Digital Detox

I spend way too much time at my computer screen.  I'm probably not alone in that thought.

When I go away for a week I am almost scared to not look at my email account for fear of being overwhelmed when I come back.  And... what's worse is that I often don't want to read the emails and just hit delete...hit delete...hit delete through maybe 20 or 30 emails in a session.  Each one of those emails has a carbon footprint - and it is a carbon footprint that most of us probably don't even think about, like the carbon footprint of a Google search.

In so many aspects of my life, I'm making efforts to lower my carbon footprint.  I create almost no physical waste.  I put my dustbin out once a year, with rarely more than what would fit in an "old style" single use plastic carrier bag.  But my digital waste is horrendous.

So this year, I've decided to do something about it.  I'm having a digital detox and a good old tidy up of online life.

I have had a half hearted attempt at this before and unsubscribed from a few emails, but this time, I'm going to be far more thorough.

Instead of clicking on delete without reading an email, I'm catching myself with that thought process and making sure I do open the email and find the unsubscribe button.  With apologies to these retailers as it is nothing that they have done to wrong me, but I know that no amount of email from Next or Monsoon or Laura Ashley or any other lovely retail outfits is going to make me impulse buy clothes/homewares etc.

I have completely changed my shopping habits over recent years and I do impulse buy on occasion - but that is largely when I have five or ten minutes to spare between appointments and seek shelter in charity shops.  I have also been making attempts to make regular donations to charity shops and I am very free and easy with the impulse buys while I'm there.  But I'm not going to impulse buy because I see something on an email, so what is the point in allowing that email to arrive in my inbox.  I think that will probably cut down the number of emails I receive by around 25 percent if I keep up the thorough unsubscribing.

Yesterday I realised that lots of the email I have to delete my way through is from Twitter.  I use Twitter a fair bit.  I do like to catch up on the news that's really important to me - the environmental stuff - via Twitter.  I learn a lot from reading articles I click through to from like minded people that I follow.  But I don't need to know every time someone new follows me.  I do regularly find new information sources from new followers that I then choose to follow back as we clearly have common ground on Twitter, but I can do that on Twitter or Tweetdeck itself.  I am sometimes getting three separate notifications about things, one from the app on my phone, one by email and one on my computer.  So I took a look at the settings and had a think about what I really do find useful and I unchecked all the rest of the boxes.

Today, I have noticed that the only emails I received were things I really did need to know about.

For January, I'm going to content myself with monitoring my online life in order to continue the clean up of future incoming stuff.

Next month I'm hoping I'll find I have more time to do some pro-active cleaning up of emails that are still in my Inbox - all 3800 - of them.  It is not as if I don't have a comprehensive filing system for emails I need to keep.  I have that already - I just don't keep on top of it.  But with fewer emails coming in, maybe I'll manage that aspect of digital life better.

If anyone has any top tips and great digital clean up habits, please do let me know.

My challenge for 2017

I love this time of year. I love Christmas and New Year and all the family get-togethers.  We have traditional Christmas dinner of turkey and pork and all the trimmings.

We then have a big buffet dinner to use up all the cold meat and pickles and turn the veg into Bubble and Squeak.

We make patés and curry and stock for the freezer and this year because we were away shortly after Christmas we put a bit of leftover sliced meat into the freezer.

After the extravagance of Christmas and New Year I love the frugality of January too.  I always set myself some kind of challenge for the year, in some way related to reducing waste or reallocating resources: buying no clothes for a year except second hand, buying nothing in single use plastic packaging, giving away 10 books a month and buying none new - these things have all featured as yearly challenges and I enjoy them.

This January I decided to have a USE IT UP month so we are living out of the freezer and plan to completely empty it.

Our first meal back at home in 2017 involved making a soup from the few bits of veg we had left in the fridge. For this I got out some stock from the freezer. The soup consisted of a chopped onion, skin still on and some chopped leak ends - the green leaves - and a couple of stalks of celery. There was a bag containing some cauliflower leaves and stalk so that went in along with the stock, once the celery, onion and leak had sweated down. I then chopped up a couple of parsnips keeping the skin on and a carrot.  I still had a few sprouts and carrots and more celery left for the weekend but the veg drawer was otherwise empty.

I also came back home to about two thirds of a pint of old milk.  Normally my Dad would have collected the milk from my fridge and used it up.  I do the same when he goes away.  But between us we must have forgotten.  So I decided to make a batch of herb scones to use up the sour milk.   It would also be an additional something to take to another family get-together at the weekend where we had promised to bring lunch with us.

Herb scones to use up some sour milk

For dinner we used up some sausages from the freezer. I must have frozen them in a hurry as there were eight sausages in the tub. With only three of us at home I had a feeling we wouldn't eat them all but it is very easy to use up cooked sausages so we cooked them all. The next day we remembered that we had frozen some leftover toad-in-the-hole, so we dug deep and found that. We added the extra sausages from the day before and used up the gravy we'd had with our sausage and mash and there was plenty for the three of us. It inspired Junior Daughter to have a go at toad-in-the-hole at uni. Turned out very well by the looks of it.

I often have lots of stock in my freezer and of course with a turkey at Christmas we have plenty of stock from that.  Each day we've been raiding the freezer either for soup or for stock to make soup.

Mr Pitt has made various turkey based soups for lunch and we've been eating it with the herb scones.

We've also had burgers and that helped with an interesting challenge for the Pitt family - some processed cheese slices.  This is not something we normally buy, but acquired these after a cricket club barbecue, not wanting them to go to waste, of course.  So we bought some salad to go with our freezer raids and had melted cheese over some pork burgers.

The freezer is slowly emptying and so far, we've only had one casualty.  We thought it might be hummus, but it was the big sin of not labelling what you put in the freezer.  Once something defrosts you can usually tell what it is, but this was just a grey blob of something mushy with no smell.  If it was hummus once, it clearly wasn't great hummus.  We decided the best place for this was the compost heap.

In preparation for our family buffet, we had a cook up evening. It was fun finding things we could use up.  We wondered what we cold do with our slices of cold meat.  There wasn't a lot left, and I felt the ideal thing would be vol au vents, but the freezer didn't reveal any ready made puff pastry.  I always make my own short crust pastry as its quick and easy and always delicious, but I haven't made puff pastry since I made it in a cookery class at school at the age of 10.

Time to get out the cookery book bible.  Yes, it is a complete faff, but actually it isn't hard.  I learnt a few things, like leaving the pastry thicker for vol au vents than you would for a pie crust or sausage rolls.  I'll have to have another go soon to try and improve. They went down very well... and besides what's the point in making home made anything that just looks like it is shop bought.  Shame I forgot to take a photo when they were made up - and the evidence has now all been eaten.

I had made a large mince pie on Boxing Day, which we forgot all about, so we had left it in an airtight cake box in our porch - which acts as a spare fridge over the winter (well most of the year round, in fact).  We had a reasonable stock of eggs in the fridge so I made a batch of short crust pastry to make a quiche as the main event for the lunch.  What to put in it?  We had some feta cheese and there was some cooked gammon from the freezer.   I had frozen some broccoli before going away so I put that in too and there we have it - broccoli, feta and gammon quiche.

I had a bit of pastry left over from the quiche and wondered what could go in it.  We had some paté in the freezer, so we took that out and I layered it into the centre of the rolled out oblong of pastry and rolled it up to make a kind of sausage roll.  We forgot to take it with us for lunch next day, which was a happy surprise on Sunday when we wanted a little snack for lunch, before a roast dinner in the evening.

To sum up the spread for the buffet we had:

• broccoli, gammon and feta quiche, 
• turkey and pork and sweetcorn vol au vents in a white wine sauce
• herb scones with butter
• pork pie (made by our local butcher and bought uncooked and frozen)
• lattice mince pie for pudding

Not bad for a use-it-up freezer raid!

The freezer delving continues and I think on tonight's menu we are making a sort of butternut squash, lentil, bacon and feta cheese lasagna, but instead of using lasagna sheets, we are going to substitute some broken tortilla wraps from the freezer.

There will be more soup, no doubt, but what else will we find, I wonder?  I think it is going to take us at least another week or two after this one and then we will move on to the cupboards.

But, there's more to the story... what started as a practical decision to use up the contents of the freezer so it can get a thorough clean out and defrost, has led me onto more use-it-up ideas.  I had a big box in my bedroom full of various toiletries.  That has been pulled out and I've been using up bits and pieces from there.

The biggest clear up for 2017, however, is going to be digital.  I decided that my big 2017 challenge would be a digital detox.  I'll tell you more about that another day.

Here's to 2017.  Let's make it a great year!

Looking forward to a less packaged 2017

It isn't just me, is it? People are generally coming to the realisation that packaging is a big problem for the environment.

I was recently asked my opinion on what I thought was the worst case of packaging that I had seen. That's a tough one for me as I don't see a lot of packaging these days as, since my year of no single use plastic in 2015, I have totally changed the way I shop.

These days I buy all my meat from my local butcher where I take my own containers and the meat is put straight into those. I buy vegetables and fruit from a green grocer in my nearest town. Most of their produce is unpackaged and loose so I buy the exact quantity I need. They do sometimes "package up" some things, usually if there are items they need to sell quickly. I have sometimes bought these but I undo the bag carefully and reuse it and these clear plastic bags are recyclable in my area.

I buy dry goods from SESI Oxford  where I refill my own containers and I also know that I am getting fairly traded, ethically sourced produce too as that's the ethos of the shop.



I buy in charity shops too, where there's no packaging either.

But I had a feeling I might find some over packaging at Christmas, especially with six nieces  and nephew's visiting. To my surprise there was nowhere near the amount of packaging I usually see. It was pretty much all recyclable too. Things are looking up.

I thing the worst packaging to be seen was actually this.

This is surprising in that it seems to be a product aimed at people who want to reduce their use of resources. The idea of it is that you don't need cling film as these discs of plastic fit over your cut fruit and veg and help it last longer by stopping the cut edge from coming into contact with air. For decay to take place air, water and warmth are required for bacteria to grow. The cut edge of fruit and veg is usually moist whereas a whole piece of fruit or veg with its skin in tact is dry on the outside. That's the point of the skin. This is why people use cling film to block in the moisture and block the air out. That's also what the fruit huggers are designed to do. They are a reusable version of cling film. I am all in favour of that.

So what is wrong with this packaging? I will start by saying it is not awful. I can see that the card is separated from the plastic, which means it can easily be removed so the card and plastic can be recycled. The worst thing about it is that I can't get in it without taking scissors to it. That means I can't use the packaging to keep the unused bits together and clean for when I want to use them.

I think for something like this a better quality reusable form of packaging would be far more suitable.

Maybe a tin or sturdy plastic box like these pastry cutters I was given for previous Christmases would be too expensive to produce, but what about a clear zip lock bag. The cardboard insert can go in just the same.

Whenever I buy anything I always consider the packaging and I won't buy things knowingly that I feel are over packaged or are packaged in non recyclable material. I think there are more and more people who think like this these days. So I say I am looking forward to a less packaged 2017 because I feel that by the end of the year we may well reach the packaging tipping point. Mainstream media are getting the bee in their bonnets about it just like me. That will get more people talking about it and it WILL get manufacturers running scared and thinking of better ways to package their produce. That thought makes me very happy.

Happy New Year!

The Food Rush - Start-ups Christmas Fair

Yesterday I went along to a tasty Christmas Fair organised by The Food Rush.  All the stall holders were food related start-up companies and they all had great stories to share.  The event was a sell out, which was very encouraging as it shows there's a growing community of people who care about the ethics and provenance of their food.

We were welcomed with wine from a company in Bristol called Vin2o. They have teamed up with Vineyard Toutigeac in Bordeaux and Bristol-based charity Frank Water, turning wine into clean water for communities in Gambia.  Vin2o donate 25p from every bottle of wine they sell to Frank Water. Here's their story.


Vin2o - About our business from Vin2o on Vimeo.

Plenty of other tasty treats were available to sample and with opportunities to do a bit of Christmas shopping.

Spare Fruit are a company who are making apple crisps and soon pear crisps from surplus and "mis-shape" fruit.  The fruit is air-dryed and there are no added ingredients so they are a low calorie snack.  You can read their story here.  They taste great.  I'm not a fan of dried apple rings, but these have a different taste and texture, which I really like. They are crisp and yummy.
 
I always ask that awkward question about packaging.  At the moment the packaging is not recyclable, but they have been researching options and they have talked to Snact, who make fruit jerky from surplus produce. Snact recently changed over to 100% home compostable packaging.. For now, though, cost is prohibitive, but it is on their radar for the future,which is good to know. Sometimes my self-imposed no packaging rule is annoying. I could just eat some apple crisps right now.  I think it is the sound of crinkling packets and munching next to me that is making me hungry.

Spare Fruit is available in various shops and cafes in London and will soon be available for online ordering.  I can't wait to try their Pear Crisps too.

Tasty Misfits is a veg box scheme with a difference. Based in South London, every Saturday morning  they deliver a weekly box of vegetables or fruit and vegetables that have been collected from mostly local farms that have mis-shapen produce and from markets that have surplus stock.

Onist make delicious avocado chocolate pot deserts blended from Fair Trade ingredients.  For each pot purchased, Onist funds a healthy breakfast for a child in need.  These chocolate pots are gluten-free and vegan (and so delicious - I have to mention that bit again).

The next stop on my tour round the Christmas Fair was another vegan option.  More Than Meat make plant based protein dishes for people wanting to reduce or replace meat in their diet.  The lamb casserole was very tasty and I wouldn't have realised that it wasn't meat. Plant-based sausage roll anyone? These are available to order online.

The Tabl table was so  crowded I didn't manage to snap a pic. Tabl provide an online outlet for independent producers and organise foodie events in London and Brighton.  Check out their website for lots of Christmas hamper ideas and "experience" gifts.

Time for another drink, I feel. This time we stopped by at the Kentish Pip table for a taste of their Skylark cider.  This is definitely on my Christmas shopping list as Senior Daughter particularly will love it. We then tasted the non alcoholic drink options from Thor.  I love talking about the inspiration behind a product and Thor are aiming to create a "grown-up alternative to an alcoholic drink" for people who are driving.  I really like that and would definitely be part of that demographic on occasions. I almost felt bad when I bought one of their gift packs for someone who I am pretty sure will love it with gin. I couldn't help myself but say this and they recommended 55 Above Raspberry Gin which they said was lovely with the Mint Apple Spritz.  On the way home today we stopped off at the Oxford Wine Company and realising I have a packed week ahead, decided to strike while the iron was hot and in the absence of 55 Above, I bought The Pinkster Gin to go with the Apple Mint Spritz and that is a Christmas gift to be excited about.

It's getting very Christmassy here at the Old Truman Brewery! Lets make it a #SparklingSeasonToRemember @trumanbrewery #thordrinks pic.twitter.com/jCWG4ER6uj

— THØR Drinks (@thordrinks) December 6, 2016

Last but not least we sampled some insect protein from Eat Grub. This is a food source I have long been fascinated by, given that insects are pretty prolific. I first tasted meal worms in the Natural History Museum in Halifax,Canada in 2000 and I remember eating some very tasty crickets at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford a few years ago, but insects as a deliberate food source has yet to take off, I feel, but is surely a sustainable food for the future?  The insect snack bars were on offer to taste and very tasty they were too.  I didn't get to ask about the packaging, but I would definitely tuck into one of these if it was on offer in the post half marathon goody bag next March. How about it #BathHalf?

Bon appetit!

Anyone else going upcycling this Christmas?

To me, Black Friday means  I go into hibernation and spend nothing until the craziness has passed over and sanity is restored.
I've heard it said that "Everyone loves a bargain."  But actually what a 'bargain' makes me think of is more the profit made the rest of the time and whether it is a fair one -benefitting all the people and communities involved in the production of said bargain item.  Most of the time, when it comes to conventional shopping I don't know whether that is the case or not.


So, as a result, I have pretty much given up conventional shopping and instead I turn to small businesses, craft fairs and charity shops, particularly the lovely "community shop" in my village that has recently re-opened after a relocation to larger premises.  I paid a visit there last Saturday to take a bag of books and DVDs.  One of the DVDs was on its second visit already as I took it there a couple of years ago, and then when Junior Daughter decided to take German A Level, I bought it back along with a few others as it had a German language option on the soundtrack.  But that's another story!
Back to Christmas presents...


I have nieces and nephews to shop for and I do like to find them something that they can make, do or read.  This year I have ordered these lovely Postage Stamp Art Kits from a local upcycling business (but they are available online, I believe).





I think these will be fun to make and nice to keep (or give away if they don't want to keep them once they are done).  They will provide a bit of creative r&r that children often need during the Christmas holidays, especially with the limited day light for playing outside.
Earlier in the year I "commissioned" some jewellery pieces to be made from a huge collection of broken strings of pearls from my grandmother. She liked the idea of them being reused.  I am sure she must have thought about reusing them herself but didn't get round to it. So she was delighted when I suggested they could be made into something.  Now, this does sound a bit posh and expensive, doesn't it?  Commissioning art, hey?  Well, all I can say is that if you know people who love making stuff, then why not ask them if you have something specific in mind with materials you already have. You can judge roughly how much something might cost by comparing your idea to the artist's existing work. Give plenty of time, but it is always worth asking. This way, you get gifts that are truly unique, meaningful and "green".
In addition to this, I will be on the look out for storage jars, baskets, or pretty trays and plates in my community shop for some home-made treats and local produce.
The best thing... I won't need to go anywhere near a crowed High Street, I won't have to queue for a car parking space or at a check out and no traffic jams. What's not to love?  Merry Christmas.

The Pumpkin Festival

Hubbub tells us that "18,000 tonnes of edible pumpkin ends up in the bin each year. That's the same weight as 1,500 double-decker buses!"  Back in 2014, Hubbub held their first Pumpkin Rescue to raise awareness of this scary statistic and to encourage people to rethink their attitude to pumpkin waste.  Each year since then I have been invited to be park of the"Great Pumpkin Rescue" helping people learn ways to make the most of their pumpkins and understand that pumpkins are food.

Delicious soup being made today by @AnnaPitt from @LFHW_UK with leftover pumpkin flesh after some incredible carved pumpkins. pic.twitter.com/hN5rTupQjX

— Cogges (@CoggesWitney) October 30, 2016

This year, I was invited to put on my Love Food Hate Waste apron and help out at the pumpkin day at Cogges Manor Farm in Witney to help them make the most of the pumpkins the children were carving to take on their lantern walk.

Pumpkin Day was a lovely family event that I hope will be repeated.  Here's a taste of the day in a lovely video from Box Cottage Photography.



I was making pumpkin soup from the flesh of the pumpkins the children were carving and I toasted the pumpkin seeds. We warmed the soup on the lovely fire in the Victorian kitchen of the manor house.  Lots of people had a cup of the pumpkin soup, sampled pumpkin tray bake cakes and toasted pumpkin seeds and lots of people went away with new ideas about how to make the most of their pumpkins as food.

Plenty of people said they didn't realise that  carving pumpkins were edible. Plenty siad they had no idea that you could toast and eat the seeds.

I was dismayed to hear the culinary experts on Jay Rayner's The Kitchen Cabinet saying that carving pumpkins are for carving not for eating and that they don't taste good.  I disagree.  It is not hard to make a tasty pumpkin soup. Here's my method used at Cogges.

I peeled some onions.  I put the onion skin into a big pan and added a couple of litres of water and brought that to the boil then turned it down to simmer gently while I went foraging in the Cogges walled vegetable garden to see what herbs I could find.  I picked rosemary, thyme, lovage and fennel.  Jess was making mulled cider and so I added the cores from the apples she was peeling into my stock pot of onion skin and added the apple peel to the bowl of pumpkin flesh.

I sweated down the chopped onions in another big pan, and once my stock had taken on a good flavour and lovely reddish brown colour, I added the pumpkin flesh and the herbs into the sweated onions and then poured on some of the stock.  Before whizzing up the soup in a liquidiser I removed the herbs. I often don't do that at home, but you know that thing about mixing colours that you learn in pre-school, it shouldn't be forgotten.  Orange and green make brown. By removing the green herbs, you will get a nicer orange colour when you blend your soup.  Keeping the herbs in there will make the soup turn brown.  However, they will have done their job and added flavour whether you keep them in or take them out.  Once liquidised, I tasted the soup ready to season it.  I added a little sea salt, black pepper and a small quantity of chili powder.

The toasted pumpkin seeds were also sprinkled with a bit of sea salt, black pepper and chili powder.

I was pleasantly surprised how many children liked the pumpkin soup and the toasted seeds. Hopefully next year they will be making the most of their own pumpkins.

Just Eat It

Last week I was invited to be on a panel of experts at the Oxford Brookes Document Club screening of Jennifer Rustemeyer and Grant Baldwin's "Just Eat It".

My fellow panelists were Rina Melendez from SESI Oxford, Jasmine York from Brookes Hub and chairing the panel, Hannah Fenton from Good Food Oxford.

I felt that the Q&A after the screening really deepened the thinking about the messages in the film – for me as a panelist as well as for the audience. It made the experience one of sharing thoughts and opinions and questioning the messages by relating to our own local experience. Having a discussion about the film deepened the understanding of and reaction to the issues in the documentary. Both the post screening talk and the opportunities for further discussion afterwards made for a powerful evening that was thought provoking, and I feel, more likely to encourage behaviour change than if people experienced the film alone.

It was a documentary equivalent of a book club, which I love.  I always find I get more out of a book when I get the chance to discuss it afterwards, particularly in a diverse group of people who have different opinions.  I find things are brought to my attention that I might otherwise have missed and the whole thing seems more memorable and enduring than just having the experience of reading a book / seeing a film or TV programme on my own.

"Just Eat It" charts the experience of the film producer, Jen and director, Grant as they embark on a challenge to live for six months on food that would otherwise be dumped.

The discussion, as well as considering the content of the film, revolved around practical actions that people might actually take themselves. There was a high level of engagement in the room and there were lots of further questions afterwards, which was very inspiring.


If you missed the screening but would like to follow a bit of the conversation around the topic, you can listen to the  Brookes Radio podcast.

You missed our last screening ?Listen to this @BrookesRadio show feat @SESIOxford https://t.co/m9X2zeOdqF #JustEatIt #FoodWaste

— OBUDOC (@OBUDOC1) October 14, 2016