I planned one trip to Whole Foods for the month of February as part of my zero waste experiment. My goal was to get some organic/free range meat, and some bulk goods that I couldn’t get from my usual supermarket. This trip took longer than I expected. I spilled flour on myself, had to ask someone Read More…
Category: Food
Zero Waste Shopping: At the Supermarket
I’ve now made three shopping trips to my usual supermarket trying to follow zero waste habits as much as possible. First I get my gear: Edith’s car seat, my shopping kit, and my canvas bags. I think that as soon as you start bringing your own shopping bags – per the norm many places now – it’s relatively Read More…
Adventures in Zero Waste Shopping
For a while now, I’ve wanted to experiment with reducing food packaging waste. I first encountered this idea in Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson (who blogs at www.zerowastehome.com). The book describes how to make every aspect of home life ‘zero waste’, that is, producing no landfill waste. (It’s full of good advice even if you don’t aspire Read More…
Pantry Organisation
I feel about our pantry much the same as I feel about our bathroom cabinets. Hooray, we have a pantry! But it’s kind of an awkward space. It has a narrow single door opening onto a very deep closet of shelves. Even at a generous estimate, only half the space is accessible enough to use easily. Read More…
In Praise of Slow: A Book Review
Remember that I mentioned the slow food movement with reference to sourdough bread? It’s one of those things that I’d never heard of until recently, but once I heard it the first time suddenly it was cropping up everywhere. Hence, I read this book, which is about slow everything – the Slow movement, to be Read More…
Sourdough Update
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about making sourdough bread, and promised to update on the results of my attempt. I’m pleased to say that I’ve made several successful loaves of bread since then. Here is my first one. Its major flaw is the very tentative cut across the top. I was afraid to Read More…
A Course in Sourdough Bread
My thesis has been consuming most of my time for the last few weeks, so housekeeping has been minimal. However, now that I am in quite a final stage (yikes!) of my thesis, I felt relaxed enough to catch up on things today, including laundry and some potted plants and getting my sewing machine fixed. Read More…
Recipe Alteration and Pumpkin Bread
Look what I found at Whole Foods on our recent shopping trip: My American friends will recognise this very comforting product. Overpriced as it was, I was delighted to stock up with a few tins of this and am hoarding some until Thanksgiving. However, I wanted to use one for some early autumn baking: pumpkin Read More…
Applesauce
A while ago, I found some Kilner home canning jars on sale and bought six of them. I then resolved to lie in wait for the apple season to start and see if I could obtain some inexpensive apples to make applesauce. I had begun to contemplate which weekend to buy my apples when, serendipitously, Read More…
The Report on Saving Money Sanely
Recently, I posted about my plans to trim down some of our living expenses but without returning to my maniacally frugal ways. I wanted to report on how it’s going! Before my new plan, on our weekly shops we were routinely spending about £10-15 more per week than we ought to be to stay on Read More…