09/13/10

I made my sandwich from moldy bread…

I’ve just eaten what is a rather late lunch and as I was doing so I picked some mold off the bread and made it into a sandwich…

Yes…I did just say that…I picked the mold off my bread. Not that my bread was completely green and fuzzy…there was no sandpaper involved in locating the bread under a carpet of mold…I simply picked off a couple of green bits.

As I was picking off this mold in order to make my sandwich I thought about the re-action of the last person who I casually mentioned this habit too who said ‘ewww that’s minging!’ and it got me thinking about the throw-away society we live in.

I know plenty of people for whom a best before date is gospel…magically the contents of their packet become away of the date and go off…just like that. Before midnight on the date it’s a nice yummy yogurt but the second after it becomes green fuzzy scum…leave it any longer and it morphs into a monster and takes over your house making you regret not listening to the best before date….of course I lie!

For example even in my lifetime I remember products that didn’t have dates but now we’ve got so health and safety conscious everything has a date and sadly we forget our common sense and just throw things away.

This throwaway society throwaway comes to mind again as I think of supermarkets…Jo works in a supermarket and is always telling me about the amount of people who refer to carrier bags as ‘throwaway bags’, people who have 2 items and put them in a carrier bag and people who say ‘oh I left my bag for life in the car…I’ll take a plastic bag’.

The problem is that if we didn’t throw so much away and just used a bit of common sense we could probably do a fair chunk for the planet. If you’re bag for life is genuinely in the car then why not keep your shopping in the trolly or carry it? If the majority of the bread isn’t moldy pick some off…if the milks not lumpy or funky smelling but is past it’s best before don’t throw it away.

I think we just need a little more common sense!

08/19/10

Greenbelt 2010

Next Friday Jo and myself (plus a various others we know) head to Cheltenham Racecourse for Greenbelt. For those who’ve haven’t heard of Greenbelt it’s probably the most unique Christian festival that happens in the UK. I’ve heard it described by some as ‘fantastic’ and others as ‘liberal’ so it should be an interesting experience.

Perhaps one of the most unique things about Greenbelt is that it doesn’t have an exclusively Christian line-up…for example one of the headlining bands are The King Blues…this wider variety of music is something I’m really looking forward to…there’s only so many Matt Redman clones you can bare to watch!

Also in the musical line-up who I’m anticipating seeing is Luke Leighfield…a Ben Folds style musician from Southampton (Luke’s album ‘Have you got heart’ is free here and well worth downloading) and some worship being led by Andy Flannagan which should be a refreshing change.

The speakers include Mark Yaconelli and there’s also some interesting panels on the line-up including ‘Musician: how to do it yourself’ and ‘Is Meat murdering the planet’.

Alongside all this there seems to be plenty of other stuff going on…including a beer tent (the place I believe Jesus himself would be hanging out!). I’m really looking forward to the experience and being challenged but also having some time out to enjoy good music.

I’ll do a full blog round-up on Greenbelt after I’ve showered and reflected on the festival!

04/2/10

Day 45: Can we live without supermarkets?

As I drove past Morrisons yesterday on my way home from my gym I realised that it had almost been 6 weeks since I stepped foot inside my little local supermarket and I realised that come Sunday I could break my fast of supermarkets…the thing is the majority of me doesn’t want to!

When I started the pledge to avoid supermarkets for lent I thought it would be difficult…and in many respects it has been. The thing is we’re creatures of habit and so to get out of the habit of thinking ‘I’ll just pop to Morrisons’ and escaping that mind set was tricky to start with but I’m now in a new habit…the local farm shop (half a mile from my house) sells all the fruit and veg I need, equally the butchers or farmers market works for dead animal requirements and whilst the milkman is not a financially effective option for milk (and doesn’t deliver until 11 which is annoying) the mini-mart works for milk and beer.

The most difficult things to get without supermarkets has been cereal because it is so overpriced locally it’s crazy so I’ve been using home bargains for cooking sauces and cereals which means a trip into Hull (although when I need it I tend to be going in anyway) but the cereals are cheaper than the supermarkets which is nice.

Cost Effective?

So is it cost effective to not shop at supermarkets? If you’re a heavy drinker then the booze cost will hit you but I’m not and so my answer is yes! I’ve spent far less on fruit and veg than I usually would and they’ve been far nicer. Meat is fractionally more expensive (unless I get it from the monthly farmers market) and everything else which I’ve used home bargains for has been cheaper.

Interestingly this church times article agrees that local stores are cheaper than supermarkets

Time Effective?

Back in 2008 following on from the comments left by Laura in my post about Tesco I posted a blog titled ‘Easy Ethical Shopping‘ and having now tried ethically shopping for a month or so I think that you spend less time buying stuff locally than you would in the supermarket.

For example it takes me 10 minutes to get to the supermarket and I probably spend half an hour in there…that’s a 50 minute trip. If I pop to the butchers, bakers and fruit and veg shop I probably spend 5 minutes in each maximum and walking to them probably makes it the same time as the supermarket trip but I’ve been popping by them on my way back from places so it’s probably a half hour trip!

Will I be returning to the supermarkets on Sunday?

In short ‘no cos they’re closed on Sunday’…to answer the question properly I have to say yes and no. Supermarkets will cater for my beer, meat free mince (which I’ve missed more than I’d imagined), cereal etc but not for fruit and veg and maybe occasionally for meat! Whilst fresh bread has been nice I can’t eat it quick enough as one so I’ve wasted bread so I guess it’s back to supermarket bread!

So can we live without supermarkets?

That’s a whole blog post in itself! The problem is that supermarkets have rooted themselves too far into our society already, without supermarkets there’s many products we just wouldn’t be able to get because it’s simply not sustainable any more to have local retailers that sell all we need. If there’s a local butcher, baker or fruit and veg store then use them if you want to keep them but I don’t think you could have everything you wanted without supermarkets…but you can cut them out of whole chunks of your shopping.

And finally…

It’s been a very interesting experiment, I don’t feel like I’ve been enlightened by the whole thing…I’ve discovered local retailers I wouldn’t have known of otherwise but that’s it!

03/30/10

Day 42: Panorama: Chocolate – The Bitter Truth

I heard from friends that the panorama on the 24th March had been on chocolate, it’s origins and Fairtrade so I thought I’d give it a watch (you can too here). I have to say having watched Panorama on Primark I expected something negative…and in fairness I was half right.

The program aimed to show us where the majority of our chocolate comes from and show how easy it is to get chocolate produced by children onto our markets and the program truly did this. It was both amazing and shocking to see how easy it was for them to find chocolate that had been harvested by children and even more shocking at how easy this chocolate was to get into the stream of chocolate heading to our big companies.

As a keen Fairtrade supporter it was interesting to understand the difference between Fairtrade and non-Fairtrade and that the big difference is traceability. This means that all plantations that supply Fairtrade cocoa beans can be traced and inspected and that these inspections have caused plantations to be forced to stop using children for labour and whilst the lady from the Fairtrade Foundation didn’t respond particularly well to the interview questions the programme highlighted the important role of Fairtrade in making cocoa beans traceable and in ensuring that children are not used.

The programme also challenged me over my chocolate buying habits and I’m seriously contemplating only buying Fairtrade chocolate because it doesn’t matter whether it’s Mars, Nestle or Cadbury the chances are unless it’s Fairtrade children have been used to produce it…plus Divine Coffee-Chocolate is yummy…the only thing stopping me is a like of Mars…my current thinking is that as Cadbury aim to make their product range Fairtrade I’ll buy Cadbury and Fairtrade.

Interestingly the programme also produced some ‘Children definitely used in production’ chocolate and showed it to the public who were appalled and said they wouldn’t buy it…which highlights the importance of making people aware of where their products come from so they can make educated consumer choices….if everyone knew I bet firms would be leaping to go Fairtrade or ensure they didn’t use children!

Finally the programme also managed to find some Nestle farmers using children…brilliant - join me in a Nestle free Easter

03/22/10

Day 34: Charity Shops!

On Friday I headed into Beverley to get a few bits…Beverley is about the same distance from me as Hull and much more relaxing to wander around and smaller. Whilst there I past a small bookshop called ‘Jacobs Well’ which is a charity bookshop with a small Christian bookshop attached to it.

Whilst the Christian section was a bit naff the rest of the shop was amazing…containing hundreds of books with a nice ‘booky’ aroma about the place I spent quite some time browsing and was especially impressed with the CD’s which seemed to consist of all the singles I owned as a child and their shelf upon shelf of Christian books.

I left the shop having spent £5 on a CD single of ‘You only get what you give’ (New Radicals), a beasty New Bible Commentary Revised and individual commentaries on Revelation (part 1), Revelation (part 2), a commentary on the letters to Timothy, Titus and Philemon, a commentary on the letters to James and Peter and a commentary on the letters to John and Jude…plus a book containing 44 John Wesley sermons….absolute bargain shop!

03/13/10

Day 25: Farmers Market

I have just returned home from a brief walk and visit to the South Cave Farmers Market which happens once a month in South Cave and although I’ve had the best intentions of visiting since I moved here mid-August it’s only just happened…and majorly because of my lent pledge to avoid supermarkets.

The farmers market is held in the playground of the school and attracts a range of local stall holders selling everything from how-made jewelery and bird boxes to meat and vegetables with the odd cake-selling Scout group thrown in for good measure.

It is very much a community thing and within 30 seconds of arriving I’d already seen and chatted to some folk from church…I bumped into a few more as time went on and some young people and in between all this managed to pick up a stupidly large cabbage, some meat and some fish cakes (I’m not going to give a full shopping list!), all at very reasonable prices.

It gave me a chance to reflect on the way home at how this no supermarkets pledge was going on an expenses side and I think that so far I’m probably spending less than I would if I did a regular trip to Morrissons or ASDA…fruit and veg at the farm shops I’ve visited have been considerably cheaper and meat although a tiny bit more expensive is much better quality.

I may never use supermarkets the same way again!

02/28/10

Day 12: Swap Your Cuppa

This last week and the week we’re about to enter into are not just any old weeks. if you don’t know we are actually right in the middle of ‘Fairtrade Fortnight’ which is a yearly two weeks aiming to raise awareness of Fairtrade and aimed at encouraging more people to source Fairtrade products as part of their weekly shop.

This year the campaign is titled ‘Swap Your Cuppa’ and it is aiming to encourage people to make a swap in the buying habits they have whether that is to buy Fairtrade tea or switch to Fairtrade bananas!

The website allows people to register their swap (link) and so far almost 3,000 swaps have been registered.

I’m not going to blog anything else on Fairtrade other than to say there’s hundreds of Fairtrade products around now and they’re better than normal products because the farmers get paid properly and the communities benefit!

Buy Fairtrade!

02/18/10

Day 2: No Supermarkets For Lent!

Whilst lent is meant to be a time or preparation and should be something to bring you closer to God one thing I am trying this year amongst things that achieve the former (I hope!) is avoiding supermarkets.

Local Veg!

I had a conversation with someone at church about farm shops last week and so decided to try and only buy fruit and veg locally…in theory much more of what I buy will be locally grown and the money I spend goes back into the local economy and not into the pockets of wealthy businessmen.

Onto the supermarkets!

Following on from my thoughts on the above I realised that it would be pretty easily to buy fruit and veg from a farm shop but I wondered what it would be like to avoid supermarkets completely and so I thought I’d incorporate it into my lent challenge.

Rules?

A supermarket is hard to define…for example I would probably not count my local cornershop as a supermarket yet Heidi would so I guess I need some kind of rules to stick to….

1 – The big 4 are out of bounds! – No Asda, No Tesco (the tricky bit!!!), no Sainsbury and no Morrissons….alongside this Waitrose and others are also not allowed.

2 - Mini-marts count – For the sake of lent my local corner-shop isn’t allowed for anything other than cereals, beer and other such things you cannot buy anywhere else without going miles out the way….whilst the village has a bakery, butchers and fruit and veg shop there is no beer or cereal shop and so traveling to Hull for such items would make the whole thing completely unethical!

3 – I can use: butchers, local bakeries and newsagents….alongside this specialist shops such as Wilkinsons can be used for cleaning products!

4 – I can eat pre-purcahsed items - If there’s something in my freezer from a supermarket or something that someone feeds me that is from a supermarket that’s fine!

The Cost?

Initial thoughts would be that this is going to be more expensive…but is this a big con of the supermarket or not? I’m going to try and keep a log of what I spend and compare it to what I’d spend in a supermarket.

Initial Thoughts

Bizarrely I’m a bit more nervous about this one than the veggiexperiment back in November, I think it’s going to be more challenging but it’ll certainly be an eye-opener of sorts! Let’s see what happens…maybe I’ll never use a supermarket again!

02/17/10

Day 1: Lent – 3 Challenges

Whilst this minister has set himself the challenge of visiting all 10,000 parishioners during lent and spent last year’s lent sleeping on his church roof I’m planning to do something slightly less extreme…actually 3 slightly less extreme things!

Firstly from today (the beginning of lent) I shall be aiming to blog everyday during lent…some of the blogs may end up being scheduled so that one appears everyday but for the 40 days (plus Sundays) of lent there will be something new on my blog (also appearing on www.40blogsoflent.wordpress.com)

Secondly a while ago I got a book called ‘Daily Reflections for Lent and Easter week‘ which I’m going to aim to follow every day as a way of getting myself into some kind of habit…and hopefully providing some inspiration for blog posts as the time goes on.

Thirdly – No Supermarkets! - Originally I thought that I would aim to buy fruit and veg locally however having done this the other day I began wondering if I could spend lent without supermarkets…more thoughts on this on tomorrows blog!

01/29/10

Fairtrade Kit Kat – Live!

So the Fairtrade Kit Kat has hit the stores and Morrissons in particular have been plugging it with a leaflet at all their checkouts and whilst my initial response wasn’t very positive I thought I’d give Nestle a chance and give their leaflet a read.

The lovely people at Nestle (sarcasm) have decided that when they’re not killing babies they are going to enter a long term commitment to improve the lives of cocoa farming communities, the Fairtrade 4-finger Kit Kat being the beginning of this.

The other ‘long term commitments’ laid out by Nestle include

A £65 million investment over the next 10 years into programmes that address key social, environmental and economic issues affecting cocoa farmers.

Helping farmers to improve their cocoa quality

Nurturing a sustainable future by providing some more cocoa trees

Better social conditions for cocoa farming communities

Now whilst all this is well and good somewhere along the lines Nestle have forgotten the point of their leaflet…this leaflet is aimed at plugging their ‘aren’t we lovely here’s a Fairtrade Kit Kat’ thing however their cocoa plan makes no commitment to making their products Fairtrade which suggests that as I suspected originally this is nothing more than a ‘buy our products’ gimmick and whilst it’s fantastic that some of their farmers are now going to be paid properly I wonder why Nestle won’t do this with all of their chocolate? (I have e-mailed them this question!)

It’s not just me wondering this either, in an article in Christianity Magazine man of many trades Steve Chalke says:

“Though we understand that it is hard to make all products ethical overnight, we want to see that this is more than a token gesture.

“So, we intend to keep the pressure on Nestlé until their commitment is global and product wide, like their competitor Mars.

“No chocolate should have the bitter aftertaste of slavery. Therefore our campaign continues.”

So there’s my thoughts, I won’t be buying any Nestle until they show that they care for their farmers rather than their pockets!

12/23/09

The Fairtrade KitKat

A week or so ago Nestle announced that from January the 4 finger Kitkat would be Fairtrade (link)…which of course for people who Boycott Nestle (largely over their Baby Milk scandels which still continue today) flashes up an ethical dilema…however I don’t think it’s time to start buying from the company who are rated 0.5 out of 20 for ethicalness on ethicalconsumer.org.

Let’s take a look at Nestle as a whole…the company own hundreds of confectionary products, a wide range of instant Nescafe Coffee and not to mention Loreal, Garnier, Go-Cat and Felix (to name a few) yet out of those hundreds of products how many are fairtrade? 1 at the moment and 2 in January.

Nestle’s Partner’s Blend Fairtrade coffee has been available for a good few years now yet where supermarkets have made large amounts of their coffee fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance Certified (as have many other companies) Nestle have done nothing making Partner’s Blend nothing more than a flag they can wave saying ‘Look at us, we support Fairtrade…buy from us’.

If they truly believed in Fairtrade they would be managed to convert the whole Nestle range by now…and it’s the same with the Kitkat.

The 2 Fairtrade products out of hundreds from Nestle is effectively saying ‘We’re going to pay some of our farmers properly and look after communities but we don’t give a crap about the others’.

Cadbury are working on making their whole range Fairtrade and have committed to that…nothing of the sort from Nestle.

So in conclusion Nestle aren’t very nice still! Fact.

11/24/09

Veggiexperiment: The End Of An Experience

The title of this post is perhaps somewhat misleading…as of today I can now eat meat again after my month of seeing what it’s like being a vegetarian, however I still have veggie bolognese left for tea and no meat in for lunch so I still won’t end up with meat today (I hope Cameron has bacon for breakfast tomorrow though!)…perhaps I should just gnaw on some pig skin (pork scratchings) in the pub tonight?

In spite of my light hearted remarks above meat isn’t actually something I’ve missed. My biggest lesson learned from all of this is that I’m not as much of a carnivore as I imagined myself to be and actually the only thing I’ve missed during this time has been fish and chips (the chips aren’t the same without the fish). I don’t think I’d find living as a vegetarian difficult however I have no reason or conviction to become one so I’m fully intending on eating meat (especially with a roast dinner!) but probably not as regularly as before.

My eating habits will certainly move away from the meat-and-two-veg (excuse any genitialia puns there) approach and more often I think I’ll be happy using veggie-alternatives, for exanple the Morissons frozen meat-free mince is actually tastier than any meat mince I’ve had.

A Limiting Lifestyle

The most difficult part of the experiment has not been in the lack of meet but in the lack of variety. Frankie & Bennies left me with nothing but a veggie-burger to munch on and sandwich choices became limited to rabbit food, cheese or egg.

It wasn’t the lack of meat that I missed but the difficulty in finding something to eat when out and about and I feel that being a long term veggie would stop me from eating out as much…you feel like such a pain telling someone you’re veggie when they ask you round for a meal.

Supermarket Labelling

There also doesn’t seem to be a clear labelling system in restaurants and supermarkets starting a product is vegetarian, some products have it on the front with the nutrition information whereas others hide it in the ingredients, making shopping more tedious and difficult.

Onwards to freedom!

So to conclude my experiment I’m looking forward to the freedom that lays ahead, I’m looking forward to the world of shopping and dining out being my oyster (or steak or chicken…you get my point) and although I may choose a vegetarian option more than I would have before I want it to be a choice I make rather than a choice I’m forced into.

It’s been an interesting month and I’ve learnt a lot about myself and what it’s like to be a vegetarian and it’s given me a greater respect for those veggie’s I know because I know it’s a more difficult lifestyle than I thought before.