Wednesday 26 December 2007

Tesco's French Cauliflowers ?



Xmas quilts 2007




Wednesday 26th December 2007

My challenge is over. Now my challenge is to carry on going. I finished with 2 computer cartridges, one plastic tray, one plastic bag from around grapes and one empty washed tin of beans in my carrier bag after three months. I shall photograph them before taking them to the tip. I have no intention of putting out a bin. My microwave packed up on me just before Xmas and that is out side waiting to be disposed of. I think I will ask for a free collection from the Council to pick it up as that is the most carbon friendly way of disposing of it as the lorry makes lots of pick-ups on each journey. I am going to attempt to live without another microwave but will keep my options open. My son is not amused about that. I survived xmas with giving home made food and quilts which I just about managed to finish on Xmas Eve morning. I think everyone is happy and if there are any complaints I will own up. Only thing I will change next year is I shall start earlier with my xmas gifts and also will source throughout the year so I have more goods available. I also start right now not purchasing anything made out of the United Kingdom. I shall carry on this blog and list what I buy and where I sourced them. I have one major issue with Tesco's even though I did not shop there for Xmas. I was at my daughters. She had visited Tesco's. I am putting in here a photograph of the plastic wrapping which she purchased her cauliflower in from Tesco's. Who can tell me where this cauliflower was grown ? I asked my daughter who had frantically rushed around Tesco's in the crowds as had most people. She said, it is Welsh of course it says so on the packaging. I know I have bought plastic she said to me, but it was Welsh. Well it is not. It is French and surely this is misleading advertising. I will find out but would be grateful of feedback to see what anyone else thinks. This made me mad, how many people paid top prices for cauliflowers covered in bilingual messages believing them to be British at least. I rest my case of wine on someones toes, hopefully it will be Tesco's. I am appalled and I will be back.

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to all who have troubled to read my inane titterings for three months, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Wednesday 19 December 2007

Day 80

Tuesday 18th December 2007

I am 4 days away from completion of this challenge. For the last week I have been frantically attempting to finish the quilts I should have started 6 months ago. People sayI work well under pressure but gosh it is killing me. I will get there but along the way I see new opportunities opening up in front of me. The red dragons I cut out last year were in the sewing chest and so I thought red dragons on the boys quilts. I finished stitching one but it did not suit the colours of my eldest grandsons quilt so now I have to do another and make 2 cushions for their beds with red dragons on. Then the books I promised them with their names in ages ago. I might make it. I shall let you know if I do. I am no diarist. Strange being a writer but I am not. But the ideas that are now flying around in my head daily will out in the next season when all is quiet and my son returns to college and I only have myself to feed. He is home for a month so life changes dramatically. Does he think his mother is mad? Yes and no. He gets frustrated with me but also respects what I do which I am thankful for. Otherwise his quilt would have daggers embroidered on it instead of playing cards. We mothers have ways of getting back. I am getting more light hearted as Xmas looms. I have faith in my ability to get there complete with the sewing challenge. My hampers are being consumed as I speak. I had texts telling me so. The weekend will be the culmination of a lot of things. Then I will go to a supermarket as my challenge will be over. There is only one reason I will go and that is to pick up cream cheese and lpots and lots of CREAM. I will make a baked vanilla cheesecake and a lemon cheesecake for Xmas a nd they will be seeved with lashings of CREAM. The two things I failed to get on this challenge that I missed, cream and glaze cherries. Impossible for me to get not in plastic. Other things I did without such as yoghurts and did not miss. In fact I have learned to live without them well. I have another 4 days and then I will have completed what I set out to do. I will write a book on the 'exercise of cooking' for it is an exercise of the mind and body and is how I believe we should be living for our well being. I am happy I ventured out as it has changed my way of life. I have no need to change it back, once I have sated on cream this xmas I will not crave it again perhaps until next Xmas. Who knows, I shall find out.

Tuesday 11 December 2007

March Hywel Mountain Cilfrew


Day 73

Tuesday 11th December 2007

In 12 days my challenge will be over. I have not put out one waste bin or a scrap of recycling. This has not hurt me one bit. It has enhanced my life in so many ways. I have proved there is an alternative. Today is a sad day for Welsh people in that it has been outed by a farmer that 300,000 welsh lambs are to be slaughtered between now and January 4th next year as the Common Agricultural Policy ( CAP) from the EU has changed and the Tir Mynyydd supplements to hill farmers have altered which means with the rise in maize and other grain on the world market the farmers no longer find it a viable option to farm lamb. Our hills which are full of sheep will now dwindle. Yet yesterdays paper saw reports of Gordon Brown starting an investigation into security of food supplies in this country. The farmers will be paid £15 per lamb to kill them and incinerate them. No doubt to create electricity. Carmarthenshire County Council state they cannot afford to feed their schoolchildren an organic diet. A report in yesterdays Western Mail states people will not be able to afford welsh lamb in wales. We will continue to import New Zealand lamb. Is it just me or does this seem madness to anyone else?

Day 72

Monday 10th December 2007
Off on the train to Cardiff. I cooked a vegetable lasagne and a chocolate cake for the kids for their desert. I had some with icecream too. I resisted the second bit but was it lovely. On the train I read all the papers and read about BP going into Canada and destroying huge swathes of it to extract tar oil which causes 5 times as much emissions per barrel as does conventional oil well extraction. When will it end? When people start moving the right way even if Governments will no longer protect them because the drive for energy and oil takes precedence over peoples lives.

DAY 70& 71

Saturday & Sunday 8th & 9th December 2007

The weekend went in a whirl as usual with my 19 year old son home from University. He fills up with all Mam's cooking and then returns to his pot noodles and pop for the rest of the week. He related to me how he went into a garage and bought a tin of hot dog sausages and a pack of rolls. Then he forgot the tomato sauce so had to go back for it. More petrol I sighed. But he was in a dilemna, he had 8 sausages in the tin but only 6 rolls in the pack. What is the solution. Of course mam he said, being a civil engineering student, I would have to buy 3 tins of sausages and four packs of rolls then I would be ok. That is him fed for a week. It is the same today with most things. Packaging has destroyed sense. Remember the ironmongers, where you could buy 1 screw or nail if you wanted. B&Q are clever, you want 7 large nai9ls, you have to buy 2 packs of 6 to get 7. Then the other 5 hang about for years cluttering up your cupboards until you need them again and cannot find them. More petrol to go to B&Q and another 2 packs of 6. No sense is nonsense. We need to conserve not reserve at Argos.

Sunday 9 December 2007

Day 69

Friday 7th December 2007

The seasons mean a lot to people who live close to the land. Supermarket shopping has divorced us from this closeness to the land and to the seasons. I have not been able to get my favourite cheese with pickle in it from the delicatessen for weeks. It is the season of Christmas. I always made my children go without for weeks before Christmas. Without sweets, without biscuits and cakes. Then the plenty of Christmas was twice as plentiful. The Delicatessen stall owner will tell you, they are now building up the stock for the festive season for then people will buy luxuries they will not buy the rest of the year and they want to be able to supply. I have ordered my 5 cheeses for my hampers and myself. This penury for the few weeks before Christmas is what it is all about. It is a tradition that the nuts and chocolates and festive eats are not put out until the children are in bed on Christmas Eve. We would always cook the meat other than the turkey on Christmas Eve and when the men returned from the pub, where they would sing carols and meet people visiting their families for Christmas, they would return to the first plate of pork or beef with the pickles and chutney out on the table. Our turkey was normally cooked over night so the smell in the house early on Christmas day when the children woke excited was all set. Then they would crack nuts and dish out chocolate from huge bars and toffees from beautiful tins. This is what makes Charistmas for me and my family.

Day 68

Thursday 6th December 2007

It is hard now that Christmas is coming so fast to control myself not to reach out and buy. Even I am tempted when I enter a store laden with boxes of stamp machines etc. for my three year old grandson. But by experience I know this machine will not work as it states on the box. So I have desisted so far. My Christmas cooking is on standby until the week before Christmas as all I have now to make are such things as chocolate devil food cake which I will turn into small slabs with chocolate fudge icing on and decorate with a sprig of holly for a far moister and better version of the chocolate log. I am then making potted game with a shank of venison I have in my freezer which I will mix with boiled ham from the market and pound to a paste to mix with herbs and spices to fill small ceramic jars. These I can buy in Wilkinsons for about 50 pence each. They will be sealed with best market butter. Mince pies with which I will fill xmas cardboard boxes bought quite cheaply in many outlets and cheesecake for my grandsons. I have to wait until after December 23rd to make the cheesecakes as I cannot source cream not in plastic. The wait will do me good. I have ordered the small waxed cheese from the delicatessen stall to complete my hampers and boxes of brandy snaps with chocolates and pralines will complete them. Never before have I had so much food in my house and I have not entered a supermarket. Hopefully it will all be eaten and appreciated.

The start of Xmas Hampers


Day 67

Wednesday 5th December 2007

Christmas looms. I have been asked if I will have a white or a green Christmas. Both I hope. Christmas is traditionally a time of fresh fruit, fresh meat and fresh vegetables. But anyone with children will tell you that the amount of packaging thrown out is abysmal. How many of us have been frustrated at all those little wire ties that one has to release a child’s toy from. Some toys even have their own tool to release the toy from the wrapping. How many times have we all said, they prefer to play with the box to the toy. Local shopkeepers will now remove packaging if I wish to purchase something that is heavily packaged. I know this in a way defeats the object but I do know that the more people that ask for the packaging to be removed the more the shopkeepers will feed back to the suppliers and the better chance there is of less packaging. I have not accepted a plastic carrier bag for the last ten weeks. When a teenager I remember my mother having a line full of washed plastic bags drying in the wind. We were not used to wasting then so did not do it. Any plastic bags I have to take have been washed and are now reused over and over again for food stuffs which I then freeze. After ten weeks of going without ice-cream I now find out that in Skewen is Cresci’s Ice Cream Parlour and a man who has the only licence in Neath Port Talbot to produce his own ice-cream. I can produce my own container and have as many scoops as I wish dropped in. What a break through, milk and pop in glass bottles and now ice-cream in my own container. My world gets to be a more eco friendly place daily.

Tuesday 4 December 2007

Day 66

Tuesday 4th December 2007

Today is day 66 out of a total of 84 days. Only 18 days to go until my challenge is in effect over. But it will not be over, it will be a beginning of a life without checking myself, it will be a natural progression into an alternative life. After writing this blog I intend to go down my garden on a drizzly day and sit in my garden chair and start my fire. I will sit there poking it with a long stick and contemplate my life. I will laugh at myself and will thoroughly enjoy the forced sitting down leaving my mind roam free and watching the flames, being warmed by the flames and controlling the flames. I think I feel good about doing this challenge as I am in total control. I control what I buy, I control what I eat and I control how I feel . It is an achievement to make food I know is good food. It is a pleasure to see the milk on the doorstep in the morning and the pop man who brings me cauliflowers from the Gower and pop in glass bottles which I can return now figures in my life where before there was nothing only a supermarket checkout. I do not miss the supermarkets in the least. I have no urge to visit them and do not think I ever will again. I will not revert to using a bin after Christmas. I will carry on doing what I am doing unless my life changes and I do not have time to do it. One day perhaps I will not be capable of doing it but until that time comes I am in control of my waste, I am in control of my life. I like it.

Day 65

Monday 3rd December 2007

Off to Cardiff on the train again. It was crisp and dry when I left Neath and raining and wet when I got to Cardiff. I opened my daughters fridge and saw a mountain of fresh vegetables. So I rolled up my sleeves and by the time the children got in from school at 3.45 pm there was vegetable curry and Mam’s oven chips made by par boiling the potatoes in huge chunks and then roasting them in the oven with butter and a little salt. There was a saucepan of vegetable and lentil soup which I know my daughter adores and a large vegetable quiche on the cooker top oozing best welsh cheese. My task in life now seems to be to cook. I wonder how long it will last?

Day 64

Sunday December 2nd 2007

Sunday 2nd December 2007

December 4th is my oldest grandsons birthday. He enters double figures, he is 10 this year. They arrived from Cardiff for dinner today. I had boned and stuffed the chicken and cooked a variety of vegetables. I also made a trifle with fresh fruit and blancmange. Blancmange is fine as it comes in paper and cardboard. My daughter brought the cream as I cannot source it with out plastic. I toasted some almonds for the top of the trifle and then used my little hand slicer to flake them. I also made some praline quickly using just butter and brown sugar in a saucepan for a few minutes, then tipping it out onto greaseproof paper. When cool put another piece of greaseproof paper on top and crush with a rolling pin. Sprinkle over the trifle with the almonds for a lovely crunchy nutty topping. I made a devils food cake covered in butter icing for a birthday cake. Everyone who tastes this cake enthuses over it as it is soft, moist and so chocolately. This year it will be devils food cake for xmas with my own butter fudge icing. We feasted like kings once again.