it's one of the cold-fill-only ones (or not - whichever is more environmentally friendly - I can't remember the details, but we looked into it, and Scientist Boyfriend said whatever-we-went-for was the better choice). I occasionally use an electric oil-filled radiator to heat my study, but this is having worked out that it's more efficient to do that than to heat the whole house for an hour during the day (and, yes, I already wear thick jumpers, gloves for typing and sit on and under a blanket before I actually have the heater on). I use the slow-cooker wherever possible.

So, yes, short of actually entering into outright privation (by which I understand going to bed at dusk, and the bf understands curtailing telly-viewing time), or doing things like using the gas hob instead of the electric oven to artificially lower our electricity consumption for the sake of the Downsizer challenge (which would be silly and just deplete one non-renewable resource instead of another, though there is an argument that at least the gas will last for longer...), I don't know how I can get it down any more!

The only thing I can think of is to get a microwave. I know there was a big fad for 'microwave cookery', but I'm too much of a food snob not to view that as an oxymoron, and to me it would just be a tool for melting butter and reheating things. I won't pretend I haven't wanted one when I've been pulverising barely-softened butter and sugar together for cakes, and it does seem very silly to fire up the oven or the hob just to reheat leftovers when two minutes in the microwave would do - as a household, we're very keen on cooking lots of food and eating it the next day (or three), so it would be a considerable energy saving.

The primary factor in my reluctance to get one (beyond the snobbery), is purely spatially motivated. We have a small, narrow kitchen, and the only place we could put it is on top of the fridge, which is currently the residence of a box of baking goodies (40 kinds of sugar, a vanilla pod and some desiccated coconut), a surfeit of lime cordial (cos I got confused in Waitrose) and breakfast cereals, all of which I view as essentials and, I suppose, could rehome, but not without inconvenience.

I'm not sure if the energy savings could 'offset' the environmental cost of having another appliance.

I'm also very short and wouldn't be able to reach the microwave safely if it was up there. Surface space is just at too much of a premium, really, but...

... well, it would be efficient. (As would getting a stack of bamboo steamers or something. I live in fear of our electricity or gas being cut off if Berkshire drowns again, and am planning to get a camping stove and a pile of steamers and make elaborate meals on a single gas ring, should it come to that.)

Hmmm. Think I'll look out on Freecycle, but not have it as a priority.

* If I worked in an office, none of this would 'count', either in fact on my electricity meter, or in theory on my carbon footprint according to every calculator I've seen.

A little light relief

2008-02-02T15:04:00.000Z

Seeing as I've spent all afternoon so far watching Tom Lehrer on Youtube instead of working, I thought I'd at least pretend to myself that it was 'research' for my project to save the world by knitting dishcloths and wittering into the blogsphere.

So here you are, Tom Lehrer's 'Pollution'.

And now I'm going to go and do some work.

Garden planning

2008-02-01T11:59:00.000Z

Yaaaaay, just finished a translation! I now feel like I deserve the rest of the day off, because I got up at 6... thing is, the only reason I had to get up at 6 is because I'd had a bit too much wine to tackle the business-speak last night, so I had an early night and did it this morning instead. Lots more work this weekend too, so please remind me I mustn't spend everything I earn on seeds...

I planned out what I was going to plant this year and have plans to surreptitiously plant things off indoors (even though the bf says there's no room) but I keep having to remind myself not to get carried away as it's far too soon to start doing anything. It's just it's sunny (if cold), and there's some peculiarly unseasonal pink blossoms on the tree in the garden, and we had a pepper in the veg box and it feels like it's going to be spring really, really soon....

I'm trying to decide whether it's best to start things off in the warmer, south-facing sitting room or the kitchen, which is cooler and nominally north-facing but has a huuuge skylight so actually gets lots of light throughout the day. Hmm. (Bear in mind I have no aesthetic qualms about having seedlings in my sitting room!)

Anyway, I have five wooden boxes, plus the one with the spinach, which I'm going to turf out soon, and am going to plant:

salad leaves
salad leaves
rocket
pak choi
blueberries
pumpkins/other squash of some kind

as well as a few grow-bags of tomatoes and peppers and some peas and/or beans in the bed in the garden. Plus a few more herbs and a chilli plant for indoors (cos the bf wants one too, and I'm ever so keen to encourage him to be enthusiastic about growing things!).

That looks rather ambitious written down, but the boxes themselves look quite small.

Have sewn up the sides of my skirt and need to pin and press the hem for the next class. Rather depressingly, it's very uneven - there's 9-year-old Bangladeshi girls working 16 hour days for next to no money who could do it better than I can!

And the veg box people have just been and delivered us a fruit and veg box instead of a veg box. Which I don't mind (much) as I've worked selling food and it's very easy to make mistakes with orders, and it's quite nice to have some pears and mandarins, but it means we don't get any sprouting broccoli which (as you may guess from the fact that I have named this blog after it) is one of my favourite vegetables. The bf once laughed at me for describing it as 'my favourite brassica'. Although I think it has been ousted from that spot by cavolo nero now...

Just ordered half a pig for the freezer. Get to try curing bacon next week! Eep.

Other people's children

2008-01-30T12:13:00.000Z

*IMPORTANT* This is rather a long-winded, heavy and self-indulgent post - you have been warned!

There has been lots in the news lately about the environment and 'ethical consuming' (I wasn't sure whether to put 'consumption' or 'consumerism', so I'll invent a noun for the moment). When I say lately, I mean it has been steadily increasing over the last year or so, and this is a good thing (mostly) as it stimulates debate, brings issues to people's attention, keeps it on some level in people's minds, which gives me hope they'll eventually use the evidence to draw sensible conclusions and do the right thing (after all, I did it, so there's no reason other people can't), and provides me with a constant stream of material to rant about in cyberspace.

One side-effect of this is that because people know I'm interested in it all, they tend to talk to me about it a lot, and some of them ask me if Ecover washing-up liquid is any good, and some of them tell me, despite the fact that they have a lot of money, that they can't afford to buy free-range chicken. Once, someone even said, 'I don't understand how fishing quotas stop global warming. Surely they've already used the oil to go out and get them, so why do they have to dump all the fish?'

I never quite know how to respond or how to approach it.

The temptation is to fall into an 'us and them' mentality - I, who grow parsley in re-used yoghurt pots, am a good, kind, unselfish person, whereas you, who moan about having to recycle or that energy-saving lightbulbs are annoying, are a bad, reckles, selfish person.

I don't think this is strictly true, though.

Lots of people, taking as an example my family and friends, because I can vouch for their characters, are good, kind, thoughtful and unselfish, even if they do very little to reduce their carbon footprint or their personal dependency on oil. My bf's mum, for example, who takes several foreign holidays a year (although has family abroad, which, while it leads onto a whole set of complications of its own, mitigates it slightly, I feel), works in one of the caring professions, is an extremely compassionate person and, when the bf was away and we'd just moved in and I was alone for four days and didn't know anyone, let me come and stay with her, took me in, fed me, talked to me and gave me valuable career advice. Another friend, who also takes several foreign holidays a year, has used a lot of those trips to do voluntary working building and teaching, is a very responsible traveller (i.e. one of the ones who can actually claim to be 'helping the local economy' as she uses local guides, stays in locally-owned accommodation etc, rather than people who use it as an excuse to carry on flying while staying in big hotels and not mixing with anyone), was heavily involved in her university's Nightline and is one of the most generous, big-hearted people I know, whose door is always open to all her friends.

I don't mean to single them out as examples to be publically shamed and humiliated - it's just that the flying thing bothers me, as I too love travel, and giving up flying is the only bit of being green that I wouldn't do 'anyway'. It's also commonly held to be the most damaging thing for the environment (releasing the CO2 higher up) and very fuel-intensive, and also quite controversial, because the aviation industry seems to wield a frightening amount of power and get away with blue murder (or tax breaks, at any rate). So, yep, straight for the jugular there!

So, how do you respond to people, whom you otherwise love to bits, when they a) harrass you for your loopy choices, b) get defensive when you mention climate change or peak oil (e.g. 'Hey, British Gas gave us some free energy-saving lightbulbs for changing to paperless billing.' 'Well, look, that's great, but I'm a very busy and important person and I have to have a job to pay the mortgage, so I need ready meals, a car, supermarkets, labour-saving gadgets and patio heaters and I'm not going to give up my holiday in the Seychelles because it's the only thing that gets me through the rest of the year.') or c) say daft things about cod causing global warming?

I generally try and ignore any outright hostility, politely pointing out that recycling isn't really that difficult or time-consuming, and we're really very lucky not to have to go and fetch water from a stream every day or cook on a charcoal fire in the back garden, so, all in all, an extra five minutes a week to deal with the consequences of Western over-consumption by sorting your cans into a separate box from your glass is not that arduous.

If it's unintentional ignorance, such as with the cod/global warming thing, I'll try and gently explain it, with a studied air of not being a know-it-all...

If whoever is asking genuinely seems interested and eager to learn, I'll gladly share information.

I don't like the idea of being hostile or confrontational, as it's only going to put the other person's backs up and make them retreat further into denial. Even more, I hate the idea of being preachy, for much the same reasons, but somehow anger is more honest than smugness, so I despise myself less for it afterwards.

It's a hard line to tread though.

I tend to go for the option of being really cheerful about how eating seasonally and walking everywhere has made me fitter and healthier, how knitting is wonderfully relaxing, how buying clothes in charity shops is much better value than Pr*mark et al and how big thick curtains or improvised blanket-related substitutes are much more effective and cheaper than turning up the heating, as gas prices are going up, you know.

Because, really, I'm not a better person.* I just happen to have decided to act on the evidence in front of me in what I perceive is my best interest, and sometimes I think, 'Wouldn't it be nice to have a take-away tonight?' and it makes me terribly sad that there are whole swathes of the planet I'll never see and I'm tempted to jump on a plane to go and see them all before the oil runs out. I ate cheap food, I took short-haul flights, I bought cheap clothes, sometimes I got lifts when I could have walked or taken the train, and I still drink lots of imported wine, tea and coffee, eat chocolate, dried mango and apricots and spend far, far too much time on the computer; and while I am in many, many ways happier, healthier and more fulfilled than I was when I couldn't see beyond the consumerist treadmill, ultimately, I'm just lucky I enjoy reading, gardening and knitting, and if I enjoyed motorbiking, or flying, or parachuting, or recreational deforestation or some other carbon-heavy hobby I'd probably find it a lot more difficult.

As well as being lucky (and having always had a steadfastly unconventional streak), I'm also frightened, and that's what makes me feel like a hypocrite when I try and convince people to 'join me' by merely expounding the positives of my peculiar lifestyle. I am really, really concerned that even though oil depletion will probably be slow and peaceful and managed by market forces, it will still entail a dramatic (albeit gradual) shift in our lifestyles and expectations, and we have not been prepared for that by our society, our parents or our education system. I want my friends and family to be able to cope with it.

I also, selfishly, don't want everyone I know to come knocking on the door of my smallholding, demanding we feed them vegetables and home-reared pork, the bf brews them beer and I knit them some socks. I'd let them in and share with them, but I'd secretly wish they'd thought ahead a little. After all, I did tell them...

We might not be so lucky with climate change, either. I don't think peak oil will result in the fabric of society breaking down overnight, but have you seen how Britain (especially the South East) responds to extreme weather? A bit of snow? Everything grinds to a muffled halt. Floods? Chaos and hand-wringing. Wind? Power cuts? End of civilisation as we know it. Long, hot summer? Oh, it's too hot to do anything - let's go and buy an electric fan and drink Pimm's. Last summer's flooding was bad enough, but if anything really bad (like, New Orleans bad) happened, we'd all be b*ggered.

As a society, we do not know how to cope when we can't get to the supermarket in the car, when we can't flick a switch and have light or heat, when we can't have clean drinking water coming out of the tap. We are not prepared, emotionally or practically, to deal with a crisis, and yet most reasonably intelligent people believe that climate change is happening and know why. Do they not think this might cause crises? Do they think they'll be immune?

For this is why I do all these crazy things, why I knit mittens, why I grow spinach under milk-bottle-cloches, why I have a cold house and lots of blankets, why I recycle, why I am seriously considering not going on holiday with the bf's family next summer if they ask me. Because I am scared, and because people are going to die if we don't act now.

People are going to die if we carry on as we are. Extreme climates, such as the equatorial regions and the poles, where people already live a tough, marginal existence, are going to be hit first. There'll be droughts and there'll be floods. Habitats will be destroyed. People will die. If we grow biofuels instead of food, we might be all right cos we can afford both, but other people won't have enough to eat.

Personally, I just cannot convince myself that the time I spend sorting out my rubbish, or waiting ten seconds for a lightbulb to warm up, or making soup when I could have a take-away, or the holiday I could have in Spain, or the convenience of having a car, or eating more meat and dairy than I need, is more important than the fact that other people, somewhere in the world, might have to see their loved ones die as a result of my lifestyle.

It really is that important.

So, yes, of course, we should all be doing these things anyway. They make us happy and healthy. Home-grown veg is more nutritious and gardening is good for us, so we should do it anyway. Cycling is better for us than driving, so we should do it anyway. Being frugal is just common sense, so we should all mend clothes anyway, but if I'm brutally honest, that is not why I do this, and to think that that is what will convince other people to do it too is therefore somewhat disingenuous.

At the end of the day, I do it because I feel it is my moral imperative, because I can't say that my comfort is more important than the life of a child in the Sahel whose family can't feed themselves any more because the Sahara keeps on creeping further south.

And this is what I want to say to all the people who ask me why they should buy local food, or walk to work, or not buy clothes made out of oil, or not fly on holiday this year. Sure, I make it look as though these things aren't hard to do and if you did them too your life would improve dramatically, so what are you waiting for? But deep down, it's just that these things coincide with what I feel gives me a good quality of life. Really, I simply don't feel that I have the right to pursue a lifestyle in the knowledge that it wouldn't be sustainable if everyone on the planet lived like me, and I don't want to be responsible for other people not having the means to survive, whether they are on the other side of the world, down the road or my own children.

At some point, I made the connection between my short-haul flight, my polyester top and my imported vegetables and the subsistence farmers around Lake Naivasha or in northern Togo and Ghana who haven't got enough water to grow food. And, yes, I probably made that connection because I've seen how small Lake Naivasha is compared to 20 years ago, and I've seen the reforestation projects in northern Togo and Ghana, and I've met people who live there and they are real people who love their families and want a prosperous livelihood, and that's because I flew there and that makes me a big, fat hypocrite - shoot me.

I can't change what I've already done. I can only try and make up for it now and not carry on doing it, now that I know.

I genuinely, genuinely believe that this is morally the right thing to do.

It's joining the dots and making that same connection that will make other people do the right thing too. As I said before, it's tempting to slip into an 'us and them' mentality - I keep doing it myself: 'people', 'other people', 'them'; 'I', 'me', 'us' - but there really is no reason that we can't all make that connection and all do the right thing. I've done it before a lot of people, but there were other people who started before me, and they don't believe that my contribution is worthless because I once flew from Newcastle to London, so I don't want to judge anyone who still does, and if my friend says she's going to use Ecover washing powder even though she's still flying all over the world, then, hell, good on her for using Ecover washing powder!

Furthermore, given the approach of the mainstream media (simplifying and polarising the issues and sometimes publishing outright misinformation) and the government (singularly failing to take it seriously, talking about green taxes, insisting on a confusing, un-joined-up recycling system that even I don't believe in, and yet expanding Heathrow and taking away grants for wind turbines), I can't really blame anyone for feeling powerless and uninspired. Also, we live in such an alienated, disengaged society, that we are actively discouraged from thinking about the consequences of our actions or the systems that we implicitly support by buying into them.

I have all this understanding and compassion in me, and I do not want to be all 'holier than thou', because I, too, am lazy and selfish, and I thank the lord at times that I live in a society that allows me to be so.

Which makes me feel that perhaps I am doing people a disservice by avoiding engaging with them about the real issues at stake. Maybe I should start talking about floods and droughts, about the people in the third world who are going to die, about the walls we'll build to keep them out, how they'll die trying to scale them to get in. Maybe I should mention all the people in the West who are going to die, that might have more impact - maybe I should suggest it could be them, their family, their children, their grandchildren. Maybe I should mention the damage we all do when we wear clothes made from oil or when we drive to work, when we eat that dried mango or spend 16 hours a day on the laptop.

Maybe I should tell them just how absolutely terrified I sometimes feel, how I'm just as selfish as everybody else, and I'm not choosing to live like this as an exercise in self-abasement or in making other people feel unworthy, but that if and when we are forced to make drastic changes or a crisis of some kind hits us, I want to be sure of the best chance of survival for 'me and mine'.

If anyone asked me, I'd say we were never going to make anyone change to being greener by lecturing them. If someone says to you, 'You shouldn't use plastic bags, they kill wildlife and pollute the environment,' you're likely to feel judged. If someone says to you, 'Those new recycled Sainsbury's bags** are really rubbish, aren't they, the handles always snap*** - I take my own, now, much sturdier and don't hurt your hands,' you might think they had a point.

But, when it comes down to it, my purely selfish, animal desire for survival and for my children's survival has got nothing to do with skipping home with organic carrots in a hemp bag, knitting a yoghurt or two and then recycling a cat into a garden ornament, and if that isn't the lifestyle that appeals to you, then you're not going to want to do it. (Conversely, you might do it anyway - my envirosceptic parents have always cooked from scratch, grown vegetables, eschewed the latest gadgets and disposable fashion and holidayed in the UK, just because it gives them greater pleasure.)

Perhaps by suggesting that you should enjoy all the things I enjoy, I'm being far more patronising than if I simply said, 'Look, we all need to make some tough decisions, for ourselves, for our parents, who will be elderly and vulnerable in a few decades time, for our children who have as much right to a future as we do, for their children, and for everyone else, everywhere in the world whose lives we are risking by carrying on claiming it is our 'right' to lay waste to the planet by doing all the little, tiny things we do every day without thinking.'

Perhaps I should stop being so afraid of making people feel judged, or suggesting that I'm right and they're wrong, because I don't want them to enjoy knitting and gardening and stop enjoying going on holiday. I want them to wake up and acknowledge their moral responsibility.

--------

Sincere apologies for the long, boring, heavy, ranty post. It's been troubling me a lot lately. I'd ask for your thoughts, but I've covered so much and gone on at such length that you probably wouldn't know which bit to respond to even if you did want to.

I'll write about cakes and knitting again next time, I promise! =D

* And if you want to read it put more eloquently and succinctly than I ever could, here are a couple of posts from one of my favourite blogs: http://casaubonsbook.blogspot.com/2006/10/theories-of-exceptionalism_09.html and http://casaubonsbook.blogspot.com/2006/10/more-on-exceptionalism.html. In fact, read the whole blog through from beginning to end, because it is inspiring, heart-warming, terrifying, thought-provoking, intellectual, beautifully written and very, very human. It's like someone's saying to me, 'It's okay that you have a degree from Oxford and all you want to do is knit and grow vegetables. You are not wasting your brain doing these things. You are in fact very wise.'
** Only, last time I checked, 1/3 recycled and still using a lot of virgin plastic and a bit of chalk. Oh, greenwash, thy name is J Sainsbury.
*** Actually, maybe it isn't greenwash, maybe it's a very clever conspiracy to annoy us all into stopping using plastic bags.

Start the week....

2008-01-28T09:50:00.000Z

Ever felt like banging your head against a brick wall?

Click here.

Weekend pottering

2008-01-27T09:37:00.000Z

The weather down here has been quite astoundingly pleasant lately. It's been sunny and crisp, but not too cold, and the evenings are getting lighter. Nights have been cold (partly cos I sneakily turned the heating down when gas prices went up.... ssshhhhh, don't tell bf.....) but a cosy duvet and hot water bottle (among other things) soon sorts that out.

Was out in the garden yesterday, clearing up other people's weeds. Grrr. I know nature abhors a vacuum, but, honestly, I swear that just before we came to view the house someone went round and got rid of all the weeds, but didn't do so properly, so within about a day of moving in, they'd sprung up all over the place again. Due, probably, to successive shortish-term tenants who see no point in investing in the garden when they're going to move out in a year or so, the garden just hasn't been managed well. Hence, I have to spend a lot of time and energy keeping it tidy (cos it's in the contract to 'maintain the character of the garden'), but have very little scope to actually do anything productive with it.

I tackled it a while back and after what seemed like hours yanking up comfrey and trying to make sure I'd got it all, I got so frustrated I got a bit trigger happy with the Roundup. Rather lazily, I'd just left all the dead matter where it was, so yesterday I scooped it all up, and the rockery does look a lot better now. I had a bit of difficulty trying to work out what was 'ornamental grass' and what was 'weeds' at times. But, really, so many of the plants that are there are so sickly and unhealthy looking anyway, that I'm quite tempted to ring up the landlord and say, 'Look, food and fuel prices are going up... global warming... peak oil... biofuels... please can I dig up all the spindly dying things and plant something useful? (And, while we're at it, can we get rid of the flimsy metal blinds and put up some curtain rails, and get a woodburner, and can you insulate the loft please?....)'

I've had a line of a poem troubling me for a while. It's to start, 'Dig up your lawns and herbaceous borders' and it's going to be about peak oil and relocalisation and how we all need to dig and knit and mend things and connect with our local communities and store food and start, literally, in our own back gardens, a bit like during the war, but I can't think of how it's going to go on. I could rhyme 'borders' with 'hoarders', I suppose, and maybe the tone could start off quite scathing and cynical, and gradually become more positive, and it could end something like:

'So dig up your lawns and herbaceous borders
something-y something-y marching orders.'

Yes, very much a work in progress, I feel.

I made a cake yesterday and as I've had rather patchy results in the past decided to experiment with oven temps and times, and it didn't rise. You win some, you lose some... I have a very dense, 1 inch thick Victoria sponge, which I am far too embarrassed to serve to my bf's family today and can't cover in icing sugar cos we've somehow managed to lose the sieve. Oops.

Anyway, I said I'd start being useful at 10, and it's just after, so I'd better go and add 'have shower', 'wake up lazy, hungover bf' and 'make crumble topping' to my list of things to do.

Also, chill wine.... =)

Inspirational blog

2008-01-25T16:20:00.000Z

I've found a great blog recently via INEBG. 'Auntie Plastic' set herself the challenge of giving up the supermarkets and not throwing anything away, and I have read her entire account of her experiences right through from beginning to end. It was absolutely fascinating, and has made me realise how much more I could be doing in my own drive to reject consumerism and not produce any waste. I feel like I'm doing so much in comparison to so many people and it's easy to get complacent, but, if I think about it, I still rely on oil to a frightening degree.

This quotation, from early in the blog, was one I found particularly inspirational. It seems to sum up exactly how I feel in the very concise and accurate way that other, cleverer people often do.

"I am purely selfish in my desire to see Neath regenerated. I cannot walk five miles to pick up my little bit of shopping. I need to retain my independence. I refuse to give a supermarket whose profits go to obscure places my money. I want to give my little bit of money to ther person who will plough their profits back into the town and give me a smile and appreciate my custom and I want people to see the benefits of keeping our local areas alive. In a time of crisis it is these people who will help one another not the supermarkets, who when there is no money to be made will ditch areas without a thought. We need self sufficiency with food."

I remember when we first moved to Northumberland. I went from being just down the road from Safeway's and the High Street and a short drive away from Waitrose and a shopping centre to being in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere with a pub the only commercial premises within a 3 mile radius. When we arrived, in 1989/1990, there was, every week, a butcher's van, a baker's van, a fish van, a mobile library, a milkman and three buses into Morpeth and back, one on Wednesday (market day), one on Friday and one on Saturday. These services gradually declined and now there is one bus a week, and you have to ring in advance to get it to stop in the village.

There's a lady who lives in the village who never learnt to drive because she never needed to. Why would she? She had all those services on her doorstep for her day-to-day needs, a garden for fruit and veg, people nearby for eggs, she ran the post office out of her front room, and for everything else, the town was a short bus ride away. How was she supposed to know things would change so much? Now, in the twilight years of her life, widowed and a long way from her children, she has to rely on the kindness of friends and neighbours to give her lifts into town or to pick things up for her. Of course, it's the sort of friendly place where people still do that kind of thing, but it must be hard, especially as she is still very active and mobile, to be so dependent.

Tricksy supermarkets. They promise us choice, the freedom to buy all these exciting products, offer us service, whereas in reality they have slowly eroded diversity and independence, particularly for the most vulnerable among us.

---------------------------

At 5 o'clock it was still light enough to see by. We have a box of sprouting beany thingies in the veg box and a UK green pepper (yep, I thought it seemed very early too!). On Sunday, we will have root vegetable gratin and broccoli, but tonight I'm going to do something fresh and green and stir-fried. Tomorrow I will sit down with my gardening notebook and my spade-shy bf and try and interest him in growing things and then order some seeds.

Next week I will try and learn how to write concise blog posts!

A suburban field guide to the identification of packaging

2008-01-25T12:05:00.000Z

I went for a walk yesterday, leaving the town by the winding, high-hedged road that runs past the grand houses, climbing the echoey steps over the railway bridge and suddenly feeling in a different world. Oh, it is a peculiar, south-eastern illusion of countryside to be sure, the horse-jumps scattered in the fields betray the fact that it would have been built on long ago if it hadn't been for the wealthy and powerful equestrian set, and it is a far cry from the hilly expanses of my youth (and even the slightly less expansive and less hilly West Berkshire countryside), but it feeds the soul better than nothing and within walking distance of my front door.

I met a friendly chocolate labrador on the bridge and chatted to its owner about the weather.

After the bridge, the path divides. Straight on takes you past the brambles, to the prep school and eventually the farm shop, and you can come back along the road and stop for a drink in the pub on the way. I come from a line of keen hill-walkers and have a genetic distaste for going home the same way I came from.

Alternatively, you can turn right, and the path disappears downhill behind some bushes. I have been tempted by this path many times, but I have always been on a mission to pick blackberries or go to the farm shop, or it has been boggy (this is Berkshire - it's flat and rains a lot) and have never explored it. Yesterday it was still boggy, but less so, and I was undaunted. I branched off to the right and squelched down to the field. Crossing the field brought me to a path. Left seemed to take me towards someone's house, and although signed as a public footpath, I'm not sure of the etiquette down here, so I turned right again, past the stables where some small girls were running about industriously with bridles and shovels.

The path brought me out next to T*sco. I knew where I was, but I felt conscious of my muddy boots and ruddy cheeks, and didn't fancy walking home through the town centre with the yummy mummies on parade in their eerily clean landrovers. I turned back and noticed litter everywhere, plastic bags hanging from trees, cans thrown into the stream.

I meant to take lots of pictures, to show that there is beauty here if you look. The evening light hitting the Victorian red brick terraces in an explosion of misty gold; the painted-pink wall of a house flaking away to reveal the bricks underneath at a rakish angle next to the water butt; the pointed windows of the convent; the hazy grey of the long, thin gardens in the morning; there may only be one field, the rest of the countryside a middle-class playground of PYOs, stables and school grounds, but it's still full of rabbits, there are still robins if you're patient enough, the trees are still majestic and soothing, there is still a carpet of scrunchy leaves...

I listened to the bird calls on the way home, how familiar they sounded, how I hadn't bothered to learn what they were when I heard them all the time. I ached to know what they were now, the way you ache when you know what you're missing. When we moved to Northumberland my parents bought a set of pocket guides to birds, wild flowers, mushrooms, trees, and they sat, pristine, on the shelves, because we had all the time in the world to learn about birds and mushrooms, because we soon learnt you could ask someone instead of relying on books. It was only in Oxford that I really appreciated the smell of cherry blossom in spring, because until I was 19 I'd never known there were places that the smell could be special, extraordinary.

The things we take for granted.

I only took one photo, and I hope it's clear enough to read the exhortation to care for the environment.

I hope someone with a less keen sense of irony and a few inches more in height takes it down some day soon.

2008-01-23T20:20:00.000Z

Well, the errant beetroot never turned up. Curious.

I have found another wintry vegetarian recipe, veggie chilli with cornbread topping. Unfortunately my cornbread topping sank when I spooned it on as the chilli was too liquid!! Aargh! Anyway, I shall pray it's still edible and post the recipe when I have passed judgement.

Had a busy weekend with friends from uni visitint. It was so nice to see everyone again, and made me a bit sad that I haven't really met anyone round here that I get on with. Still, am meeting up with someone from SSish and joining a knitting group. One day....

My dressmaking skills were praised very highly at my class last night. I now have all of the skirt cut out and will actually be let loose on a sewing machine next week! One of my friends very kindly threaded mine on Friday, but I still can't get the bobbin thread to work. Grrrrr! How can this be so complicated?! Luckily, I've found a book in the library with really clear pictures.

Should also be getting some work at the end of this week, which means I might have some money to buy seeds with soon. Hurrah!

Hmm, am wittering on a bit here. Just wanted to let you know I was still alive. Best go check dinner hasn't met with any more disasters in my absence!

Oh beetroot, where art thou? (a.k.a. veg box vegetable of the week)

2008-01-17T22:24:00.001Z

Somewhere in my kitchen lurks a beetroot.

Of that I am quite convinced.

I know five came in the veg box last week, and I cooked four on Tuesday, and I can't for the life of me find the other one.

Alongside my ambitious New Year's Non-Resolutions and my commitment to give 10p to the RSPB for every plastic carrier bag I am unable or too embarrassed to refuse (although I haven't inadvertently acquired a single one yet!), this year I am also trying desperately to find exciting ways to cook the contents of the veg box, that doesn't just involve: stir-fried greens, sauteed greens, roasted root veg, boiled 'n mashed root veg... In my defence, it is January...

I am gradually trying to convince my bf that eating less quantity and better quality with regard to meat (well, with regard to everything really, but I'm quite happy if he stuffs himself with chard, cos it's cheap), which he is quite happy to go along with, as he agrees in principle, and sees the financial benefits. Unfortunately, while for me it is something akin to a guiding philosophy, I think he sees it as something that is fine while we are young and skint, and every time I place a chickpea casserole or a bean risotto down in front of him, there is a certain tangible disappointment to his demeanour, a slight sense that British masculinity has been affronted in some way...

(And the Waitrose magazine which included a section called 'The Winter Vegetarian' was full of recipes involving peppers, fresh tomatoes and aubergines. In a magazine called 'Seasons', I ask you...)

So this week I have made:

Cauliflower, lemon and tahini salad,
Bubble and squeak rosti

and a roasted carrot and beetroot salad of my own invention.

I made it with couscous, but it would have been better with bulgar wheat.

You will need:

1 large carrot, chopped into large slices (approx
4 small beetroot
enough bulgar wheat or couscous for 2 people
juice of 1 lime
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
1 large chilli
olive oil
fresh oregano
small amount of goat's cheese (optional)

Basically:

Roast the veg (beetroot wrapped in foil for approx 40 mins, carrot tossed in oil for approx 30).

Meanwhile cook the bulgar wheat and lightly fry the onion, garlic and chilli.

Peel the beetroot, while wearing gloves or you'll end up with a lovely natural purple nail polish, and chop it into similar sized chunks as the carrot.

Pop everything in a bowl, add the lime juice and enough olive oil to make it.... look like a dressed salad (I'm never going to cut it as a celebrity chef). Stir through the oregano just before you eat it.

All the above were met with resounding approval.

This week we will be getting: potatoes, carrots, onions, broccoli, a bag of brussells tops, a cauliflower, a head of celery and a mystery vegetable that will take the place of the turnips we vetoed.

So, if anyone has any exciting veggie recipes that don't involve roasting, boiling and/or mashing the carrots and potatoes and stir-frying/sauteeing the brussels tops and broccoli and uses the cauliflower in a way that doesn't involve boiling it to death or smothering it in cheese, please feel free to suggest them.

Also, if anybody sees a rogue beetroot, please send it back to my kitchen pronto. I want to roast it!

I am most perplexed.

Second dressmaking class!

2008-01-16T11:18:00.000Z

Well, I went to my second sewing class last night, and am making good progress with my skirt.

I went into Reading (UK!!) yesterday to buy some fabric and found a lovely little shop where the staff were so helpful! I basically said, 'Look, I'm a total beginner, I need some fabric for a class, this is my pattern, I need it to look like this skirt, what should I get?' The manager showed me all the things that might be suitable, and when the one I liked wasn't wide enough for a big, flary, bias cut skirt found me something else. I ended up buying some pink and white checked fabric which I like very much. The checks will hang like diamonds when it's made. I suppose the friendly people in the shop could have totally fleeced me, but I'd like to think not. =)

It was about £10.50, and that was for quite a voluminous skirt, which uses a lot of fabric and will have plenty of offcuts. I've always heard people saying that making your own clothes is really expensive, and it's true that I could easily have bought a skirt for less than £10, but not necessarily a nice skirt, and it didn't strike me as unreasonably pricey at all. Admittedly, I have to put in my own time to make it, and I have chosen to absorb the costs of the sewing machine, the course, the scissors, zip, other equipment etc (which will decrease as a proportion of the garment every time I make something). I also didn't buy a pattern, which helped.

I have the main bits all cut out (though I had to get my teacher to make the first snips as I was scared of ruining it, hehe) and will be able to do the waistband and interfacing next week. I'll actually get to start sewing!

I think I might try and get to grips with my sewing machine a bit more this week, and try and make a cushion cover out of an old skirt I have.

Dammit...

2008-01-15T11:41:00.001Z

After reading about GTM's knitting group (and various other knitting groups elsewhere), I decided it would be fun to join one around here. I've been a bit down lately, as I don't really have any close friends where I live, and, well, not to bang on about it, but it's all very suburban and consumerist and I'd be willing to wager large sums of money that the majority of the local community is not interested in cooking, gardening, knitting or peak oil. (If you know the type of place I mean.) So, I've been going on the offensive trying to meet like-minded people near enough for a coffee and a natter (I have friends in London but it's a bit far just for a quick chat), and thought a knitting group might be an excellent idea.

So, I put 'knitting group Reading' into google and the first thing it came up with was a knitting group in Reading. 'Awesome,' I thought. Apparently they meet tomorrow. 'Awesome,' I thought. They didn't say where until you joined the online group. So I did.

And was dismayed to see that they were actually in Reading, Pennsylvania.

Bugger!

Things I have been reading lately...

2008-01-14T16:09:00.001Z

Got some interesting books for Christmas, bought some with Christmas money and have swiped things off all and sundry lately. Thought I might share some with you, as have been very much enjoying curling up with a book on these wintry evenings.

'Taste' by Kate Colquhoun inspired last Friday's dinner. In an uncharacteristic nod to tradition, we had fish on Friday - we defrosted some salmon steaks. I had read in this book that the Romans used to make sauces for salmon using ground almonds and white wine, so I thought, 'Well, I have some ground almonds... I have some white wine...' and armed with the knowledge gained from 10 minutes googling 'salmon' and 'almonds' I proceeded to create a sauce entirely as an experiment, using ground almonds, white wine, an onion, the juice of a lemon and a teensy bit of sugar. If I'd had some cream, I'd have added that too.

Britain's food history seems to start fairly uninspiringly, dwelling on the Roman obsession with eating roasted cow's vulva's and things (eurgh!), but otherwise I have found it extremely interesting thus far, with lots of exciting snippets of information about Saxon peasant farmers, medieval banquets and the introduction of the fork.

'Cod' by Mark Kurlansky is also really interesting. I never realised how much of history depended on cod! Cod was vital to the slave trade and American Independence, among other things. I mocked my dad resoundingly when he asked for this for his birthday about 10 years ago (I was young and foolish) but it's actually really interesting and really well-written - which in itself can sometimes make something that may not seem that interesting captivating. It has this great little poem in it too:

The codfish lays a thousand eggs
The homely hen lays one
The codfish never cackles
To tell you what she's done.
And so we scorn the codfish
While the humble hen we prize
Which only goes to show you
That it pays to advertise.

I was going to use this as the basis for a long post about all the chicken programmes last week, overfishing, and the influence of 'advertising' (or creating publicity for a cause), but even I am slightly fed up with all the talk about animal welfare, supermarkets and the socioeconomics of food. Yes, even I. I never thought I would say that.*

These last three ('The Illustrated Wise Words and Country Ways' by Ruth Binney, and 'Eating for Victory' and 'Make Do and Mend', which are collections of public service leaflets distributed in WW2) are basically pretty books that are interesting to leaf through and have on your shelf! 'Wise Words etc' has lots of old sayings and superstitions and examines them to see if they are true, and finds out that a lot of them were. 'Eating for Victory' has lots of thrifty recipes - I thought it was going to be full of vegetable gardening tips for beginners, which was why I bought it - which is interesting, but I think I prefer 'Make Do and Mend', which showed me how to mend my pyjama sleeve - you can't see where I've done it or anything. =)

Anyway, if, like me, you have been watching far more telly than usual, thanks to C4's food season, Sense and Sensibility and Lark Rise to Candleford, then I hope some of these will provide a pleasant antidote! I'm also reading the latest Jasper Fforde and picked up 'The Dice Man' in a charity shop the other day, but these have nothing to do with the blog....

*Though I was encouraged to notice in Waitrose this morning that there was a huge dent in the free range and organic poultry sections and many of the 'standard' birds, even the ones on special offer, were still on the shelves. But then, I noticed the same thing back in September. Wanted a chicken and was annoyed there weren't any free range birds left. Then had to remind myself this was a good thing.

Soup

2008-01-11T13:20:00.000Z

Somebody, somewhere, on their blog, or on a forum, suggested putting a squeeze of lemon juice into Jerusalem artichoke soup. I can't for the life of me remember who you are or where I read it, but it was a fantastic idea, and I am very grateful.

Chicken talk...

2008-01-09T12:52:00.001Z

Watched the second 'Hugh's Chicken Run' last night, and am enjoying it (if 'enjoy' is the right word) and am pleased he is concentrating on the whole spectrum of issues around cheap food, eg people who won't or think they can't pay more, and people being disconnected from their food, and isn't just all harrowing footage of poor little fluffy things... The Hayley woman is a bit odd though. She seems to be determined not to change almost on principle - someone on DS said it's like she's got her fingers in her ears and is going 'lalala, I'm not listening'. I kept screaming at the telly, 'Well, just eat chicken less often! It's not a fundamental human right!'

At least she knows, though. I suppose there are going to be people who think it's fine to treat chickens like that if it means they get to eat them more often, and if she has decided that in full possession of the facts, then that is her choice. It sickens me, but I can't argue with it. It's the unintentional ignorance that is the biggest problem, and there are already loads of people posting on the RC forum who've joined in the last couple of days and are saying things like, 'Omg, I had no idea, I'm switching to free range from now on.'

Apparently sales of free range and organic are going through the roof! Hurrah! Let's hope it's not just a fad.

I wish the nutritional side of it could be stressed more. Maybe this will be dealt with tonight, or perhaps Jamie Oliver will, as it's more his area. It's not just a welfare issue, but the quality of free range or organic chicken is so much better. Intensively reared chickens are much fattier than free range ones, which actually get to exercise, and have a much higher water content. When you pay the extra £2 for a free range bird, you're not just paying for the chicken to have a good life, although this is important, you're paying for higher quality food and get more for your money.

It's easier to get stuck into the old argument: 'Pay more for happy meat.' 'I can't afford to pay more for happy meat, you patronising middle-class nit, I'm poor and just can't afford it.'

Eating quality food has such a stigma of being 'posh' attached to it. When I was working on my hospital food project, we didn't ask private hospitals about their catering precisely for that reason.

I think this is an important and often ignored facet of the cheap food argument. 'Cheap' and 'value for money' are not the same thing. Take bread for instance. You might buy a loaf of value bread for 30p. A 'proper' loaf with a proper crust and some seeds in it might cost you 90p. Certainly the first one is cheaper, but if the second one is so much more nutritious and filling that you only need to eat one slice of it, instead of 3 or 4 of the other one, then it doesn't work out as better value.

Same with salt. We're always being told to eat less salt, but rarely do you hear anyone say to use sea salt instead of rock salt, as it has a more intense flavour and you can get the same result by using less.

Good animal welfare is not just good for the animals!

First sewing class

2008-01-09T12:24:00.000Z

Well, the dressmaking class was lots of fun.

Unfortunately, I was about 20 mins late, due to getting horribly, horribly lost on the way to college from the station. (Flipping 1960s town centres designed for flipping cars, so if you want to walk you can't navigate from maps very easily and have to keep walking through dank underpasses and deserted shopping centres after dark, grrrrrr, ranty, ranty, ranty, moral highground, moan, moan, moan =) ...)

Still, all I missed was the bit where people said what their experience was and what they wanted to achieve. Annoying that I don't know people as well as they know each other, but at least I didn't miss learning anything. We were shown how to copy a pair of trousers, and it really, really helped to have someone show me how it all worked! I've read a lot about making clothes, but it doesn't make sense on paper. Now I understand sooooo much better. Yay!

As it was the first class and there were lots of beginners, nobody really had a 'project' to get on with, except a few people who'd done the course last term as well, so we all went and had a drink in the cafe and chatted for a bit. The teacher looked at my skirt and said, 'Ooh, that's lovely, you could make that!' so we went back to the classroom and she made me change into the trousers she'd been using to copy, and the rest of the beginners and I all copied my skirt! So I now have a pattern, except she's going to show me how to shorten it next week. Might see if I could get her to show me how to make it smaller round the waist, 'cept I might get even more stick for being tiny....

I'm really excited about it all now. I was worried it was going to be all commercial patterns and fancy dresses, but a lot of the emphasis seems to be on copying clothes you already have and later we'll be doing a tailored jacket and things, so working from measurements as well. Hurrah. Much more economical! There was also a girl who had bought a cheap coat, which she said didn't hang properly, and the teacher said it was cos it didn't have interfacing, and that she'd show her how to add it herself. Awesome! This is what I really want to be able to do - mend clothes, adjust them and snap up bargains in charity shops and make them fit me, but I need to understand how clothes work first, by making something from scratch.

Sewing machine waffling

2008-01-08T16:44:00.000Z

Some very helpful people over at SSish have been trying to help me figure out what on earth the three peculiar bits of metal that came with the sewing machine are. We have finally established that the small round thing is a bobbin, which is apparently essential for actually using the machine with thread (what? you can use it with thread to sew things? and there was I using it as an efficient thigh-muscles-toner-upper...), and thanks to some painstakingly idiot-proof explanation and a facsimile of the manual that I found online, I think I know more or less what to do with it.

There are two spikey metal things, which are apparently feet. I don't know what to do with sewing machine feet. I didn't even realise they had feet until the other day. This is all hideously complicated, and I fear I have bitten off more than I can chew.

I suppose it was rather ambitious to suppose I could restore an ancient piece of machinery to working condition, and use it to learn a complex skill I know next to nothing of (I once hemmed a tablecloth, and I do buttons and small tears along a seam), when all available educational materials and helpful-people-who-know-how-to-sew presuppose access to a technology at least 50 years more modern... My knowledge of both dressmaking and Edwardian engineering is sadly lacking.

Hohum. I am definitely booked onto the dressmaking course, though, and should be heading off in just a couple of hours! Wheeee!! I have assembled all the requisite 'bits' and the directions and am praying to someone/something that whoever is teaching the course can help me translate dress patterns into a language I understand, and doesn't think I'm completely batty for not having a machine that can do zig-zag stitch....

Defeatist? Moi? Nay! I don't care if my curtains are wonky!

Hugh's Chicken Run

2008-01-07T10:44:00.000Z

It's strange. I signed up to the Chicken Out! campaign ages ago, and everyone has been talking about it all week, but somehow I never got round to writing about it or putting the banner on here. I think, partly, it's because almost everyone who reads this probably already knows that intensive farming is a Bad Thing. However, I did write a long, passionate post about it on my other blog, which is for friends from uni and school and suchlike, many of whom are, shall we say, less enlightened....

Anyway, 'Hugh's Chicken Run' is on tonight on C4, and I'm following up on New Year's Non-Resolution number 4 - meet like-minded people in real life - and going to the local FOE meeting, so the bf will be under strict instructions to tape it.

Here is the entire schedule. Basically we get a fortnight of programme's about food, and why we should eat better food. This can only be a good thing!

Hugh's Chicken Run - 7, 8, 9 Jan, 9pm
The Truth About Food - 10 Jan, 9pm
Jamie's Fowl Dinners - 11 Jan, 9pm
Fast Food Junkies go Native - 15 Jan, 9pm
Jamie's Eat To Save Your Life - 16 Jan, 10pm
It's Not My Fault I'm Fat - 17 Jan, 9pm
Gordon Ramsay: Cookalong Live - 18 Jan, 9pm

First steps in home-brewing

2008-01-05T18:32:00.001Z

I have finally reclaimed the kitchen, after it was taken over by an enthusiastic home-brewing novice using all the pots, pans, jugs and mixing bowls to measure out the requisite 29 pints of water (I even offered him the bread bin at one point!!). He kept calling me in to sniff jars of viscous brown liquid, and seemed very excited by the whole process - he's a chemist turned actuary, so he probably misses playing around with powders and potentially explosive concoctions. The enormous vat is now sitting in the downstairs bathroom (!) as this is probably the least cold room in the house. I am assured it will soon be moved to the study.

The Freecycle demijohns are 'soaking', my code for, 'I can't be bothered to wash them up properly yet.'

I am not a big beer fan; in fact I have to admit to the shameful fact that I only really like extremely generic lager, and even then only when I'm abroad. I mostly drink wine, which is, I recognise, not the greenest thing in the world... However, Scientist Boyfriend is very much the real ale enthusiast, always trying new, obscurely-named bitters and getting as wound-up about the beer industry and the importance of supporting small breweries and microbreweries as I do about agribusiness, supermarkets and the importance of supporting small shops and producers. I therefore fully support the home-brewing endeavour, the alcoholic equivalent of gardening and keeping hens.

Plus, if Hedgewizard is right about rising beer prices, this could turn out to be a very useful birthday present indeed...

The Hamster Wheel

2008-01-04T11:11:00.000Z

It works! It works! It works!

My beautiful, beautiful treadle sewing machine which I have lovingly nursed back to health has finally reached the stage where I can pedal away, and the little wheel goes round and moves the needle up and down. I've been happily making lines on bits of paper to practise controlling it for a few days now. Not v neat yet....

Have sent off application for dressmaking course, but not heard anything back yet. It's supposed to start on Tuesday, so I hope I hear something soon!

Can't read patterns though. It's like a foreign language, and all the books on curtains that I got out of the library are all about fancy stitches, matching colours and making pelmets - not bunging any old thing on the windows just to keep your house warm.

My SSish Secret Santa present arrived this morning too - I think the postman was a bit confused to deliver a second parcel address to 'Hamster'. Anyway, I got some seeds, all of which look like they can be grown in containers (whoever it was did their research!), a big cloth shopping bag and some things to put on my phone.

I've also snapped up 4 old coffee jars in Oxfam, which I sterilised (like for jam) and now keep my tea in them - I've been given so much stuff this Christmas I've had to reorganise all my cupboards, and putting tea in jars means I can stack them on the wee thing my dad scavenged for me from my grandma's house.

Should be getting three demijohns delivered by someone from Freecycle, later, too. I offered to collect them (one by one, on foot) and she very kindly said she'd drop them round on her way to Waitrose instead! People really are lovely.

This post is largely about the acquisition of stuff, which makes my next thought rather hypocritical, but it struck me when I was in Oxfam before Christmas. Now, a lot of the gifty type things they have in Oxfam are really lovely - I wish everywhere sold only Fairtrade chocolate, or recycled paper pads, or hemp shopping bags, or things made from recycled (as opposed to just recyclable) materials. I was just slightly troubled by the pressure to 'buy an ethical gift this Christmas', when all the ethical gifts took up the space that the rest of the year had been occupied by second-hand things. Surely the most ethical thing would be to rehome a used item, or not buy so much crap that ends up in charity shops in the first place? Where are the clothes and kitchen items that used to be in the shop going? Landfill? Dumped on the third world?

We can't buy our way out of this mess, people!

We can knit our way out of it instead! Here are the mittens I made my mum for Christmas:

Oil hits $100 a barrel

2008-01-03T11:27:00.000Z

Apparently it has now come down in price slightly, but according to the Times, prices are set to stay around $100 a barrel. I know the price is just an arbitrary milestone on an overarching trend, but that is the kind of thing people respond to - like how we celebrate New Year even though the seasons are constantly changing and renewing themselves. Maybe more people will start to realise how much we depend on oil...

Junk food ads ban - polemic alert

2008-01-02T22:35:00.000Z

I was very excited when I first heard this.

It is a good thing.

But it is also a small thing.

When I was young (by which I mean under five, as that is the age when most children can't tell the difference between adverts and programmes, although they don't really understand the persuasive intent of marketing until around eight) there was very little television aimed at children. If you were up early, you could watch an hour or so in the morning, and another hour or so in the afternoon. That was about it. Added to the fact that my parents are terrible intellectual snobs and I barely watched anything on ITV, I don't think I was exposed to that much junk food advertising when I was little.

I remember once seeing an advert for something called a 'Push Pop' - basically a boiled sweet, but in some funky plastic contraption a bit like a lipstick tube, so as you ate a bit of it, you pushed more out - which my brother and I thought looked like the most amazing things in the world ever. So we nagged and nagged my mum to buy us some, and (in a move which was totally out of character) she gave in. They were kept on the top shelf of the cupboard and we were allowed them for a few minutes a day. They lasted for about a week.

Even now, I can still remember the advert clearly and how much it made me yearn for this sticky, sugary, garish, overpackaged product.

Do not underestimate the power of advertising to children, and now with several 24-hour channels aimed solely at children, they must be seeing much more adverts than I ever did. The children I au paired (aged three and five) for used to get up, put the telly on first thing, watch telly till I could drag them away from it to go and play outside for a couple of hours, come back inside, put the telly on again over lunch, have a nap, then watch it again all evening. I expended obscene amounts of energy trying to persuade them to do other things with their time - read, draw, play with toys, anything, but they used to sit there watching inane cartoons (by the end of my stint I was pleased if they were just watching the better quality channel) for hours on end, unless forced to do otherwise.

Their parents despaired. 'All you ever do is watch telly,' they said. 'Go and do something else, and let us watch telly for a bit.' They never saw their parents engage in any leisure activity other than watch telly either. Never saw them read a book, write a letter, garden, play an instrument... These were bright, educated people, with lovely, intelligent children.

It made me terribly sad. Now, I don't have children myself, but I have spent two horrible months as an au pair, and I know how terribly draining children are - how much more peaceful it is to let them watch telly rather than actively encourage them to do other things, how they can wear you down, how much easier it is to give into them. I've always thought, though, that being a parent is not so much about doing the easiest thing, but about doing what you believe is the right thing, even when it is not the easiest thing to do.

So that means limiting telly, even if your children despise you for it. Cooking them a proper meal, even if it's easier to throw a packet in the microwave. Telling them that junk food is bad for them and vegetables are good for them and encouraging them, even if it nearly sends you loopy, to eat more vegetables and less junk food. In short, children may be young and impressionable enough to be swayed by these adverts, and, yes, they do see too many of them, but their parents should know better. Children are not the ones who go round the supermarket, fill up the trolley and pay for stuff.

Sadly, many adults are also worshippers of the giant god of consumerism, and are unable to teach their kids any differently. Banning junk food ads is just the tip of the iceberg. If your parents don't know how to cook and you eat nothing but fast food or ready meals at home, and you don't learn to cook from your parents or at school, however few junk food adverts you see, you are not going to grow up to have a healthy outlook on food or to eat a healthy diet.

I don't want to go all Daily Mail and say that it's all down to personal responsibility - large corporations and agribusiness control what we eat to a frightening degree, corporate responsibility is very important, and if they will insist on selling crap to kids, then the government should damn well step in and stop them, because, frankly, it is wrong and children should not be eating this stuff as much as they are. (Personally, I think all adverts should come with the disclaimer, 'This person is paid to lie to you.') The education system has failed them and, I fear, the current generation of parents, by not teaching cooking and by ripping out school kitchens and feeding kids more processed, industrialised rubbish.

But unless children see grown-ups, celebrities and superheroes chopping onions, peeling carrots (and composting the peelings), marinating chicken and milking cows, the ban will have a very limited effect. They need to be exposed to real food, good food, nutritious food, and they need to be taught by the adults responsible for them that meals should be cooked from scratch from decent ingredients the overwhelming majority of the time.

I am glad my mum bought me a Push Pop. It made me really happy. I am glad she took us to MuckDonald's every once in a while as a treat. I enjoyed it at the time. I am glad I used to eat take-aways with my parents as a teenager.

I was an extremely fussy eater as a child, and god knows it must have destroyed my mother's soul to have to cook the same handful of meals over and over again for me and my brothers for what must now amount to about two decades. But I am so, so grateful to her for not giving into what must have felt like the easiest thing to do and give us chips every time we moaned at eating the skin on new potatoes, or chicken nuggets every time we complained about the bones in meat.

I'm also glad my dad spent every free moment in the garden and that I saw first-hand where strawberries and peas come from. I'm glad I grew up in the country around sheep and cows and fields of corn (and oil seed rape).

I have grown up into an adult with an almost unhealthily healthy approach to food, and this is not because I never saw a junk food ad on the telly, but because my parents made sure I didn't watch too much telly and because they taught me that it was just that, junk, and there was nothing wrong with eating it once in a while, but that a healthy diet should not contain too much of it.

I went on the Newsround website to see what 'da kidz' were saying about it. These comments were rather old, but here is a selection of my favourites:

"No, it definitely won't stop kids eating junk food. They need to make junk food look ugly and like it doesn't taste nice because that's what healthy food looks like!"

This child clearly understands how marketing works!!

"They should ban junk food altogether, but don't ban it on Fridays."

All things in moderation.

This, from a 13-year old girl, is more worrying. She reckons junk food advertising should be banned as it is:

"really hard to stay thin in the modern world"

Along similar lines,

"Ohmigod! What r u going to say next that all kids r restricted to eat Brussels sprouts from now on!? why can't u ppl stop being so over protective let us enjoy our lives - Soon we're going to be adults and will be going on diets and stuff this is going way over the top chill out."

New Year's thingies...

2007-12-30T22:17:00.000Z

I don't really want to call them resolutions, largely because I'm contrary and don't want to think of what I want to achieve as being in the New Year's Resolutions category along with unrealistic pledges to lose weight, drink less, exercise more etc... I actually do need to exercise more, but that is a general ongoing thing.

I don't expect that the house will be cleaner, that I will spend less time on internet forums, that I will remember to sterilise my mooncup before it's actually needed, or that I will cork up the rest of the bottle and save it till tomorrow, just because of an arbitrary promise I make, so I'm not going to make myself feel guilty by trying. If I want to decide to be tidier in August, I can be tidier in August!

However, there are several things that I could do which I feel will enrich my life. They are more a product of my crisis a few weeks ago than the New Year, and are things I want to do anyway, but thanks to the happy coincidence of timing, I will be starting them in the first few days of January...

1) Take a dressmaking course, and learn how get more use out of my beautiful Singer treadle machine than just as a really nice table.

2) Do something with the piles of scavenged curtains we have lying around to make my house warmer and more efficient. (Possibly contingent on the above!) Nag bf to put up curtain rails and get second draught-excluder for the back door.

3) Grow something (other than herbs) that actually gets big enough to eat, unlike my winter spinach which is still alive, but not getting any bigger due to the cold.

4) Try and find some people in my area who are interested in these sorts of things, so I don't conduct my social life entirely over the internet. Have been meaning to go to my local FOE group or Green Drinks since I moved, and never got a round tuit...

And, more prosaically, 5) get a bit better at my job, so it takes me less time and I have more time to knit and garden!

Seasonal greeting-type thingies

2007-12-22T10:33:00.000Z

I probably won't be online very much over the next few days, as I'm off to see my boyfriend's family for a heady whirl of birthday/festive socialising and booze, followed by visiting my family in Northumberland, who I don't see very much and who I'd quite like to actually talk to when I'm there, rather than spending all my time on the internet!

So I would like to wish everybody reading this a very happy Christmas, whatever it means to you. I hope you eat well, drink well and get to spend time with the people you love.

And, in case I get really sidetracked, hope you see the New Year in in style....

Drat that Mr Seymour!

2007-12-19T14:45:00.000Z

My wonderful boyfriend got me the wonderful 'Self-Sufficiency' by Jon Seymour out of the library last week, and now I want a smallholding and a cow.

Which I can't afford.

Well, I could maybe save up for the cow, but I think my neighbours would look on my garden with even more disapproval if it had a cow in it.

Next step

2007-12-16T22:41:00.000Z

I have covered my cakes in marzipan.

Also my kitchen.

Oops.

Dear lord, I've only realistically got a week to make a bookmark, some toffee and a pair of mittens. Aargh! Why was I not more organised?! I spend TOO MUCH TIME on internet forums.

Sorry for the heavy tone of the last post. Well, I'm not sorry really, because it was important, but I realise that being depressing is not the way to achieve whatever the hell it is I'm trying to achieve (or really to achieve anything), so while I don't apologise for anything I thought of felt, I do apologise if it made you feel anything like I did on Friday night! Still haven't come up with that damn list, either...

We also have a Christmas tree. There was some confusion and faffing about in the garden centre, so we aren't actually entirely sure if it has roots or not - responsible consumer or what?! - but it is the right size and very cheerful, and if it doesn't have roots we can get one with roots next year....

I ordered some decoration kits from the nice people over at Christmas Matters which should arrive tomorrow, so I can get started on those. So little time, so much to do....

This extract from the Song of Songs was just read out as part of the sermon on Choral Evensong.

"For now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land."

Made me think of Christmas.

"Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux"

2007-12-16T14:26:00.000Z

I'm not sure I'm convinced by my new colour scheme. That'll teach me to fiddle around with the settings!

I had a bit of a slump on Friday. The bf was out revelling and I was alone in the house and it was absolutely freezing, and I was reading the news about Bali and writing Christmas cards, and suddenly felt very despondent about the planet and my efforts to save it.

It seemed as if Bali was just another talking shop - as The Now Show put it, world leaders have agreed that the time for action is now and so they've decided to have another meeting in three years. (I paraphrase.) I do feel somewhat encouraged that the US has signed up, but I still don't really see it as a victory. Firstly, with our government's plans to expand Heathrow and give planning permission to any supermarket that wants it, I hardly feel that Britain is really in a position to claim any moral superiority, and I can see no evidence that the government is willing to act, even by passing simple regulations such as making offices turn their lights off at night. If our leaders really believe that they are making a difference, I despair, I really do.

I also don't see how all these politicians can't be worried about it as human beings. Yes, I know the aviation industry wields a lot of power over the government and it's difficult to regulate them politically, but do these people not have children? Can they really, genuinely not see that if they don't act now, the planet will not be capable of supporting their descendants? Does this not worry them?

I just don't understand how you can read about peak oil, read about climate change, read about overfishing, deforestation, overpopulation and not feel as angry, as passionate and as motivated as I do.

In addition to the political apathy, I also feel that the general population is stark, staring bonkers. People running around, spending, spending, spending, consuming, consuming, consuming, not thinking about how things were produced or how to get rid of them responsibly when the adverts tell them it's time to move onto the next thing. I want to stand in shopping centres and scream, 'We're all going to hell in a handcart - what are you people DOING?' These things are made from trees, made from oil, made by real people, but most people seem to believe that stuff comes from 'shops' and then they can throw it 'away'.

I felt like there was no way we could prevent or really slow down the catastrophe. I no longer believed that writing to my MP or taking direct action will help, and I no longer believe that the majority of people are going to accept there is a problem and start being more responsible until they are forced to by circumstances or heavy-handed legislation (and I don't believe the legislation will be forthcoming, so basically we will need to lose Norfolk before anyone believes there is a problem).

I try so, so hard not to become dry and humourless about my greenness - I do have the odd rant, and the odd moment where I just have to bite my tongue, but on the whole, I'd like to think that instead of preaching at people about driving to work and carbon emissions, I'd be more likely to say something like, 'Oh, I prefer to cycle home, as the fresh air really blows away the cobwebs after a day in the office, and I get a good work-out so I can put my feet up in the evening instead of going to the gym!' I don't view anything that I do in order to be more green as a hardship (except possibly when it's cold as it was yesterday!) and generally find it to have been a very positive influence in my life - I'm eating better, fitter, more relaxed and have learnt so many new skills, and have so many exciting projects for the future.

I don't resent doing all this stuff - I love that my woolly jumper is warmer than an acrylic one, I love all my second-hand furniture, I love knitting and cooking and growing things and eating local seasonal food and walking places instead of driving, and I'd do all these things anyway because they're good for the soul.

But it was absolutely FREEZING in my house and I refused to turn the heating up and almost everybody in the world would think I was crazy for sitting there in the cold, and I suddenly realised that rather than thinking, 'I mustn't turn the heating up, because if we all save resources, it can make a huge impact and we can avoid the worst impacts of climate change', I was thinking 'I mustn't turn the heating up, because if I can save this tiny bit of gas, and if a handful of other people save tiny bits of gas, there's the tiny chance that it'll last just that tiny bit longer, so that by the time it hits, we might have a house with a proper garden and I might have learnt how to use my sewing machine.'

I never questioned whether what I'm doing is the right thing to do, but it upset me that my motivation seemed to have momentarily changed: instead of believing that by all doing the right thing we will eventually influence governments and communities to do the right thing too, I seemed to have been gripped by a manic, baked-bean-hoarding drive for self-preservation and lost my faith in the goodness of humanity!

I suppose we all have moments when it's nigh on freezing outside and there's nothing to eat but cabbage and swede for four more months and we feel completely out of kilter with the rest of the world, and the scale and enormity of what we're facing suddenly hits home: how things are going to change, and how we are going to have to change, and all the things that won't be there any more.

It makes me sad. It makes me not want to have children. This isn't something I'd been planning on doing within the next few years anyway, but I suddenly felt so despairing for the future of the human race that I felt it wouldn't be fair on my children, and it would only add to the problem anyway. And yet, facing the possible threat to our survival honestly, the urge to replace myself suddenly made itself felt very strongly.

I've thought about this a bit more, and realise that we don't need no people (though the planet might thank us), we need fewer people, and we need those people to live sustainably. The planet would probably be able to cope with us all living a Western lifestyle if there was only a billion or so of us, and if we all lived like African subsistence farmers, the extra few billion would matter much less. Human instinct plays a large part here, and this probably sounds like a shameless attempt at self-justification, but I don't think that my holding back from having one or two children and raising it/them to be responsible is the answer to the mess we're in.

I went to bed on Friday evening, with a hot water bottle and a piece of carrot cake and listened to last week's 'Gardener's Question Time'. This restored my faith in humanity somewhat, and I was briefly tempted to hibernate with Radio 4 and baked goods until spring.

I posted about this on INEBG,* and received some very good advice and welcome reassurance from the lovely people on there. They reminded me, and I knew deep down inside, that the only thing we can do is to keep plugging away, doing what we can to prevent, postpone and/or prepare for the coming crisis, whatever it may be, chipping away at the wall of ignorance, denial and prevarication around us.

I thought of Voltaire's 'il faut cultiver notre jardin', with all the myriad of different implications that that has. Yes, we must go out and weed even though the weeds will grow back, but we must also cultivate our souls and our communities.

I thought of Camus's Sisyphus myth, how, even though we know our actions may be pointless, honest hard work is a better response to existential despair than denial, dogma and death.

I thought of the Inquisition, the Second World War, and all those who have lived through dark times, and how doing our bit and keeping a positive frame of mind is in many ways the best, and sometimes our only, course of action.

A revolution through gardening. A new 'dig for victory' campaign.

I am currently thinking of five positive actions I can take to make myself more able to cope with the crisis and to do more, however futile it may seem, to spread the word. It's important not to be complacent. Yes I am doing lots, and doing lots more than many other people, but I can't sit back and feel smug about it.

So far I have:

get some thick curtains to stop so much heat escaping through the windows, make a draught excluder for the back door
go along to the local FOE group and the Green Drinks event in Reading - meet people, make connections, stop feeling so much like no-one cares except people on the internet

Have several other thoughts, but need to tease them into a list. I like lists. Any suggestions?

*from which much of this entry is copied and pasted, sorry for being so unoriginal

December sniffles, obscure cuts of lamb and bio-"diversity" in my back garden

2007-12-14T16:22:00.000Z

Succumbed to the lurgy this week, shame on me! I felt myself coming down with it last week and thought I had successfully fought it off, and so I went around smugly evangelising about the healing properties of echinacea, zinc, onion soup and sheer bloody-mindedness. Unfortunately, I felt sniffly at the weekend and had to rally myself to meet a huge deadline on Monday, to which my immune system said, 'don't push it, mate, I'm not invincible' and I woke up on Tuesday feeling disgusting.

I get absolutely epic colds - not in the sense that I am ever particularly ill, but for some reason, they always go straight to my eyes, which get all swollen and streaming and painful, so I can't been able to focus on anything like knitting, reading, the computer, cross stitch etc. But enough of me moaning!

Being now less busy and germ-ridden, I have been able to get on with the mundane tasks associated with this time of year, and have placed a final Amazon order, written all but 5 of my cards this afternoon, while listening to the Messiah (this being the only Christmassy music I have aside from the Britten 'Ceremony of Carols' which doesn't last very long) and given my Christmas cakes a final feed of brandy before icing them this weekend.

Last night, I had my first encounter with lap of lamb (other than selling it), or, as it's known down south, breast of lamb. With help from the wonderful Old Scrote I managed to bone it out and make a sage and onion stuffing and roast it so slowly that by the end, the bf was kneeling by the oven, inhaling deeply and begging to be allowed to eat it now. I even managed to make him eat sprouts, though only by the inclusion of bacon...

The kitchen is still full of washing up, however.

Casual observation out of my window has shown that my garden is full of wildlife which, for a suburban wasteland whose surface is almost entirely gravel and patio, is rather impressive. Admittedly, much of the aforementioned biodiversity is actually pigeons and a grey squirrel that spends all day running back and forth along the fence at the end of the garden (don't really count greys as real squirrels, spoilt Northumbrian that I am!). I have seen a couple of robins and smaller birds, though. I wonder if there is any way I can encourage more wildlife while discouraging, or at least not further encouraging the pigeons and bushy-tailed vermin!! Or if, indeed, this is at all an ethical position to hold! Better some wildlife than none.... The greys have long since driven out the reds round here, so I needn't worry if they pinch some of the food I put out. I suppose I just wish some of the less pushy species would benefit from my generosity.

I got a form from some nosey agency the other day asking what I'd been doing since graduating. I filled it out saying I was a care worker and looking to become a freelance translator and report-writer, because I liked the control this gives me over my work and being able to work flexibly. I also said I was planning doing a dressmaking course next term because I wanted to 'learn new skills for a post-oil world'. Wonder what their statistics will make of that!

Carbon footprint

2007-12-06T20:25:00.000Z

I've been working on a conference on carbon capture this week, which has brought back to me some of the science of climate change, rather than simply concentrating on the lifestyle aspect of it.

So, I calculated my carbon footprint on the government website. This is the first time I've been able to do it with my own heating bills, which is interesting, although I couldn't find the bf's mileage on his car or anything, so that wasn't taken into account.

Anyway, we came up with 4.43 tonnes per year as our household footprint, which compares pretty favourably with the national average of 10.22 (although if this is for a household, most households may be 3, 4, 5 people, so it's not necessarily fair - the website isn't very clear about that) and with the target footprint of 3.54.

We did particularly well on appliances, which considering that we have a pretty crummy old (second-hand!) fridge and freezer, means that there must be a lot of people leaving their mobile phone chargers plugged in...

So, what does our action plan suggest:

Home:

switching to a green tariff - no can do, renting
reduce temp on thermostat - done this already, house is often dangerously cold as it is!
set the timer to only come on when people are in the house - well, duh!
get a seven day timer if people are in at different times - again, we have no control over the boiler etc, but when I'm in on my own during the day I tend to have the oil-filled radiator on for a burst of heat as it's better to heat a room than the whole house
renewable technologies e.g. solar panels, wind turbine - no can do, renting (when I get my smallholding, though......)
draught-proofing - have draught-excluders, but getting some really thick curtains would be good... there were some in Oxfam, so i'll measure the windows and see if they fit (they looked a bit short at first glance)
loft insulation - not shelling out to insulate someone else's house!! can you take it with you when you move???
double glazing - again, no can do.... would look into that or secondary glazing if we buy somewhere that's not double-glazed, but I flat-out refuse to get uPVC windows
underfloor heating - again, no can do, but I had it in my first year at uni and LOVED it!

Appliances

get more energy efficient fridge - yep, when this one breaks
get a microwave - I know they are more energy efficient, but we really haven't room for one, and I only really see them as a tool for defrosting/reheating rather than a cooking appliance... I know I should be more open-minded... I do use my slow cooker a fair bit though
get a dishwasher - okay, it only says this if you are a large household and do a lot of washing up throughout the day... we are a small household, do the washing up once in the evening (maybe once at lunch too), and also have a small house with no room for said appliance
turn down brightness and colour on the telly - apparently, manufacturers tend to set them for showroom viewing which is too bright for normal living rooms. I have no idea if this is true... I also never go anywhere near the telly... will pass info onto the boy...

Transport

walk, bike, use public transport whenever possible - do this already, boy does most of the time, sometimes drives to work when late... only really use car for getting places we can't get to on food/by bus/train or when we need to pick up something heavy
keep car in good condition - not my job!
stop flying - yes, yes, I know, it's bad, I am going to take the train to China... never take domestic flights, will take train within Europe, but sometimes it's just so expensive and time-consuming....

Leftovers recipe of the week

2007-12-05T11:57:00.000Z

This isn't a recipe, so much as a tip. I haven't done anything massively creative with leftovers this week. I tried a thing that involved fried rice, but it was vile and peculiar so you don't want to know about it!

Anyway, I have recently discovered that you can make stock in the slow cooker! As I have a ferocious cooker, it's quite difficult to keep the heat low enough as it is, which gives the slow cooker an advantage, but it is also so energy-efficient that it must be a more economical and environmentally friendly to make stock.

Just bung all the bones, veg, herbs etc you would normally put in in the crock pot, cover with cold water and cook for about six hours. Skim the fat off about half way through. When it's done, just strain it into various containers/bags and freeze!

I'm making some onion soup in the slow cooker atm. The boy has a cold, and has very generously shared his germs with me, so I thought it would be a nice, health-giving thing to have for supper. And it smells divine while it's cooking!

Ta-da!

2007-12-02T18:01:00.000Z

All finished, ready to frame, only almost-three-months late, but....

the enormous cross-stitch project is finished!!!!!

******mas

2007-12-01T10:46:00.000Z

I am not preparing for Christmas in the sense that I am rushing out to send myself (further) into debt by buying over-packaged gifts for everyone I know. Nor am I festooning my house with cheap tat made from oil and imported from the other side of the globe. I have a strict rule about not even beginning to think about Christmas before the 1st December. The only exceptions are that I have made my cakes, in order to get maximum brandy into them before I ice them, and bought some cards because I have a friend in China and need to post it early. But that's it.

I am trying to be as green as possible this Christmas. I don't buy into the massive festival of commercialism it has become. In fact, the 'greener' I get, the more I feel totally turned off by the decorations and naff gifts that are in the shops. I'm a bit of a foodie and love getting foodie things as presents (far better than having yet more stuff hanging around the house), but the weird gadgets that shops are trying to persuade people who don't know about food to buy you???? Give me a good knife or a Le Creuset dish any day, but really, there is nothing else I need. Or I'd love some good quality ingredients I wouldn't normally buy (my mum got me some fantastic things for my birthday) but don't get me something just cos it's in a pretty bottle!!

I hate how people are 'boxed' as well - shops will have a range of £5 gifts, £10 gifts, £20 gifts, so you can neatly slot your friends and family into little boxes for how much they mean to you and buy them presents accordingly.

No thank you! I have given up fighting my way through red, sparkly books of quotations to find things my brother might actually want to read, and now do most of my shopping online.

Now, really, the greenest thing to do would be to boycott Christmas altogether. It is, after all, a huge faff, and extremely expensive. The Victorians have a lot to answer for.

Yet, I can't quite bring myself to do that. Firstly, I'm a weakling who can't bear to be different from the rest of society. Okay, okay, that's not quite true. But it's important to me to take time out from my daily routine (wake up, drink tea, arrange words on a page, drink tea, faff on the internet, watch cookery programmes, drink wine, listen to Radio4, go to bed) and spend a few days lazing around with my nearest and dearest. I really enjoy cooking a meal alongside my mum and/or my granny, even down to everyone pitching in with the mammoth washing up effort. I love going for walks with the dog on Boxing Day when the ground is all crispy and frosty. I love singing, and carol services, and carols, and hate Slade with a fiery passion. I don't like mince pies very much, but I'm very fond of mulled wine, stollen, Christmas cake and those little sausages wrapped up in bacon.

On a more spiritual level, I definitely wouldn't call myself Christian, but as I've become more aware of the earth and the seasons, the connection* between the church's year and the agricultural year has become more acute to me and has become something worth celebrating for its own sake, rather than just because this is the time of year someone decided to plonk Christmas.

I don't think caring about the environment means we have to deny ourselves everything. For it to be a sustainable lifestyle choice, it has to be about restructuring how we live and how we consume, and coming together celebration is a part of that.

So, having decided to embrace Christmas, what can I do to celebrate it without giving in to mass consumerist hysteria?

Gifts

I am disorganised and untalented and I won't actually get around to making many of my gifts. I'll be lucky to finish the cross stitch for my parents' wedding anniversary which was in September, let alone knit my brother a dalek. (My cross stitch scissors have gone missing.) I am going to cross stitch a bookmark for my bf but that's it. However, I am going to buy small, thoughtful gifts for those closest to me and make sure that they are made of natural materials (as far as possible) and not going to get chucked out or left in a drawer come January. Next year I shall have done a sewing course, so will be in a better position to make things.

Gifts will be wrapped in recyclable (recycled, if I can get it) brown paper, stamped with potato-printed stars.

Cards

I'm sorry, I just like cards. I know they're not green, but a card says, 'hey, I like you enough to get off my arse, go to a shop, find out your address, dedicate an afternoon to writing individual messages to people, buy some stamps and get to the post-box before the last posting date' so much better than a circular email. Also, my elderly relatives don't do email. Also, I like getting cards, cos they make the house look festive, and they can be re-used as gift tags the following year. But, yes, I recognise that they are hugely destructive. Therefore, my cards are 50% recycled and all the profits go to Oxfam. M&S had some that were 75% recycled, the highest percentage I could find without getting the train into Reading, and gave a portion of the profits to charity, but all those ones were horrid and naff, and the nice ones weren't so fluffy and friendly, and I resented the implicit assumption that you couldn't care about the environment and have taste, so I refused to buy them.

Decorations

Oh, oh, the big tree debate. Do you buy a plastic tree that is made from nasty, unrecyclable materials and gives off nasty chemicals and is shipped over from China but which lasts for years and years? Or do you heartlessly rip a real tree out of the ground in order to cover it in baubles and then throw it away?

I've done a bit of reading online, and the main point is to consider what you're going to do with your tree afterwards. Does your council collect them? Can you chop it up and use it for firewood? Have you got a big garden you can plant it in?

I suppose it depends on your personal priorities. And, personally, I'm all for natural materials, and the idea of a re-useable tree that is made of baaaad things and is imported and hence unsustainable in a post-oil world comes a definite second to a real tree that comes from close by and smells all piney. Mmmmmm. Well-managed woodland is sustainable. Plastic is not. Plants and foliage help celebrate the passing of the seasons. Plastic does not.

The bf doesn't even want to get a tree at all, and I sort of see his point, as we are going to be away for most of the actual 12 days of Christmas, but I reckon I've found a solution, at least for next year. For £25 online (and that's without looking very hard, I'm sure I could find one cheaper with a bit of effort, and from nearby) you can buy a 3-4 ft Christmas tree in a pot, which you can bring into the house for a couple of weeks and then put outside again, and you can re-use it for at least a couple of years. Someone mentioned a dwarf spruce that will live in a pot and grow to a maximum of 6ft, which sounds perfect. I can't plant a tree out here, but from what I've read, it should survive in a pot for at least year or so, and hopefully by the time its life in a container is over, we will have bought somewhere with a garden that we can plant it out into.

For other decorations, I'm just going to get some good-quality, tasteful tree decorations and ribbons, and check out the legality of foraging for holly.....

Food

... is entirely the responsibility of my mum and my bf's mum who are doing the actual cooking over Christmas. I have faith that they will buy what they can locally and seasonally, and anyway, it's their choice, and I can't nag them about it, because I'm a guest and that would be rude! I can just buy them Joanna Blythman books next Christmas if I have my doubts. Muahahaha. I may well end up catering at new year though.

My word, what an epic post! Well done if you got to the end!

* some might call it the shameless hijacking of pagan festivals by the Judeo-Christian tradition.... they would not be wrong... but I believe that essentially we're celebrating the same thing - nature and community - and I'd rather just slot in with what the rest of the community does than split hairs about four days just to make a political point

It's Friday night and I'm alone at the computer...

2007-11-30T19:31:00.000Z

Today has been very frustrating. The audio I was transcribing seemed to have been recorded in a tin box and everyone at the conference appeared to be facing away from the microphone and suffering from a horrible cough. Couldn't hear a damn thing. Grr. Having a glass of chardonnay now while researching brassicas and would like to do some more work this evening (the bf is out at a work Christmas do - one of about 400 parties! - thank god I'm self-employed, I'm such a sociopath, the idea of these things fills me with fear) but fear I'll end up drinking in front of the internet and going to bed and falling asleep to 'The World Tonight' again.....

I've been going to bed so early lately. I'm sure it's because it's getting dark early.

Following on from the waste audit, this week we have a paltry amount of plastic packaging and a few bits of leftover turnip in the bin. About a sixth of a black binliner!!

I love my composter.

And, compostwoman, you will be pleased to hear all cotton wool pads are now going into it!

Veg box vegetable of the week - sprout tops

2007-11-30T18:56:00.001Z

According to BBC Food:

Once the preserve of street markets and allotment growers, sprout tops are now one of the most fashionable vegetables in the foodie world, along with other rediscovered brassicas like curly kale and purple sprouting broccoli. You'll now find them on menus in smart restaurants all over the UK.

So there you are. I am a very trendy vegetable-eater.

Sprout tops are the rosette of leaves from the top of the Brussels sprout stem and none of the photos Google threw up looked like what I have downstairs, so I was reduced to photographing my own!

Apparently, they are very nice stir-fried with ginger and chilli. So that's dinner sorted then!

Captain Cook made his crew eat sprouts as well as limes and lemons to combat scurvy and as far back as 5000 years ago they were believed to have healing properties and were prescribed by Chinese doctors. They are actually very healthy - only 10 calories each, high in fibre, free from cholesterol, low sodium, low fat, lots of vitamin C and some anti-oxidant properties.

Leftovers Recipe of the Week - Chicken, Leek and Mushroom Risotto

2007-11-26T23:31:00.000Z

Okay, last week I attempted to be helpful and try and come up with some approximate quantities. This week, it's just 'a dash of this' and 'a slosh of this' and the assumption that you know roughly how to cook risotto!

For 3 portions (yesterday's dinner and my lunch!), you will need:

leftover roast chicken for 3
2 small leeks or 1 big one
1 onion
2 large portobello mushrooms, or equivalent
chicken stock
white wine
fresh or dried herbs, we used tarragon, as we'd roasted the chicken in it on Saturday and made...
lemon and tarragon gravy (see Delia's fast-roast chicken and make too much!)
butter
cream
parmesan

Melt butter. Fry onion until soft. Add dried herbs now (I tend to save fresh till later on, but it's your choice!) and fry for a bit more.
Add the rice and stir it around to get coated in butter. Add a slosh of cream, but not too much. Stir.
Spoon in some stock. Basically, you need to do this repeatedly till the rice is cooked. Add liquid... wait for it to soak in and evaporate off... add more... wait...
Add the vegetables and chicken and stir.
Keep adding liquid and stirring constantly. I usually alternate between stock, wine and the yummy gravy.
When the rice is cooked, stir through some more cream and grate some parmesan into it to taste. Add fresh herbs here if you didn't earlier and season.

I love...

2007-11-25T20:58:00.001Z

Risotto.

Risotto is possibly one of my favouritest things in the world. It is impossible to be stressed and irritable while stirring a risotto.

Firstly, it makes you be a good cook and prepare everything in advance, so you can just add piles of chopped vegetables to the pan really easily and continue stirring more or less constantly, which makes for smooth, relaxing cooking.

Secondly, stirring it is so therapeutic! It's important to stir constantly, as you need to give each individual grain of rice a chance to cook evenly. Now, I know Jamie and Nigella with all their Recipes for Busy People, will tell you you can just whack all the stock in at once and bung the whole thing in the oven for half an hour, but I believe that people should be less busy! Less busy! And stirring a risotto is a wonderful excuse not to be busy for 40 minutes.

This means risotto is the kind of thing you can only really cook for family or very close friends, as you couldn't invite someone you didn't know that well over for dinner and then spend 40 minutes obsessively stirring grains of rice, so it has lots of lovely, homey connections!

Veg Box Vegetable of the Week!

2007-11-25T20:34:00.000Z

Okay, okay. I'm sorry.

I said you'd have to wait till Friday for this new feature. You've actually had to wait till Sunday. I could postdate it, but that would be deceitful. The BBC wouldn't be allowed to do that nowadays, so I'm damned if I'm going to deceive my dear readers.

Anyway, this Friday, we received in our veg box for the first time some cavolo nero.

Cavolo nero is an Italian cabbage with dark green leaves - very dark green, hence the name, which translates as 'black cabbage'. However, if we give it a poncey Italian name, cabbage seems more exciting than 1960s school dinner fare, which has unfairly influenced my perception of cabbage, even though I wasn't born until a good 20 years later. I blame the parents.

Cavolo nero has a tangy bite, but a sweet aftertaste, and (for cabbage!) it was rather pleasant.

We just sauteed it in a saucepan with some butter and some sprigs of rosemary and enjoyed it a lot, but it can also be used in a traditional Tuscan soup, and River Cafe Green has a nice recipe involving sausages. I also came across it in pasta on the internet, which looked nice.

According to this tome of wisdom, the plant can grow up to a metre high, and, unusually for a member of the cabbage family, you can pick the leaves and they grow back. "The ... leaves should be lightly crinkled and stiff, just the tip bent over. ... The wonderful taste develops after the plants have had a few weeks of frost. Leaves picked too early taste bitter and stringy." Apparently, you can also eat the little leaves in the middle raw in winter salads, but winter salads sound like the kind of thing that are much easier to contemplate in Italy than a badly-insulated house in Berkshire. We like soups and stews and blankets and hot water bottles!

Interesting article on raw milk from the Guardian

2007-11-22T23:01:00.001Z

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/drink/story/0,,2215048,00.html

Ways with waste

2007-11-19T20:06:00.000Z

Friday 16th November

tea leaves
veg scraps
tape from package
beer bottles

Saturday 17th November

tea leaves
veg scraps
duck carcass
wine bottle

Sunday 18th November

crisp packet
coffee grounds

That's interesting. I said on Self-Sufficientish that the single biggest contribution I could make towards reducing how much rubbish we put out would be to start making my own yoghurt. Actually, I should stop buying crisps! But yoghurt looks easy, so I'll do it anyway.

Since the arrival of the composter, all compostable waste has been accordingly composted. I find this disproportionately exciting, novice that I am.

We usually put out up to half a binbag a week, mostly packaging and occasional food leftovers (eg bones and veg that have been used in stock) that can't be composted. Packaging is to some extent unavoidable. I do try, e.g. I've started buying Copella apple juice which comes in recyclable bottles instead of stuff in tetra-paks. Bags for things like raisins, rice, pulses etc are less targetable, and sometimes have to be offset against other things: e.g. I reckon it's greener to buy dried pulses instead of tins, but then tins are recyclable... I've never seen any of those storecupboardy things packaged any other way, at least outside Morocco, except for those raisins in cardboard boxes I remember from when I was really small!

And now for my new feature....

'Leftovers Recipe of the Week'

Ta-da!

(I have another new feature too, but you'll have to wait for Friday for that.)

Now, I am including this, you understand, because I one day hope to turn my blog into a book on sustainable eating and cooking that will make me a millionnaire overnight and convert the rest of the world to home-made stock and whole milk.

Ahem...

Right, thanks to Lakshmi on INEGB for inspiring me with this.

Leftover Lamb Lucky Dip

You will need:

bits of lamb hacked off yesterday's roast, enough for two people
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
1 large carrot or several small ones
piece of ginger approx 2.5cm, grated
400g can tomatoes
1/2 tbsp tomato puree
juice and zest of a lime
creamed coconut, one serving, made up as per manufacturer's instruction
300ml stock (approx)
1 tbsp garam masala, or other spice mix of your choice
1/2 tsp chilli powder
Fresh herbs, e.g. mint, parsley, coriander, your choice!

Fry the onion for about 5 mins, then add spices and garlic and fry for further 2 mins
Add carrots and sweat for a few mins
Add lamb, stock, tomatoes, creamed coconut, tomato puree, lime zest and ginger. Bring to the boil then reduce heat to a simmer and leave to reduce for about an hour, till it is a thick, gloopy consistency
Stir in lime juice and fresh herbs, then serve

Waste audit, continued

2007-11-16T16:22:00.000Z

Wednesday 14th November

toilet roll tube
plastic rings that hold beer cans together
veg scraps (various)
stock cube box
stock cube foil
paper bag
dishcloth

Thursday 15th November

tissue
tea leaves
veg scraps
plastic packet (from dried mango... organic, but still totally unsustainable... must break habit...)
cotton wool pad

I really must eat less imported dried fruit, I'm sure it does terrible things to my carbon footprint.

I'm also slightly puzzled as to why there were no tea leaves on Wednesday. I cannot believe I drank no tea the whole day. I must have forgotten to write them down.

As an exciting addendum to what I shall term 'waste week', my dalek has arrived!! I am inordinately excited about it, and immediately emailed my dad. It was delivered on Wednesday night, but I had to go into Sustain yesterday and was working on a freelance job until lunchtime today, so I've only just had time to play with it. It is now sitting down the bottom of the garden, with the weeds from the other week's digging extravaganza, some veg scraps from lunch and a couple of toilet roll tubes in it. My amateur opinion is that it needs more 'browns'. Maybe I should tear up a cardboard box or two and make a layer of that...

Anyway, I have been working hard and not sleeping well for the last few days, so I am going to retire to bed with a hot water bottle, a cup of chai and a Wiggly Wigglers podcast or two.

Waste audit number two

2007-11-14T09:21:00.000Z

Prompted by a thread on selfsufficientish I've decided to do another waste audit. For a week, I'm going to write down everything that goes in the bin or the recycling and see how it's changed since I moved out of halls and into a proper house, as well as what I can do to reduce it.

Monday 12th November

milk bottle top
top of yoghurt pot
bulgur wheat packet
tea leaves
leek leaves
tuna can
plastic wrapper round tuna cans
2 pieces kitchen roll

Tuesday 13th November

tea leaves
back of panty-liner
coke bottle
2 beer cans
veg scraps
cardboard tube
2 crisp packets
plastic freezer bag

The most obvious change is that now I'm living with the bf there's much more junk food in the house!!

Things highlighted in green are compostable; I don't actually have a dalek yet, but it should be arriving soon, and this is something I've already identified a need for and am taking steps to reduce.

Things highlighted in red are recyclable (though the cardboard tube will probably be composted when that's an option).

Christmas cakes

2007-11-12T14:49:00.000Z

I got my Christmas cakes out of their tin to see if they needed 'feeding' again. There was a strong waft of brandy, so I decided they didn't, but I thought I'd take a picture of them to share anyway!

After much discussion on Downsizer about the best size and shape cake tins to use, I ignored all the advice and made a square one and a smallish one. My grandma gave me lots of cake tins as she's selling her flat and moving into a home, so the bf came home a couple of weeks ago to find me covered in cake mix doing area calculations involving pi to work out which combination of tins would work out the same size as the one in the recipe.... (I then had to give the cake tins a good scrub as she hasn't been able to see to do the washing up properly for about five years....)

Anyway, the cakes have worked regardless. I have used epic quantities of greaseproof paper and half a bottle of brandy! They smell all yummy and Christmassy.... Mmmmmmmm.....

Treadle machines and Jerusalem artichoke soup

2007-11-11T19:07:00.000Z

Wow, I thought I was eating the seasons last year, living off roasted carrots and parsnips for six months, but it's amazing how much more variety there is, even at this time of the year, than I was aware of!

We've started getting a veg box, which is local, or as local as is feasible when you live in the suburban sprawl that is the south east! (It's also organic, but I'm more fussed about the local.) £10 a week for an enormous box of veg. And, honestly, the changes you make to your diet when you have to! I've been saying for ages that we need to eat more veg-based meals and less meat, and do more creative things in winter than roasted carrots and parsnips. Somehow, it's difficult to get out of old habits, even with the best of intentions. I never did buy any Jerusalem artichokes, and I never did get to grips with kale. I didn't like the idea of veg boxes and spent a lot of time trying vainly to find a local supplier with a shop (we did find one, but he closes in the winter!), because I like being able to poke my potatoes and fondle my onions before I decide to buy them. However, now we've got one, I've been given a kick up the bottom and have finally done all the things I knew I should do and never got round to. Chard minestrone, yummy veggie stir fry, and just now a soupy-stewy-thingy made with half a cabbage and leftovers from yesterday's supper (the citrus liquid from the casserole - b*ggers ate all the duck! - and some carrots). Tomorrow - Jerusalem artichoke soup!

In other news, my sewing machine works!! We finally got wireless to function properly, and I can now use the computer all over the house, instead of only on top of the sewing machine by the phone socket, so I finally got round to putting the belt on and when you pedal it, the little wheel on top goes round and moves the little needle up and down!!! Wheeeee!!!!

I did have a little trouble keeping up the momentum, though, and intend to stick to making lines on paper till I get the hang of it. I was put in mind of these guidelines, from treadleon.net

1. Place sewing machine on floor... it is best if back of machine is to the wall and front towards open space.
2. Place chair in front of machine.
3. Sit in chair and place feet on treadle (right one slightly ahead of left one)
4. Start hand wheel by turning with hand
5. Wiggle feet
6. Observe what happens... if it doesn't look right, wiggle feet differently.
7. Curse, rethread needle where thread broke, start hand wheel in opposite direction and try again
8. Try it with one foot
9. Get a kid to work the pedal while you sew :o)

Lastly, rather than cursing the fact that none of my friends are interested in being green and that I'm therefore conducting most of my social life through the internet, I've decided to embrace the fact instead! Please find, on the links bit down the side, for your delectation, lots of blogs which I've been reading for a while which are variously interesting, amusing, thought-provoking and often all three!

'22 Hyde Parks!'

2007-11-07T16:34:00.000Z

According to one of the Wiggly Wigglers podcasts (which I'm steadily working my through having rediscovered them last week!) an area the size of 22 Hyde Parks has been lost in London alone due to people concreting/paving over their gardens!

While it might not seem that urban gardens could do much for wildlife, being small and, well, urban, they can still be wildlife havens and can provide necessary 'stepping stones' to allow animals to move between larger open spaces, such as parks and greenbelt, or as my 'Grow Organic, Cook Organic' book puts it, "an oasis in an urban desert". We do seem to have quite a bit of wildlife in ours - quite a few birds, an absolutely enormous pidgeon, a particular grey squirrel that runs along the fence at the bottom of the garden all day, and once a fox came right up to the patio outside the back door! (Of course, having grown up in the wilds of Northumberland, I'm a bit of a wildlife snob and don't really consider grey squirrels or urban foxes 'proper' wildlife.)

I feel a bit hypocritical going on about this after having been frantically digging up weeds earlier in the day. I must confess to partly giving in to the suburban urge for tidiness, but I did also want to have that bed free for growing edible things in next spring. I'm also sure it must be possible to have a garden that attracts wildlife without being an overgrown mess - I prefer looking at the garden when it isn't full of dead leaves and comfrey!

So, I've resolved only to take stuff out of the garden when:

a) it's going to be doing something useful (such as the comfrey for the compost heap and tea)
or b) I can put something better in its place.

There's little I can do in terms of planting things that will attract wildlife, as someone else has already paved over my garden, making a wildflower lawn or woodland garden a little bit out of the question, but I could get a bird table I can reach (there's a thing hanging from the tree, but it's rubbish) and some seed feeders and continue my policy of benign neglect with regards to the rockery for the time being. However, I reckon I could take the nettles out of there (somehow, somewhen), as long as I leave the patch behind the garden that we're technically responsible for in its wild, nettley state* and dedicate at least one of my wine boxes to growing some brightly coloured flowers to attract bees, insects. Lavender, maybe. Lavender smells nice.

* Just have to hope I don't lock myself out too often!

Hamster 1 - 0 Weeds; Hamster 0 - 1 Yale lock

2007-11-07T15:03:00.000Z

Inspired by Mel's post on comfrey, I decided the time had come to do something about the weeds in my garden. All well and good to declare part of your garden or allotment the comfrey patch, but the only other thing I have is gravel, so I need all the growing space I can get. Bear in mind, this is what my only free bed looks like.

The tyranny of comfrey and mint must end!

Bear in mind also that the only gardening equipment I have is a small hand trowel and a plastic rake. I used both to their full potential. There was a carpet of leaves on the ground, and I now have three full bags of leaves to make mulch out of. There was a bed full of weeds and stones: there is now a bed covered in cardboard and old carpet waiting for spring, and a bin bag full of comfrey leaves waiting to be put into a dalek. (Where, oh where is my dalek?) If I can get my hands on a bucket I might make some comfrey tea.

I'm afraid I had to put weedkiller on some of the roots as I couldn't get them out with my trowel. Please don't hate me.

It's fairly well intertwined with an unhealthy-looking shrub thing in the other bed, and constitutes (along with nettles) most of the rockery. I've left this task for another day. One of the problems of only being able to grow things in containers is that looking after the garden itself seems like an unnecessary chore - in fact you could get quite Marxist about that: I don't want to maintain a garden in a rented house, because I don't own the means of production! I'm just looking after someone else's garden so I get my deposit back eventually, rather than using it to feed myself or grow what I want.... Creative freedom, man....

Woah, slight side-track there!

When I went to get the cardboard boxes which are kept out the front, I decided to take my shoes off to go through the house, as I'd just tidied up. Unfortunately, it's been a rather windy day, and as soon as I stepped outside, the door banged shut behind me, leaving me standing on my front patio wearing only socks on my feet and clutching some flattened cardboard boxes.

'Bugger', I thought.

My socks were clean and everything.

To get back to the garden, I had to go to the end of the terrace and make my way down a very narrow, nettle-infested path, using the flattened cardboard boxes as makeshift stepping stones and feeling very silly indeed.....

Luckily, I was able to chuckle at myself as I nursed my nettle stings and my cold feet.

And I found a marble in the plantable bed.

And my garden is slightly less of an eyesore. My soul feels happy.

Chard

2007-11-06T08:53:00.000Z

Well, we dived into the veg box with enthusiasm last night, and I can say with conviction that I have no strong opinions about chard at all.

Foodie news items

2007-11-04T20:24:00.000Z

There've been a couple of things in the news recently that I really should comment on, but have been dashing around like a mad thing lately, and tending to spend my evenings talking to my bf or making Christmas cake.

Firstly, the Soil Association were considering imposing much stricter standards on imported organic food. Now, my first reaction to this was that organic is just a label that tells me how something is grown* and that as an intelligent consumer I am perfectly capable, thank you very much, of looking at the label to find out whether something has been grown organically in Israel or grown organically down the road from me. I broadly agree that growing cash crops for export is never going to lift third world countries out of poverty, and that importing lots of food is a Bad Thing. I just didn't really think it was within the Soil Association's remit.

Then, I thought about it a bit more, and realised that the aim of the organic movement and the Soil Association is to promote sustainability, and that, really, air-freighted food and large-scale importing of food** isn't, really, sustainable.

I still don't know if I want every ethical food choice I make to be dictated by the SA, but I'm beginning to see the connection between the two issues. Oh, it's all so hideously complicated.

The second thing is the Competition Commission's report on supermarkets***, which I won't go on about at length in case I start spitting blood again. The Today programme irresponsibly broadcast it before I'd had my second cup of tea, and my colleagues had to suffer the consequences all morning. (Poor buggers.)

Anyway, I understand that it was largely a result of the Asda/Tesco milk-price-fixing scandal that came to light over the summer (Really? Supermarkets don't pay milk producers enough? The food industry is stacked against the little guy? Quick! Commission a report!) and that it was therefore supposed to report on supermarkets' competing against each other, not against other retailers, cos, y'know, that's not really competition so much as....

Okay, okay, blood duly spat, sorry.

So, yes, the recommendation that supermarkets should stop hoarding land and not building it to discourage other supermarkets opening is a good one from a certain, limited, point of view.

And, yes, there are no systemic problems with the supply chain. Waitrose, while not perfect, still manages to pay suppliers a fair price, while maintaining a large-scale distribution network. So it's not because of the way Tesco sources its products that farmers get pissed off and go bankrupt, it's cos of the way they treat the farmers.

The thing that annoyed me was that it neatly sidestepped the big problems with supermarkets. They are all capable of competing with each other, and we don't need to make that easier, as off the back of that recommendation there could be more and more and more supermarkets opening up everywhere in the name of 'competition'. Which might help them fight each other, but will just squeeze out small local retailers even more.

And also, the immense amount of pressure the supermarkets exert over their suppliers was largely overlooked, which ignores the glaringly obvious problem that the reason none of their suppliers will speak out against the supermarkets is not because they are happy with being treated like like they are, but because they are scared. Scared to speak out in case they lose the paltry income they get from their monocrop of cauliflowers. It's not a Catch-22**** situation, but it's a very unfortunate one, and it needs lots of people to start caring and provide a demand for alternative outlets and to campaign on behalf of this.

The bf and I went to stay at his mum's this weekend. There's a little Tesco just opened in the village a few months ago. That shop was a mini supermarket before, and the village managed to support (and still boasts) two butchers shops (one of which is new!), a fishmongers, two greengrocers and two bakeries. One butcher, greengrocer and baker and in the same stretch of shops as the Tesco, while the others and the fishmonger are further away. It'll be really interesting to see what closes, and where, if anything.

In the interest of being positive about this issue, may I first praise the new butcher in the village for the excellent service we received yesterday. We turned up as they were clearly closing, and he went into the back, found us a roasting joint, brought the scales out, even though they'd been cleaned, so he could weigh it and price it for us, and was very smiley and helpful, even though we'd probably annoyed him by turning up when he wanted to go home. (I know we did, I used to work in a shop. Every day punctually at 5 to 5, a bevy of people used to appear in the car park, walk towards us very slowly, proceed to wander around the shop and ask questions about where the meat and cakes came from and stuff. Insensitive so-and-sos.)

We also got our veg box on Friday, and haven't got to play with it yet, but it looks very exciting. Some of it comes from near Reading, some from Thame and the fruit from Gloucestershire, which is about as local as you can hope for when the farm shop has closed for the winter and everywhere around you is covered in new-build houses and motorways. All organic, though that was a secondary consideration. Also got some meat at the farmers' market on Thursday, including a mallard which I have to learn how to joint, and some pork - if it's good we'll get half a pig from the same people. Very helpful he was too, the farmer.

Now, what can I do with Swiss Chard?.......

What is Swiss Chard????

* And don't get me started on the Soil Association's monopoly on organic labelling, and how it discriminates against small producers who can't spend ££££ on certification.
* Is it just me that thinks that while eating strawberries in January is Just Plain Wrong, we can excuse ourselves the odd banana and cup of coffee? I am a little hypocrite sometimes.
*** "Why is there only one Monopolies Commission?" my boyfriend asked the other day. Why indeed. Must be why they renamed it. Could stand the paradox.
**** Really, it's not. I read the book. It's a whole lot more complicated than just 'a difficult situation'.

Quick update

2007-10-25T10:49:00.001+01:00

Hello all,

Have been very busy rushing around with jobs, volunteering and stuff, and have also been a bit stressed out about it all, so done very little and had little time to write about it. Had some friends over at the weekend, which was lovely, and I was encouraged that they were also starting to talk about 'green' things. (We did have a bit of a go at one of our number about vegetarianism, mind....)

Am very excited as my spinach seedlings have just poked their wee green heads through the soil!! It's weird - they sprouted, the next day I read the end of 'Scenes from a Smallholding' where he talks about how amazing the miracle of seeds turning into plants is, and then the next day I read this post on Bean Sprouts... Must be a sign of something!!

I've also ordered a dalek, so at some point within the next, ooh, 25 days it should have arrived, and my great composting adventure can begin....

Is it wrong...

2007-10-14T20:26:00.000+01:00

... that as a committed environmentalist and someone who generally finds Jeremy Clarkson supremely irritating, I am giggling at Top Gear?

*ponders*