A few updates...

I know it's all been a bit quiet on the blogging front recently - I've been a bit lacking in time as work's been very busy, and I've been trying to juggle a lot of stuff outside that.

However, many things have happened/are happening...

• I'm in the middle of moving my money from Natwest to The Cooperative. So far, so good.
• I got very excited about a table. My friends gave it to me when they moved out of their house, and it's in the kitchen of my new house. To look at, it's nothing exciting. However, the exciting thing is that the table is designed to be taken apart and put back together - the legs are held on with bolts and butterfly nuts, meaning it can be moved between places, instead of battling with the Ikea style furniture that doesn't like being taken apart and reassembled. 
• I'm reading two awesome books - "Waste" by Tristram Stuart, which is all about waste food, and "Cradle to Cradle", which is about rethinking the way we view things and sustainable product design. Both are awesome.
• I went on a bike maintenance course last weekend at the Bristol Bike Project, which was a birthday present from my sister. My bike needed a bit of work, and I was keen to learn how to fix some basic things myself instead of just taking it to a bike project. The course was great, and a great insight into the wider project as a whole (hopefully more on that soon...). If you're looking for a bike maintenance course, I highly recommend it, as it helps support a lot of their other awesome work.
• I've made some progress with booking my holiday in Spain. I'm travelling to Barcelona with 4 friends, and we're hiring a car (just as sustainable as getting the train if you have a full car!) and getting the ferry from Portsmouth to Le Havre, then stopping off at a few places in France along the way (including a WWOOFing site of a friend of a friend I believe). Then after the festival we're helping out at, I'm staying on in Barcelona for 3 days, before getting the train across to Bilbao for 3 days. Someone has already offered me a couchsurfing spot in Bilbao, but I'm on the hunt for somewhere to stay in Barcelona still. I've also booked my tickets back - the sleeper train from Hendaye to Paris, the Eurostar across to London and then the coach back to Bristol. All in all, I'm pretty darn excited, both about the holiday, and doing it in a different way. The idea of getting the train back is especially exciting as I love trains, and I'm really looking forward to couch surfing and meeting some people while I'm there...
• I found an awesome butchers - Sheepdrove Farm up in Redland - they have amazing welfare and environmental standards. They also have really minimal packaging, including wrapping the items in waxed paper that can be recycled

The meat of the issue

This blog post has taken me ages to write. I've found the subject of eating meat a really difficult one to talk about without sounding judgemental over other people, which isn't my intention at all. The last couple of weeks especially have been a real learning experience for me regarding meat production, and it's shaped my thoughts on the matter. But it's shaped my thoughts on where I BUY meat from, not where I EAT meat from - if someone else has cooked dinner with meat that I didn't buy, I value the social importance of eating together above needing to know where the meat has come from.

Now in explanation, I've just finished reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, most of which I read whilst staying with my friend Alexa who recently raised her own pigs (which she's now eating). I would say it was one of the most important/difficult/interesting/horrifying/thought provoking books I've ever read, and I would encourage others to read it too. It's not easy reading, but it is important reading. As he says in the book "...it is an argument for vegetarianism, but it's also an argument for another wiser animal agriculture and more honourable omnivory."

This means I've been thinking a lot about meat, and whether it's ok to eat it. I'm a meat eater and always have been. I was raised in a family where my dad doesn't think it's a meal if there isn't a chunk of meat on the plate somewhere. As a result, it was normal for me to eat meat once, maybe twice a day.

Over the last year, I've been making a concious effort to eat less meat, but I still eat more than I think I do. If you asked me, I'd say I eat meat 3 times a week, but I'd say by the time you count an occasional lunchtime sandwich, or bacon buttie at the weekend, it's probably closer to 7. And that's definitely too much in my opinion.

Since starting the project, I've made an effort to switch to only eating free range chicken and pork. I was feeling pretty good about things - there was a mental "tick" in the box for the area of meat eating. But right at the start of Eating Animals, he talks a lot about what the terms Free Range and Organic mean. Or don't mean.   Turns out, that free range don't necessarily roam around outdoors, and neither do organic chickens. "Access to the outdoors" can mean a window, or a door at one end of a very large shed.

At this point in reading the book, my heart sunk. Everything I thought I knew went out of the window.

The rest of the book re-iterated things that I already kind of knew, added in a lot more information, and put it all in the cold light of day. I'm not the most well off person in the road, but it's within my budget to buy better sourced meat. So while I could previously have claimed to be ignorant about the issue or too poor to make changes, I now felt that if I didn't change my purchasing habits, it could only come down to indifference on my part.

And indifferent I am not.

Before this year, I don't think I'd ever used the word provenance. But now it's one that frequently leaves my lips, especially when talking about food. It refers to the place or source of origin of something (in this case, the food item in question). And that I've realised is the most important thing. If you buy an organic chicken from the supermarket, you have no real idea where the chicken comes from. But if you buy it from a butcher, they should be able to tell you where the chicken comes from and what the welfare standards it was raised under were (well, if they're a decent butcher they should)...

So what does this mean?

Well, supermarkets were already out, so that's not a problem. But it means I now want to go above and beyond just buying free range or organic meat, and actually bother to check whether it has access to the outdoors as well. I suffer from what I call "polite British syndrome", so I'm going to have to get over that sharpish if I'm going to start doing it.

Two places recently have impressed me though with their provenance information.

The first is Sheepdrove Organic Farm, who have a shop up in Redland. The information on their website is incredibly detailed, and their commitment to animal welfare should be applauded. I'm hoping to get up to the shop to chat to them more in the next few weeks.

The second is Better Food Company, an organic food shop in St Werburghs. Now, I do complain about BFC from time to time, due to a lot of the produce being pretty darn pricey. But their dedication to detailing their suppliers and the provenance of their produce is amazing for a shop of their size. So while I would prefer to go to the butchers for my meat, it's useful to know I can buy from BFC knowing that the meat there meets my standards.

This goes alongside my other commitments to eating less meat, and trying to eat the less desirable cuts (the pate making in Lincolnshire was a success, so I'm hoping to replicate it here soon), hopefully leading me to "more honourable omnivory"!

Slippers and sausages

I'm up in Lincolnshire at the moment visiting my friend Alexa who I studied with at CAT. Two things about this visit have been especially inspiring.

Firstly, last year Alexa and Gavin got pigs. This was mainly because the garden of the house they bought was full of the wild version of comfrey, and pretty much the only way to get rid of it (without resorting to nasty chemicals) is with pigs. The problem with trying to dig it up, is that if you split the root, two plants grow in its place. However, pigs dig up and eat the roots, solving the problem.

 

So two little piglets were purchased, an area was fenced off, and the pigs started digging. Apart from a few minor mishaps and some escaping piglets, the pigs were a resounding success. The comfrey was eradicated, and the pigs had a completely free-range and happy upbringing. The pigs went to the butchers in January, with one pigs worth of meat going to Gavin's family, and the other pig being kept by Alexa and Gavin. Now, Gavin is a vegetarian, and hasn't eaten meat in 15 years, but decided that he couldn't possibly disagree with eating the pigs on environmental or animal welfare grounds. And so, he's been eating the pork. 

Best of all, they got given all the offal too, so Alexa and I are going to have a bash at making pork liver pate this weekend - I shall report back on the outcome...

Secondly, and perhaps more interestingly, Alexa makes slippers for a living. She made a pair for Gavin for his birthday a few years ago, and they worked out so well that the idea for Motties slippers was born. Alexa now makes slippers full time, making them out of a little  workshop in her house.

What's really inspiring about Motties is what they're made out of and how they're made. The leather for the slippers is rescued waste from the upholstery industry, where it would otherwise be thrown out. Likewise for the wool and the rest of the fabric that goes into a pair of the slippers, often made from unwanted blankets or jumpers. Material that is unusable or unsuitable for other parts of the slippers is used inside the inner sole, then layered with a suede sole and fabric inner. A top is crafted from a leather outer and wool inside, and then the slipper is stitched together. Each pair is unique as the stock of leather and material that Alexa has to work with changes week to week, and so the colours vary all the time. 

And there's some inspiring details behind the scene. She's currently experimenting with composting the wool, leather and cotton scraps that are too small to use, making sure any waste is recycled as much as possible. Added to that, the packaging that the slippers come in is minimal and reusable - simple brown paper envelopes that protect the slippers, but can be reused by the recipient or easily recycled. She's also currently experimenting with making removable inner soles for the slippers that can be bought to allow old Motties to be given a second lease of life, or be washed to keep your slippers smelling fresh. 

I love the fact that they're upcycled from reclaimed materials, and Alexa works with what she has available at the time. Plus they're super comfy and mine have lasted brilliantly. 

So, as well as catching up with a friend, I've had a lesson in ethical and happy meat, and upcycling and sustainable product design. 

Still here, just internetless....

So it's been a bit quiet on the blogging side over the last month. It's a combination of packing to move house, and then not yet having internet at my new house. Here's a whistle stop tour of what's been going on...

- Money moving - I'm preparing to move my bank account to a more ethical bank account as part of Move Your Money Month...
- Energy supplier - In my new house, we've decided to pay a bit extra to go with Ecotricity as our gas and electricity supplier - this makes me very happy
- Furniture reuse - I furnished the rest of my bedroom from second hand furniture or stuff that was being thrown out. We also rescued two things for our kitchen from skips/the side of the road, and managed to hand on a few bits and pieces we didn't need to other people.
- Forage o'clock - I went foraging at the weekend and picked a load of wild garlic just off the cycle path to Portishead. Talk about zero food miles :)
- Happy pigs - I've just been reading the rough guide to ethical living, and as a result, pork is joining chicken on my list of things that I'll only eat if it's free range/organic.
- Smelling green - Over the last couple of months I've slowly been switching to natural based toiletries. Gone are aerosols and chemical things - I've now switched shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, face wash, moisturiser and perfume. Generally I'm really pleased with how my skin/hair is feeling. Still a few things I need to address - I tried switching deodorant and turned out to be allergic to the one I switched to. Hmmmm. And I still can't find a hair product that prevents my hair from going frizzy without it making it greasy... The hunt continues...

Longer posts to come when the internet is back next week :)

Slipping up, almost slipping up, and missing out

All's been a bit quiet on the blogging front, mostly because I'm moving house today, and so the last few weeks have been a bit focused on that. There's been a lot of conversations and thoughts going on though - mostly around waste and our need for stuff.

A few quick updates though....

I bought a sandwich last week from the cafe across the road. Mmmmmmm coronation chicken. It didn't hit me for a few days that their chicken is not free range (I didn't ask, but given the price and the type of cafe, it would be pretty surprising). So whoops.

I almost accidently went to a supermarket yesterday too. I was in a restaurant/bar with some friends, eating tasty pizza and drinking some lovely red wine, and when I left realised I was in need of some milk. Oh look, there's a Coop across the road - excellent. It wasn't until I got to the til that I realised what I was doing. I blame the several glasses of wine for dulling my memory, but it shows how easy it is to fall into a habit, especially when you're somewhere unknown or different.

And then we move on to the missing out. I was in London last weekend and went to Camden with some friends on the Sunday. Firstly I found it a bit overwhelming - the sheer amount of shops and people trying to get you to buy things is incredible. I came across a lovely scarf that I fell in love with, and I was about to part with my money for it, when my friend Sian pointed out that it was made in China. To me, the scarf was a bargain, but at that price it couldn't pay the workers a fair amount. I realised then that each transaction is not just about me. Clothes and accessories is something I haven't really looked at in detail yet - I think it's going to be a hard one, as I'm not the skinniest girl around, and I'm yet to find somewhere that stocks ethical fashion above a size 14/16. But things like scarves etc are things that I do have control about, and therefore it's even more important that I make the right decisions with these items. I'm still thinking about that scarf though....

The wider issues of food...

At the weekend I went to a meeting arranged by Bristol 2050, aimed at exploring who feeds Bristol and what the future potential is. It made me think a lot about what the bigger food issues (outside of myself and this project) are, and what the solutions might be.

A lot of interesting points came up. I started a discussion about feeding people in more deprived areas of the city, which is an issue I feel is often lost amongst discussions that often rotate around projects and people in more affluent areas. A lot of talk was around the need for education and engagement with people, as well as the challenge of providing low cost, high quality food. All good points, all hard things to do in action...

But the two things that I took out of the meeting were as follows:


We are very separated from our food and how it grows 

We live currently in a perpetual global summertime, able to buy whatever food we want, whenever we want. It comes shrink wrapped, with the mud scrubbed off and pre chopped/peeled for our convenience. Not only does this separate us from the source of our food and the process of its production, it also means that it often tastes pretty rubbish. I remember the first time I had carrots grown by my Mum, being surprised that carrots tasted like that. And the strawberries I picked in the Pick Your Own fields in summertime were something that the imported strawberries that you can source year round just pale in comparison to.

What's the solution to this? Eating seasonally, as I've mentioned, is not a walk in the park (and I'm not even eating 100% seasonally). A lot of vegetables that grow well in this country (such as beetroot) are not things that people cook with, or even know how to cook. And imported food is not all bad - it's a necessary export for a lot of countries. However, there has to be some kind of balance in this.

One point that stuck with me though is that we have lost our enjoyment in food. If you eat year round strawberries, you get used to the mediocre taste. But if you get to eat wonderful tasting strawberries for a few months a year, then they taste even better. Food that's ripe when picked, rather than been picked unripe and shipped across the world, simply tastes better. And that's something that we seem to have forgotten and lost along the road to convenience.


How do we do this without taking a step back?


A lot of people don't want to change. That's the reality. Even I am struggling with the limits of how far I'm willing to adapt my eating habits, and I'm pretty motivated by all of this. And this is a big issue - will be people be willing to change their on demand, season-less eating habits?

Someone made a valid point at the meeting, that people don't want to take a step back, and I think this is true - most people don't want to do something that feels like they're losing out on something, or giving things up. So maybe we need to focus on finding the positive message? Perhaps we need to help people to rediscover the joys of good, seasonal food, rather than trying to stop them eating the inferior imported options.

How we go about doing that is another question...

The problem with cabbage...

...is mostly that I have two of them in my fridge that need to be eaten. Last week I never quite managed to eat the cabbage that came in my veg box, and another one arrived this week.

Given that it's just me eating this food, that's a lot of cabbage.

For the last 3 weeks I have been full of enthusiasm and excitement for the veg box and eating seasonally. Lots of potatoes and carrots? No problem! How hard can eating seasonally be?

Well, now I have two large cabbages in my fridge, not to mention a load of potatoes in my cupboard.

Suddenly, seasonal eating seems a little less appealing. I mean, I like cabbage, but not enough to eat it every day.

So what are the options? Well, sharing a veg box with someone would help with this kind of problem. Half a cabbage a week is a lot more manageable than a whole one. I'm hoping that in my new house, one of my housemates might be up for doing this, but I'll have to wait and see. I could opt for a less seasonal veg box with some imported vegetables, but that kind of misses the point really.

Which leaves me with one other solution - find some more cabbage recipes - can anyone help?

The chicken saga...

Ok, so maybe saga is too strong a word, but it was a bit of a mission...

I was cooking a special meal for some friends last night and had planned a big Chinese feast. One of the central parts of this meal was planned to be sweet and sour chicken. Which using my incredible powers of deduction required me therefore buying some chicken.

So Saturday morning, I set off up Gloucester Road armed with my reusable shopping bags and a stupidly long shopping list, which featured some free range chicken breasts.

The first hurdle however was when I got to the local butchers, only to discover that their chicken wasn't free range. With supermarkets off the agenda, I was faced with walking 20 minutes up the road to the next butchers that I knew stocked free range chicken (all the time grumbling that I hadn't taken my bike).

The second hurdle was reached when I got to the butchers. Yes, they had free range chickens, but no chicken breasts, only whole chickens. Parting with the best part of a tenner (internally lamenting that I could have bought a free range chicken for half that from the supermarket, whilst constantly reminding myself that this isn't about the money), I bought a chicken and carried it all the way home.

But then the hurdles turned into positives. I jointed the chicken yesterday, ready to cook it for the sweet and sour, and using only the breasts and one of the thighs, I fed myself and three friends, and still had enough to supply my two housemates with leftovers.

And then I roasted the remaining chicken parts, stripped off the meat, and made stock with the carcass and the bits of leftover vegetables that I've been keeping all week (supplemented with a few bits from my veg box). The remaining chicken and the stock then went into making a (by my own admission, delicious) chicken noodle soup that will supply me with lunches for the rest of the week.

So, having to travel quite a long way to get the chicken was a bit of a pain, but now I know which butchers to go to, things will be easier in future. Also, I've discovered a great butcher that clearly labels the free range/organic status of its meat.

However, I think the fact that I had to buy a whole chicken was a real positive (and good lesson). I don't think it's right that we can just buy the best parts of the animal and ignore the rest of it. If you want the chicken breast, you should use the rest of the meat too, and waste as little of it as possible. And by doing that with the rest of the chicken, I made stock (also using up lots of ends of vegetables that would have been wasted), and ended up with a lovely soup that will feed me for several further days.

The honeymoon period is officially over...

The first month of this project was pretty easy. It was all exciting and new, and full of good ideas.

And now it's starting to sink in that things aren't going to be that easy.

Today I forgot to buy any milk, and my nearest cornershop doesn't stock organic milk. So it's either an early morning trip to the further away shop, or a different breakfast for me. Turns out my memory isn't quite up to the task yet.

Cooking is getting trickier - a lot of my go-to meals involve meat (which I'm trying to eat less of, and mostly used to come from supermarkets), so a lot more time is going into working out what I'm going to eat at the moment. I'm sure this'll get easier as I expand my vegetarian repertoire, but at the moment, it's seeming a little challenging. Fingers crossed this weekend's weekly shop will help.

I'm also feeling like I'm constantly lacking in knowledge about the right/wrong things. I have a huge stack of books to read that I need to get through before I can make some of the decisions I need to make, but I'm struggling to find the time to read them, make the changes and then write about them in a remotely up to date fashion. I've started several books, skimmed some parts of them and then had to move on because I need to get onto the next one, and the stack never seems to get any smaller...

But two good things have happened today.

1) My first veg box arrived. The reality of eating seasonally is apparent, with a good chunk of it being potatoes and carrots, but there's also beetroot, leeks, a squash and a cabbage to add a bit of variety.

2) I've been getting some RSI style twinges in my arms this week (no, that's not the good thing), and this is likely due to too much computer usage. Work are buying me an ergonomic keyboard as I found in the past that really helped, but obviously that doesn't help me outside work with all my writing, which is done on a laptop. So I put a quick message up on the freeconomy website asking if anyone has a spare one they're not using, and offering some skills/baked goods in exchange. And bingo, someone's offered me one. It feels good, because not long ago I would have just gone online and with a click of a few buttons, bought myself a new one. I've realised, in reality there must be a lot of people with that kind of thing sitting on a shelf gathering dust somewhere.

Shopping lists

I'm terrible - I never write a shopping list. I just bumble around the shops, making it up as I go along. The consequence of this is that (a) I waste food, buying stuff I never get round to using, and (b) I forget to buy things that I need, and have to go back to shops. Over the last few years, I've got around the second problem by just popping to supermarkets to pick up whatever I need at the last minute. However, that option is now no longer there, and I've noticed in the last few weeks that I've found myself without things I've needed on a couple of occasions, and ended up either eating an odd combination of food, or scouring local shops in the hope that they stock what I need.

I'm trying to change my food habits at the moment, focusing on:
1) Eating more seasonally.
2) Eating less meat, and also eating some of the less "desirable" cuts of meat that we often shun.
3) Wasting less, both in terms of food waste, and packaging waste.
4) Sourcing from local shops

All these things mean that I need to plan more about what I'm going to eat, and do a proper weekly shop to enable me to get to the shops that will help me achieve the above. Whilst I have some local shops very close to me, they don't fit with some of the other criteria, and whilst I will undoubtedly still end up using them, I would like to get as close as I can with a majority of the food.

I'm hoping the eating more seasonally will be helped by my UK sourced veg box, which is arriving on Thursday. I've been online and checked the expected contents of the box, so I have an idea what to expect, and planned the rest of my food around it.

I've also checked my fridge and cupboard, so I have an idea what I have in that needs eating, therefore reducing waste. I have a mass of mushrooms and some sour cream (left over from the weekend). I'm therefore planning to get some liver from the butchers and make a stroganoff style dish. Liver is an overlooked ingredient, which will also help with my iron levels as I struggle already with anaemia and don't want it to get worse with reducing my meat intake.

I'm due to get beetroot with my veg box, and that instantly in my head gets combined with some feta on a salad, with the rest of the feta going well with some squash (from the veg box) and some lentils (from my cupboard) for another meal. Added to some soup ingredients (for my lunches at work) and a bit of stewing steak (as I'm expecting to cook for a gluten/dairy free friend at some point in the week) and I'm just about there.

I've realised it's probably a good idea to have a proper idea of what I have in the fridge and the cupboard, and also a running shopping list that I can add to during the week, so I've started these on Evernote (which is a list making program that syncs between my phone and computer - yes, I realise this is very geeky), and planned in a bit of time at the weekend to properly sort out my food cupboard and see what's in there.

So that's the plan. We shall see how well it works in practice...

Weekly update #2

Yes, the weekly update is back. A bit quiet this week, but still there.

- Money moving - I've been meaning to move my bank account to a more ethical bank for years (I've always been with Natwest), but still haven't done it. Occupy Bristol encouraged people to do it at the end of last year, and their campaign has now spread into Move Your Money month, which will take place in March. And so that's when I'm going to move my money. I need to do some more research to decide where I'm moving to, but at least I have a time frame now...

- Useful tool - This tool lets you look at your journey and work out whether it's better to go by train, car or coach. It surprised me that the coach was better than the train, as is a car with 5 passengers. I'm going to do a bit more research into the figures they use though.

- The car saga continues - Turns out my car isn't dead. So car sharing is off the agenda immediately, but I'm going to look into it again once I've moved house (since I'll be sorting things like insurance changes there anyway). What the whole thing has made me do is loosen my emotional attachment to my car - a few months ago I would have been very precious about anyone else driving it, and now it seems like a fairly easy step. I've also ridden my bike a lot more over the last couple of weeks when I didn't have access to my car, even doing a couple of journeys by bike that I would have previously driven. So I'm definitely going to try and consider cycling journeys like those rather than driving in the future...

- Milk follows chicken - A few years ago, my friend Em took me to an organic dairy to learn how to milk cows (it's a long story). The whole experience really stuck with me - the cows were so happy and well looked after that it made a real impression on me, and one that contradicts a lot of evidence I've seen about a lot of large scale dairy farming. Added to that, research has now shown it's better for you. I've recently discovered that a local corner shop sells organic milk, so I now have no excuse for not buying it. So only buying organic milk follows the free-range chicken commitment.

- Supermarketless life - I'm still managing ok (apart from the issue with feeding 30 people at the weekend). I've hit my first couple of problematic areas though, and one really surprised me - wine. Turns out most of the wine I buy comes from the supermarket - in fact, my favourite red wine is a Tesco Finest wine. There's so few decent off licenses around that I've been buying fairly average wine from my corner shop. I think this might call for some further investigating...

- Boxes of vegetables - I've ordered my first veg box, and it's arriving on Thursday. Exciting times!

The vegetable conundrum

I’ve been meaning to start getting a weekly organic veg box for quite a long time. The fact that I don’t currently get one is a great illustration of why I’m doing this project – lots of good intentions, but little action.

For the vegetables I eat, there are a number of things that are important to me – sourcing from a local independent shop, eating produce that is grown locally, eating organic produce where possible, and also trying to eat as seasonally as I can. The last one is especially important. We have lost touch with the growing seasons in this country, as we can go to the supermarket and buy strawberries in January and pumpkins in July. This means that even if these products are grown in the UK, they are often grown in energy intensive greenhouses, or imported from abroad.

Now, there are some good fruit and vegetable shops about 15 minutes walk from where I live (ticking the local supplier), but the produce is often (a) not organic, (b) not locally sourced and (c) not seasonal.

Another option is a nearby organic “supermarket”, but some of the produce is organic produce imported from abroad, and quite frankly, it can get a bit pricey.

An organic veg box seems like a good solution. Because your box contains whatever is harvested that week, it is usually cheaper than organic food from a shop. But a quick browse of the local schemes revealed that there were still a mountain of different options and a number of decisions to make. A quick search revealed five local schemes, each offering between 1 and 14 different boxes. That’s a lot of choice.

So how to narrow it down. Well, one box had come with a bad report from a friend as to the quality of the produce. So that one was out. Another didn’t have a size and variety option that appealed, and so that one was out.

So down to three options. One of them is Riverford, a large and well established veg box scheme that runs across the whole of the UK. They have four farms across the UK, and about 78% of their produce comes from the UK with the rest imported. Whilst the reputation and selection was excellent, I was a little dissuaded by the distance that the food travels from the farm and the amount of imported food, and so have ruled it out for not.

So two options left.

One is The Community Farm, located between Bristol and Bath, which is a community owned farm (as suggested by the name). Bonus points for supporting an enterprise that I would like to encourage. Specifically of interest is the small Gert British box, which is filled with 100% British produce.

The other option is to join the Simms Hill Community Supported Agriculture scheme. Again, bonus points for being a CSA, which I'd like to support. It works out slightly more expensive, but the food is grown really locally (a few miles from my house). Rather than deliver, they have local drop off points from where you collect your box. However, you have to become a member to get a vegetable box, and as it's such a fledgling scheme, I'd not want to do that without being fully committed.

I’ve never had a proper veg box before (excluding a few sporadic forays into the Riverford boxes a few years ago), and so in all honest, I’m not sure how it’ll work out. So I’d really like to be able to try it for a few months without any great commitment. For this, The Community Farm box seems more ideal. And then, if I find that it works for me, I’ll contemplate switching to Simms Hill, especially if I can persuade my future housemates to join in with me.

So the source is chosen, now I just need to place the order...

Weekly update #1

I've decided to start doing weekly updates on my progress. I'm going to keep writing longer blog posts on specific things that I come across and research, but this seems like a good way of updating on the little things.


- Interesting discover - I found this seasonal food chart - It makes me realise how pretty much everything I eat is out of season. Something to aspire to...

- This week I have been mostly reading - Hungry City by Carolyn Steel - a book about how food and cities have developed, and the integral relationship between the two, including a lot of fascinating history. I'm only halfway through, but highly recommended so far.

- Behaviour change - Following reading the start of Not On The Label by Felicity Lawrence, and watching the first half of Food, Inc, I'm properly committing to no longer eating chicken that isn't free range (and preferably organic). I pretty much do this anyway, but I want to make this a concrete decision.

- Topical question of the week - Is it rude to ask the origins of meat in a restaurant? If I'm going to commit to only buying, for example, free range chicken at home (see above), surely I should apply the same standards to food I eat out. In which case, is it ok to enquire when I'm at a restaurant?


- Supermarketless life update - So far so good. It's definitely involving more planning and creativity already though - I never used to think much in advance about what I was eating, opting to let the supermarket provide me with whatever I happened to fancy. Now I find I have to think more in advance about what I'm going to eat that week and make sure I have anything I can't get after work at the weekend.

- Disclaimer to the above - there has been a slight concession to the supermarket boycott. I'm going away this weekend with 30 friends, and it's self catering. We're already tight on car space, and are staying quite a way from the nearest town (which isn't massive) - an online supermarket shop is the only way we could get enough food in given the time and money constraints. Not ideal, but I feel it's a valid exception and will definitely not be a regular occurrence!

- Positive purchase - I bought an album this week, as a digital download straight from the independent record label. And best of all, it actually cost less than it would have done from on Amazon mp3 (which is where I would have previously got it from).

- Wasn't on the agenda - My car may have died. I'm currently awaiting a second opinion, but it's definitely bringing the question of car sharing further up the agenda. I put a plea out on facebook and the freeconomy website for people interested in car shares, and have a bunch of possible people to follow it up with.

A farewell to supermarkets...

My name is Steph, and it’s been 5 days since I last set foot in a Supermarket. And hopefully it’ll be many more days until I set foot in one again. Giving up Supermarkets was high on my agenda, right from the start of this project, but the actual giving up was a bit unplanned. To the point that I haven’t had a chance to do any planning, get down to the local shops and buy a weeks worth of food. So this week has seen me eating a rather bizarre selection of food, but I’m managing without too many issues so far, and hopefully with a bit more planning this will get easier.

When I was growing up, pretty much all the food we ate came from supermarkets. For a long time, our local supermarket (and I say “local” with a pinch of salt, as it was a 20 minute drive), was Sainsburys, and my Mum would do a weekly shop there. Then a Tesco opened closer (a mere 15 minute drive away) and in a more convenient location, and so the weekly shop shifted.

To set the scene, my parents live in a small village. There is a village shop, but it can provide little more than a pint of milk and some stamps. The nearest town is a 10 minute drive away (with the Tesco being situated on the far side of this town). I don’t remember there being much of a local food shop network before Tesco moved in, but there definitely isn’t one now. I believe the last remaining fruit and vegetable shop has closed, and I’m not sure if there’s a surviving butcher. So where my parents live, there isn’t much option beyond a Supermarket (although I should point out my parents do grow some of their own vegetables).

And I’d class myself as one of the Supermarket generation. That’s the way I was brought up to shop – all my food and other household (and beyond) needs, conveniently located under one large flat metal roof. Why waste time visiting so many small independent shops when you can make one stop and get everything at once.

I have a confession – at times I have quite enjoyed the “Supermarket experience”. I love to cook, and being bombarded with options and colours and flavours makes that side of me tick. Not sure what to have for dinner? A quick browse round the supermarket throws up options of thai curries, roast chickens, stir frys, fajitas and lasagne. The choice is overwhelming.

And overwhelming is the word. We’ve got so used to having what we want, when we want it. How often have you left the Supermarket, feeling dismayed that they had run out of a particular item, like it was a fundamental human right that you should be able to buy ripe bananas whenever you wish.

Over the last year or so, my supermarket shopping self has become a lot more cynical. The way it is laid out to make you part with as much money as possible, with the milk and bread (the most common items you might just “pop in” for) located at the back of the store. The way the aisles are moved around to make it harder to find what you’re looking for. The big signs promoting bargains on items you didn’t know you wanted. Almost every time I go into a supermarket, I leave with at least one item I didn’t mean to buy, and frequently I pop in for a few things and come out with several bags of things, many of which I didn’t really need.

To me, the Supermarket appeals to our time saving convenience loving nature, but also feeds our consumerism focused lifestyle. Its aim is not to provide us with the best possible produce available, it’s to make us buy more stuff and turn a profit for the shareholders.

For months, I’ve been resenting my trips to supermarkets, but lacking the kick I needed to actually say “no more!”. Well, I’ve done it now, and (hopefully) there’s no going back.

So why have I given up supermarkets? Here are some of my thoughts at the moment...

1. The Monopoly. 1 in every 7 pounds spent in the UK is spent in Tesco. When you add to this that three quarters of food bought is from one of the major 4 supermarkets (from The Rough Guide to Ethical Living), you get an idea of what a monopoly they have. 
2. The Local Damage. I think we’ve all seen local business after local business go out of business over the past decade, to the point that many people have no option other than shopping at the supermarkets. The convenience and potential cost savings are sufficient to sway a lot of people to move their shopping under one single brightly lit roof, rather than buying items from more specialised shops. This means that a lot of businesses such as butchers, bakers and greengrocers are being forced to close their business as they cannot compete with the supermarkets. I appreciate that I’m very lucky to live somewhere that still retains a good selection of local shops, and therefore I feel it’s even more important that I support them and buy from them, in an attempt to help them continue. 
3. The Farmers. The purchasing power that the supermarkets yield allow them to dictate the price and terms of produce, sometimes to the point of making it no longer economically viable for farmers to continue. A lot of the risk is placed in the lap of the grower and supermarkets may change their mind at the last minute leaving farmers with a surplus that they are forced to sell for low prices in dump markets. Added to this, the supermarkets strict aesthetic standards leads to a massive amount of food waste, with farmers unable to sell misshapen or imperfect produce. 
4. The Experience. When I go into my cornershop, I get a smile and an enquiry as to my wellbeing. A trip to the Italian shop down the road involves being served by a series of slightly grumpy but familiar old Italian men. I always get served by the same man in the butchers. In Tesco, I could get served by any of several hundred employees, who are serving people at the fastest rate possible, in order to maintain the lowest number of employees and therefore make the greatest profit. In short, the experience of shopping at shops other than supermarkets is so much nicer. I love the slower pace of the shopping experience, and I like knowing the people I buy food from, which is something I’m hoping will continue over the coming year. 
5. The Quality. I remember the first time I ate carrots grown in my Mum’s garden. They tasted unlike any carrots I’d ever tasted from the supermarket. And this goes for so many things – meat, fruit, bread. And yes, there can be some sacrifices – bread goes staler quicker for example, but there’s something slightly terrifying about being able to buy a loaf of bread that’s still soft and fresh 10 days after you open it. And I’m not saying that all food bought outside of a supermarket is of better quality – this is far from true. But it can certainly be better, and full of less preservatives and chemicals. 

So no more popping into Tesco or browsing in Sainsburys, but I have a feeling that the reality of this is going to be a lot harder than it sounds...

Sustainable food...

I found this "sustainable food mantra" on the Tom's Feast website, and it summarises so much of what I've been thinking about food (and says it so much better than I could)...

"Buy Local – Not just from a local grocery but check where the ingredients themselves have been grown. This cuts down on food miles, storage, processing and packaging.

Provenance – If your shop can provide you with the origins of their produce they will be able to provide you with information as to how it was farmed and how far it has travelled.

Seasonal – The energy that was used to grow the food ie. grown in poly tunnels as a pose to hydroponically or transported from another country

Organic and GM free – Natural farming methods have a positive impact on the soil, through organic farming methods soil can be kept fertile without the use of fertilizers that strip the soil of its goodness.

Thrift – Use every last morsel of food that you buy, keep leftovers, ask for a doggy bag, be imaginative with ingredients…. leftover soup, stocks and trimmings.

Say no to packaging – Buy products that have no unnecessary packaging. This uses resources unnecessarily.

Boycott supermarkets – Supermarkets produce a huge amount of waste at all levels of production, where possible buy direct from farmers markets and grocery stores."

More specific details to come, but this is the basic list of ideals I'll be working towards...