It has been a long time, and I guess most of you might have given up on hearing from me again, an update is certainly long overdue, but we are still going strong in phase 2 of being green, lazy and out of money.
When the first 12 months had been completed I wondered what would happen to the project. I was keen to continue the green efforts, but frankly there was a part of me wondering if it would change anything that I was no longer committed to telling the world about our efforts. Thankfully I don't think it has, at least we haven't been going back the way, but I think the steps we are taking have become smaller.
We still put in a good effort on many fronts: energy saving, minimising waste, recycling, travelling better (even in the colder weather), eating local and attempting to grow our own stuff, but I have realised that we have now reached a stage where efforts might need to be focussed on something specific.
Phase 1 was about the steps more or less everybody can do with a bit of determination. We didn't invent something amazing, we didn't change the world, we didn't set any records - we simply followed some of all the advice out there and became greener. So now every time I read another list of '10 ways to save the planet' I can usually tick at least 9 boxes. Anybody can do that!
Phase 2 is harder. I struggle now to find advice on things to do or improvements to make that doesn't involve a fair bit of investment (I still really want to fit a woodburning stove and solar panels) or a big amount of effort. E.g. part of phase one was to not leave appliances on standby. The main element required to achieve this is to actually remember to flick the switch - not time consuming. On the other hand a phase 2 target could be to become self sufficient in fruit and veg. It would mean a huge investment, partly of equipment and trees etc, but mainly of time.
I recently read about a family who had reduced their waste so much that in one year they had only put their bin out for collection once. Very impressive! It makes our achievement of only having half full bins to put out look like nothing. But to achieve that level of waste reduction would mean a lot of work. You would need to think every action of the day through from a waste point of view, and I can't help thinking that these people made a tremendous effort on the waste front, but maybe they are behind me on the transport front or the grow your own front... (or maybe they are superhuman and do everything)
And there is my dilemma at the moment. There is only 24 hours in a day and there is only so many things we can do in that amount of time. Ideally I would like to take all areas of green living to a higher level - but I can't! There is simply not enough time to keep making progress in all areas. I mean I wish I had the time to learn lots of new cooking skills so that I could cook fabulous food from local produce, but I don't if I am also at the same time trying to drop my car, reduce my waste to zero, pruning trees and planting carrots, making Christmas cards out of recycled newspaper and knitting sweaters to stay warm in our less heated house. So after a few months in phase 2 I have had to face the fact that I need to prioritise.
If I want to take big steps in any area it is likely to mean that other areas will become stagnant. Either that or I need to accept that the steps we take become smaller. Hmm, not sure what the best way forward is. So many things to try, so many ideas, so many opportunities. Maybe that is part of being green as well, knowing your limits and having a lifestyle that is sustainable from a wellbeing point as well. Anyway I guess as long as we are going forward, not back - we are still doing OK.
Wednesday 3 November 2010
Friday 27 August 2010
Over and out (almost)
This is it - we have now spent 12 months trying to become a green household. Funnily enough I expected this blog to be a nice little round up of all the stuff we have achieved - but I don't know if somebody is trying to send me a message. I usually do my updates in the beginning of the week and it is now Friday and despite several attempts this one just doesn't seem to happen, latest issue was the almost completed entry that just disappeared! 12 months I have been doing this and that has never happened before.
I am now wondering if I am being told that it is not time to close this project?
So I have decided to take a different view: phase 1 is over, phase 2 can begin. Phase 2 consists of continually going forwards! We can't go backwards on all the good work we have managed during phase 1.
Phase 1, the original challenge has been good and fun and educational, but it has also been annoying, tiresome and sometimes blooming awful. But that is how it works with lifestyle changes, they don't happen overnight. They happen gradually and that way they become set as new habits and routines, and that is the real change.
Being green is definitely a scale, we started somewhere on the very light green side and we have moved a fair bit towards the more shiny green side, but there is a long way before we would be completely green. We haven't ditched the car, we haven't installed solar panels and we generally still live like a pretty ordinary family. Nobody is going to enter our home and think 'wow, they are certainly green' (they are probably more likely to think 'has the hoover broken...), and that I think is good. Because I didn't set out to change our lives completely, I wanted to find out if it is possible to follow some of all that advice out there and still have a happy family life. I think the answer is yes.
What I didn't realise was the profound effect this would have on the way we think. We might not have moved a lot from an outside point of view, but I do believe we have changed our thinking - the environment has taken a much higher priority in the way we live.
So to check if we have actually achieved something or if I am just happily imagining stuff, I decided to calculate our carbon footprint again. I did this in the beginning of the challenge using the Governments Act on CO2 website and we had a footprint of 12.88tonnes per year. When I calculated it again on the same website earlier this week our footprint had been reduced to 9.57 tonnes per year. I think that is pretty good. We have shaved 3 tonnes of CO2 of our footprint in one year and that is without investing hardly any money in it. Imagine what it would look like if we had spare cash to install solar PV or a wood burning stove or super insulate our house etc.
Obviously the carbon footprint doesn't say everything (I have on several occasions ranted about the uselessness of this measure), but on this occasion I will take is as proof that we have actually achieved something.
Not that long ago my brother suggested to me that going green is a bit like raising kids, they change little by little and all of a sudden you look back and realise how big they have become. That is exactly what we have been doing this year. Little by little we have changed habits and looking back I actually think it adds up to a rather big step. But just like children never stop changing and learning, green living is a continued process and honestly from that angle we probably haven't even reached school age...
But before we embark on green living phase 2 I will leave it to my 3 year old to sum up this experience. At the dinner table I asked how everybody thought we had done throughout the challenge and he very promptly shouted 'goood'.
May the green work long continue.
I am now wondering if I am being told that it is not time to close this project?
So I have decided to take a different view: phase 1 is over, phase 2 can begin. Phase 2 consists of continually going forwards! We can't go backwards on all the good work we have managed during phase 1.
Phase 1, the original challenge has been good and fun and educational, but it has also been annoying, tiresome and sometimes blooming awful. But that is how it works with lifestyle changes, they don't happen overnight. They happen gradually and that way they become set as new habits and routines, and that is the real change.
Being green is definitely a scale, we started somewhere on the very light green side and we have moved a fair bit towards the more shiny green side, but there is a long way before we would be completely green. We haven't ditched the car, we haven't installed solar panels and we generally still live like a pretty ordinary family. Nobody is going to enter our home and think 'wow, they are certainly green' (they are probably more likely to think 'has the hoover broken...), and that I think is good. Because I didn't set out to change our lives completely, I wanted to find out if it is possible to follow some of all that advice out there and still have a happy family life. I think the answer is yes.
What I didn't realise was the profound effect this would have on the way we think. We might not have moved a lot from an outside point of view, but I do believe we have changed our thinking - the environment has taken a much higher priority in the way we live.
So to check if we have actually achieved something or if I am just happily imagining stuff, I decided to calculate our carbon footprint again. I did this in the beginning of the challenge using the Governments Act on CO2 website and we had a footprint of 12.88tonnes per year. When I calculated it again on the same website earlier this week our footprint had been reduced to 9.57 tonnes per year. I think that is pretty good. We have shaved 3 tonnes of CO2 of our footprint in one year and that is without investing hardly any money in it. Imagine what it would look like if we had spare cash to install solar PV or a wood burning stove or super insulate our house etc.
Obviously the carbon footprint doesn't say everything (I have on several occasions ranted about the uselessness of this measure), but on this occasion I will take is as proof that we have actually achieved something.
Not that long ago my brother suggested to me that going green is a bit like raising kids, they change little by little and all of a sudden you look back and realise how big they have become. That is exactly what we have been doing this year. Little by little we have changed habits and looking back I actually think it adds up to a rather big step. But just like children never stop changing and learning, green living is a continued process and honestly from that angle we probably haven't even reached school age...
But before we embark on green living phase 2 I will leave it to my 3 year old to sum up this experience. At the dinner table I asked how everybody thought we had done throughout the challenge and he very promptly shouted 'goood'.
May the green work long continue.
Monday 16 August 2010
Green is good
Before I start on some long winded philosophical saga on green living, I thought it would be time to answer a question several people have asked lately: are you going to continue writing when the 12 months are up?
The fact is in 2 weeks time me and my family will have spent a year trying to become green and that will be the end of the challenge, but it will not necessarily be the end of this blog. There will however be changes. First of all - 'Green, Lazy and Out of Money' is now as well as a blog the title of a talk. This means that anybody in the Central Belt of Scotland can book me to come along and do a little talk on the ups and downs of going green. I decided that some of all the experience and information we have gathered over the last 12 months just might be helpful to other people - and so far it has been well received. Anybody wanting more information is very welcome to send me an email - see details on the right.
The blog itself is probably going to continue, but on a less regular basis. This is partly due to time constraints but also because it just might end up getting boring! There are only so many energy saving tips or natural beauty products you can try without repeating yourself and somehow I don't think it will be interesting for anybody to continually hear about gardening failures or smart meters or especially read yet another rant about government policy, supermarkets, public transport or any other of my pet complaints... So I have promised myself to only write if I actually have something valuable to say! (Weekly updates therefore impossible...)
I still have a couple of weeks however before this rule applies, so I have decided to share some thoughts with everybody on green living. A few days ago I read an article about how the Government and environmentalist are actually hindering the progress of more sustainable lifestyles. This is not on purpose, but the images connected to greening up life are mostly about giving up things or missing out, e.g. giving up the car, avoiding imported food etc and therefore people are put off. It is not attractive!
For progress to be made focus needs to be changed to the aspects of life that are actually better with a green lifestyle. So here we go, this is my top 10 of stuff that has improved over the last 12 months:
1. We have saved money on the electricity and gas bill, simply by paying attention to our usage. We haven't really missed out on anything, we are just not wasting energy.
2. We are fitter. None of us are super athletes and we never will be, walking and cycling more has made an improvement. Yesterday both my kids walked into town and back, 30 min each way with a play in between and neither of them complained, because they are used to getting around in that fashion.
3. We have saved money on petrol and maintenance of the car.
4. We eat tastier food by getting more local supplies in stead of supermarket stuff. It hasn't really been more expensive, but trust me a burger from the local butcher is better than a plastic wrapped one from the supermarket.
5. We generally eat better. We eat more vegetables and less meat and very importantly we eat less additives and strange chemicals - just by being aware. We have even become more adventurous and tried new things.
6. We have learned a lot about gardening, and had the joy of eating stuff we grew ourselves.
7. We have been outside more. This is a point my daughter wanted included in the list, she said it was nice going out in the fresh air walking or cycling, being in the garden and especially camping. You can't really argue with that.
8. We know more people locally because we have been getting involved in local environmental groups. This has been particularly great because we are new in town and our network has grown quickly.
9. We have wasted a lot less of everything and saved money along the way. We have even received some stuff for free through freecycle and other waste conscious routes.
10. Last but not least we have had the chance to feel that we are achieving something. This might all sound cheesy, and it probably is, but never the less the feel good factor shouldn't be ignored, and going green definitely haven't made us feel bad.
So there you go - being green is good!
The fact is in 2 weeks time me and my family will have spent a year trying to become green and that will be the end of the challenge, but it will not necessarily be the end of this blog. There will however be changes. First of all - 'Green, Lazy and Out of Money' is now as well as a blog the title of a talk. This means that anybody in the Central Belt of Scotland can book me to come along and do a little talk on the ups and downs of going green. I decided that some of all the experience and information we have gathered over the last 12 months just might be helpful to other people - and so far it has been well received. Anybody wanting more information is very welcome to send me an email - see details on the right.
The blog itself is probably going to continue, but on a less regular basis. This is partly due to time constraints but also because it just might end up getting boring! There are only so many energy saving tips or natural beauty products you can try without repeating yourself and somehow I don't think it will be interesting for anybody to continually hear about gardening failures or smart meters or especially read yet another rant about government policy, supermarkets, public transport or any other of my pet complaints... So I have promised myself to only write if I actually have something valuable to say! (Weekly updates therefore impossible...)
I still have a couple of weeks however before this rule applies, so I have decided to share some thoughts with everybody on green living. A few days ago I read an article about how the Government and environmentalist are actually hindering the progress of more sustainable lifestyles. This is not on purpose, but the images connected to greening up life are mostly about giving up things or missing out, e.g. giving up the car, avoiding imported food etc and therefore people are put off. It is not attractive!
For progress to be made focus needs to be changed to the aspects of life that are actually better with a green lifestyle. So here we go, this is my top 10 of stuff that has improved over the last 12 months:
1. We have saved money on the electricity and gas bill, simply by paying attention to our usage. We haven't really missed out on anything, we are just not wasting energy.
2. We are fitter. None of us are super athletes and we never will be, walking and cycling more has made an improvement. Yesterday both my kids walked into town and back, 30 min each way with a play in between and neither of them complained, because they are used to getting around in that fashion.
3. We have saved money on petrol and maintenance of the car.
4. We eat tastier food by getting more local supplies in stead of supermarket stuff. It hasn't really been more expensive, but trust me a burger from the local butcher is better than a plastic wrapped one from the supermarket.
5. We generally eat better. We eat more vegetables and less meat and very importantly we eat less additives and strange chemicals - just by being aware. We have even become more adventurous and tried new things.
6. We have learned a lot about gardening, and had the joy of eating stuff we grew ourselves.
7. We have been outside more. This is a point my daughter wanted included in the list, she said it was nice going out in the fresh air walking or cycling, being in the garden and especially camping. You can't really argue with that.
8. We know more people locally because we have been getting involved in local environmental groups. This has been particularly great because we are new in town and our network has grown quickly.
9. We have wasted a lot less of everything and saved money along the way. We have even received some stuff for free through freecycle and other waste conscious routes.
10. Last but not least we have had the chance to feel that we are achieving something. This might all sound cheesy, and it probably is, but never the less the feel good factor shouldn't be ignored, and going green definitely haven't made us feel bad.
So there you go - being green is good!
Monday 9 August 2010
Green beauty
Is is possible to be green and beautiful? Well, OK beautiful might be stretching matters a bit on the personal front, but there is the issue of all the products we tend to use to make ourselves look better. I am by no means obsessive about grooming - I have never set foot in a beauty salon, but like most other people I sometimes feel the need to improve things slightly.
Several months ago I started changing my creams, shampoo and other stuff for primarily organic versions (surprisingly it is not necessarily more expensive), but even then the lists of ingredients can look a bit scary sometimes. So the other day I decided to have a look for something even more natural.
It turned out that making your own is not completely straight forward. Some things like body lotions require you to have a base of some sort either beeswax or various other options that you can get from a pharmacy - but not really anything you are likely to have hanging about the house. That immediately put a dampener on my spirits - I didn't really want to go out spending loads of money on this experiment.
Thankfully the web is filled with weird and wonderful ideas, so there were still several things for me to try:
Some were a bit strange, like make your own lipstick by mixing Vaseline with food colouring. I can see the fun side of this, you could have blue or yellow lips, but considering what is normally in food colouring, that didn't seem like a chemical free option to me.
Or how about this recipe for gorgeous hair:
1 mango, 1 apricot, 2 tbsp olive oil, 1 small pot of natural yogurt, 1 tbsp of sugar free muesli.
Blend together, apply to your hair in a thick layer, leave for 30 mins, rinse out.
I am sorry, but sitting around with a breakfast smoothie in my hair just doesn't sound appealing - I would rather have it in my tummy.
But other things I did give a go.
Like the egg and beer hair treatment. To be fair I am probably not the best person to try hair treatments, my hair is short and no amount of eggs will turn it into long luscious locks, but hey, we all like the idea of lovely shiny hair. For this I beat 1 egg (the suggestion was 2, beaten separately and then mixed, but as mentioned my hair is short) and rubbed it gently in my hair. It was a slightly funny feeling and the egg is rather slippery, but not horrible. This then needs rinsed with tepid water. Beware tepid is the key here, apparently if the water is too hot you will end up with a scrambled egg hairdo... Finish off rinsing with either lemon juice or beer.I did consider lemon juice, but when I started thinking about how many lemons I would need to squeeze to have enough juice to rinse my hair I opted for the beer suggestion. Funnily enough I remember as a teenager my mum talking about rinsing her hair in beer and me as a typical teenage chemical lover finding this disgusting. Anyway I managed to sneak a beer past my husband and happily poured it over my hair (word of warning - avoid beers straight out of the fridge, it freezes your brain...). The instructions didn't say anything about rinsing your hair again in water, but the smell of pub was so strong I simply had to. Was it worth it? Well, even the following day my hair was surprisingly soft and had more volume than normal, so not a bad result.
Then there was the tea bag treatment for dark circles round your eyes. Very simple - stick your used teabags in the fridge over night, when you wake up in the morning feeling all puffy eyed - place the cold teabags over your eyes for a bit and hey presto all is better. It was OK, my eyes possibly looked better, but I have to admit that having to go downstairs to get the stuff out of the fridge before then having to lie down again was a bit off putting - I certainly wouldn't do that every morning. Too much effort!
It did remind me however of another trick I learned when I was younger and still able to party later than midnight: Take some cotton wool, wet it with cold water (tap water is fine, it gets pretty cold) and then wipe underneath your eyes. It always worked for me, if nothing else it wakes you up and it kind of shocks the body and makes the skin freeze up for a bit...
My favourite experiment was the body scrub. According to beauty experts you really should exfoliate regularly, but for some reason it is one of those things I always forget to buy. Now I can make my own: 1 part oil mixed with one part sugar, stir it round, scrub your body with it and rinse off - all done. Fab! Apparently it is best to use sweet almond oil or grape seed oil or any massage kind of oil, but stay clear of olive oil unless you want to smell like a Mediterranean salad... You can also use salt instead of sugar, but sugar is supposedly kinder to the skin. My only comment is that you might want to wash with soap afterwards as it can be a bit greasy.
There was one final thing I wanted to try, but just haven't got round to yet. Apparently oats are very good for all sorts of things, and seemingly you can moisturise your face by soaking oats in cold water for 30min, sieve and squeeze the oats and then apply the white liquid with cotton wool. I will keep you posted if I manage to try it.
Throughout it all one thing kept popping into my head: is this really a good use of resources? Should I be using perfectly good eggs to fluff my hair, when I could have been eating them? What kind of carbon footprint is attached to a sugar and sweet almond oil mixture? Actually my question probably should be whether beauty products are a good use of resources all together?
And the answer: it is a pointless question.
I doubt anybody would give up on their looks solely for the reason of being green? And in that case I believe it is greener (and more fun) to use an egg in your hair rather than some chemical concoction. Mixing stuff and pulling things out of cupboards certainly made me much more aware of what we are actually doing for the sake of our vanity.
So I will continue my search for natural beauty, you never know what hidden qualities there might be in potatoes or brussel sprouts. Or maybe this is where I am supposed to say that real beauty comes from within...
Several months ago I started changing my creams, shampoo and other stuff for primarily organic versions (surprisingly it is not necessarily more expensive), but even then the lists of ingredients can look a bit scary sometimes. So the other day I decided to have a look for something even more natural.
It turned out that making your own is not completely straight forward. Some things like body lotions require you to have a base of some sort either beeswax or various other options that you can get from a pharmacy - but not really anything you are likely to have hanging about the house. That immediately put a dampener on my spirits - I didn't really want to go out spending loads of money on this experiment.
Thankfully the web is filled with weird and wonderful ideas, so there were still several things for me to try:
Some were a bit strange, like make your own lipstick by mixing Vaseline with food colouring. I can see the fun side of this, you could have blue or yellow lips, but considering what is normally in food colouring, that didn't seem like a chemical free option to me.
Or how about this recipe for gorgeous hair:
1 mango, 1 apricot, 2 tbsp olive oil, 1 small pot of natural yogurt, 1 tbsp of sugar free muesli.
Blend together, apply to your hair in a thick layer, leave for 30 mins, rinse out.
I am sorry, but sitting around with a breakfast smoothie in my hair just doesn't sound appealing - I would rather have it in my tummy.
But other things I did give a go.
Like the egg and beer hair treatment. To be fair I am probably not the best person to try hair treatments, my hair is short and no amount of eggs will turn it into long luscious locks, but hey, we all like the idea of lovely shiny hair. For this I beat 1 egg (the suggestion was 2, beaten separately and then mixed, but as mentioned my hair is short) and rubbed it gently in my hair. It was a slightly funny feeling and the egg is rather slippery, but not horrible. This then needs rinsed with tepid water. Beware tepid is the key here, apparently if the water is too hot you will end up with a scrambled egg hairdo... Finish off rinsing with either lemon juice or beer.I did consider lemon juice, but when I started thinking about how many lemons I would need to squeeze to have enough juice to rinse my hair I opted for the beer suggestion. Funnily enough I remember as a teenager my mum talking about rinsing her hair in beer and me as a typical teenage chemical lover finding this disgusting. Anyway I managed to sneak a beer past my husband and happily poured it over my hair (word of warning - avoid beers straight out of the fridge, it freezes your brain...). The instructions didn't say anything about rinsing your hair again in water, but the smell of pub was so strong I simply had to. Was it worth it? Well, even the following day my hair was surprisingly soft and had more volume than normal, so not a bad result.
Then there was the tea bag treatment for dark circles round your eyes. Very simple - stick your used teabags in the fridge over night, when you wake up in the morning feeling all puffy eyed - place the cold teabags over your eyes for a bit and hey presto all is better. It was OK, my eyes possibly looked better, but I have to admit that having to go downstairs to get the stuff out of the fridge before then having to lie down again was a bit off putting - I certainly wouldn't do that every morning. Too much effort!
It did remind me however of another trick I learned when I was younger and still able to party later than midnight: Take some cotton wool, wet it with cold water (tap water is fine, it gets pretty cold) and then wipe underneath your eyes. It always worked for me, if nothing else it wakes you up and it kind of shocks the body and makes the skin freeze up for a bit...
My favourite experiment was the body scrub. According to beauty experts you really should exfoliate regularly, but for some reason it is one of those things I always forget to buy. Now I can make my own: 1 part oil mixed with one part sugar, stir it round, scrub your body with it and rinse off - all done. Fab! Apparently it is best to use sweet almond oil or grape seed oil or any massage kind of oil, but stay clear of olive oil unless you want to smell like a Mediterranean salad... You can also use salt instead of sugar, but sugar is supposedly kinder to the skin. My only comment is that you might want to wash with soap afterwards as it can be a bit greasy.
There was one final thing I wanted to try, but just haven't got round to yet. Apparently oats are very good for all sorts of things, and seemingly you can moisturise your face by soaking oats in cold water for 30min, sieve and squeeze the oats and then apply the white liquid with cotton wool. I will keep you posted if I manage to try it.
Throughout it all one thing kept popping into my head: is this really a good use of resources? Should I be using perfectly good eggs to fluff my hair, when I could have been eating them? What kind of carbon footprint is attached to a sugar and sweet almond oil mixture? Actually my question probably should be whether beauty products are a good use of resources all together?
And the answer: it is a pointless question.
I doubt anybody would give up on their looks solely for the reason of being green? And in that case I believe it is greener (and more fun) to use an egg in your hair rather than some chemical concoction. Mixing stuff and pulling things out of cupboards certainly made me much more aware of what we are actually doing for the sake of our vanity.
So I will continue my search for natural beauty, you never know what hidden qualities there might be in potatoes or brussel sprouts. Or maybe this is where I am supposed to say that real beauty comes from within...
Monday 2 August 2010
The veg thing (again)
Good news! I managed to overcome my veg box phobia and have now already had 3 deliveries - and what do I think about it? Well, if you had asked me after the first delivery I wouldn't have sounded too impressed. Not only did it contain kale, which is something I really struggle to eat, but it also made me realise that I might have to rethink my food planning. I usually try to plan the meals for the week at the weekend - longtime readers of this blog might remember that I took part in a food waste project in November that reminded me how useful it is to plan your meals and your shopping in advance, so I have stuck with this routine as much as possible. Problem was that the veg box gets delivered on a Wednesday, so getting an unknown quantity of unknown fruit and veg in the middle of carefully planned week made things a bit awkward. I was having visions of lots of food wasted - not good.
But a few weeks down the line I am quite beginning to like this. Now I probably should admit that I am playing safe and the size of box we are getting at the moment is far from enough to keep the whole family going for a week, it is kind of a top up, but it has brought a bit of excitement to the whole food/shopping thing.
It has been a rediscovery of certain foods. Turns out that without really realising I had got into the habit of primarily buying stuff I knew the kids would eat. 4 weeks ago the chances of finding a pink grapefruit in our house would have been approx nil, but last week we had one delivered - and it was a nice change from the usual. Likewise I rarely buy melons, they can be rather heavy and bulky to fit in the backpack, but my son suddenly got the chance to totally indulge in it. We have even had several different varieties of apples over the last weeks - amazing how set we can become in our habits.
It has also reminded me what food really can taste like. On top of our box I have ordered potatoes on a weekly basis, and I don't want to sound like some fanatic foodie, but honestly they do taste better than the ones from the supermarket.
Finally I think it has forced me to remember dishes I haven't done for some time or at least to think the other way round, so rather than decide what we want to eat and then shop, I look at what we have and then think about what we can make with that. It is refreshing! I have even managed to postpone some of my food planning, so that I wait and see what the box will bring.
Amazingly my fear of strange green leafy things have been taken care of as well. It turns out you can tell them if there is stuff you really don't want, so I have now added Kale to my list, and that shouldn't show up in my box again. Great!
All in all the veg box is a success, which is good, because my homegrown stuff isn't doing well. Turns out you actually have to look after the things... OK, I knew that, but I obviously haven't been doing enough, because the garden is a rather poor sight. 4 weeks ago everything was looking great. We were eating the first peas, we had overload of lettuce, we had handfuls of strawberries, everything was sprouting and looking green. Now however the remaining peas have gone yellow, because I really should have picked them a bit sooner, the spinach grew to a height of an inch and died, the parsley is light brown instead of green, the carrots have just withered away, the pumpkin plant has given up growing and the radishes have bolted. All rather pathetic and my visions of meals made from homegrown ingredients are very quickly fading. Sigh...
Funnily enough the plants that seem to be doing really well are the ones everybody told me couldn't grown in Scotland - tomatoes. One of the blackberry bushes is also happily producing, which is great although they only seem to ripen 4-5 at the time, so kind of hard to get enough together to actually make something. I also have a couple of beetroots that might turn into real veg and there is still hope for the onions and the potatoes, so not all is lost. And the remarkable thing is that I still want to do the garden thing. I still want to extend the vegetable plot and start all over again next year. I just want to be slightly smarter about the whole thing.
I am going to get more low maintenance stuff. More soft fruit, maybe another tree or two. Yes of course you need to pick and prepare the fruit when the time comes, but there is less weeding involved and the stuff you get is primarily for puddings - best incentive in the world.
Yes, one day I will get that meal made from homegrown produce, one day in the future - until then I will hang on to my new veg box.
But a few weeks down the line I am quite beginning to like this. Now I probably should admit that I am playing safe and the size of box we are getting at the moment is far from enough to keep the whole family going for a week, it is kind of a top up, but it has brought a bit of excitement to the whole food/shopping thing.
It has been a rediscovery of certain foods. Turns out that without really realising I had got into the habit of primarily buying stuff I knew the kids would eat. 4 weeks ago the chances of finding a pink grapefruit in our house would have been approx nil, but last week we had one delivered - and it was a nice change from the usual. Likewise I rarely buy melons, they can be rather heavy and bulky to fit in the backpack, but my son suddenly got the chance to totally indulge in it. We have even had several different varieties of apples over the last weeks - amazing how set we can become in our habits.
It has also reminded me what food really can taste like. On top of our box I have ordered potatoes on a weekly basis, and I don't want to sound like some fanatic foodie, but honestly they do taste better than the ones from the supermarket.
Finally I think it has forced me to remember dishes I haven't done for some time or at least to think the other way round, so rather than decide what we want to eat and then shop, I look at what we have and then think about what we can make with that. It is refreshing! I have even managed to postpone some of my food planning, so that I wait and see what the box will bring.
Amazingly my fear of strange green leafy things have been taken care of as well. It turns out you can tell them if there is stuff you really don't want, so I have now added Kale to my list, and that shouldn't show up in my box again. Great!
All in all the veg box is a success, which is good, because my homegrown stuff isn't doing well. Turns out you actually have to look after the things... OK, I knew that, but I obviously haven't been doing enough, because the garden is a rather poor sight. 4 weeks ago everything was looking great. We were eating the first peas, we had overload of lettuce, we had handfuls of strawberries, everything was sprouting and looking green. Now however the remaining peas have gone yellow, because I really should have picked them a bit sooner, the spinach grew to a height of an inch and died, the parsley is light brown instead of green, the carrots have just withered away, the pumpkin plant has given up growing and the radishes have bolted. All rather pathetic and my visions of meals made from homegrown ingredients are very quickly fading. Sigh...
Funnily enough the plants that seem to be doing really well are the ones everybody told me couldn't grown in Scotland - tomatoes. One of the blackberry bushes is also happily producing, which is great although they only seem to ripen 4-5 at the time, so kind of hard to get enough together to actually make something. I also have a couple of beetroots that might turn into real veg and there is still hope for the onions and the potatoes, so not all is lost. And the remarkable thing is that I still want to do the garden thing. I still want to extend the vegetable plot and start all over again next year. I just want to be slightly smarter about the whole thing.
I am going to get more low maintenance stuff. More soft fruit, maybe another tree or two. Yes of course you need to pick and prepare the fruit when the time comes, but there is less weeding involved and the stuff you get is primarily for puddings - best incentive in the world.
Yes, one day I will get that meal made from homegrown produce, one day in the future - until then I will hang on to my new veg box.
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