One Week to Buy Nothing Day

In one week's time it will be Buy Nothing Day again. It's a day where you challenge yourself to switch off from shopping and tune into life.

The rules are simple, for 24 hours you will detox from consumerism and live without shopping. Anyone can take part provided they spend a day without spending!

It's time to plan what you are going to do for Buy Nothing Day 2008. Check out the BND website for an event to join, such as the Food For Free Freeconomy Feast in Bristol, the Big Green Giveaway in Birmingham, or the Go Green Fair in Southampton. Or you could organise your own event in your local town, there are hints and tips on the Toolkit page at the BND website. Or you could spend some time with people you like doing something fun that doesn't involve buying stuff. How radical is that?

What are you going to do? Leave a comment and let me know.

Sprouts - Not Just for Christmas

In the summer I long to eat salad and vegetables, fish and cold chicken. But when the cold weather comes I welcome the swede and leeks, roast meats, pies and casseroles, and yes, sprouts. It seems to confuse Ed when I serve sprouts. He said "It's not Christmas yet is it?" But sprouts are not just for Christmas. Steamed and served with a knob of butter and plenty of black pepper (or better still, ground nutmeg), they're divine. I had mine with a nice gammon steak and some boiled potatoes.

The next day I used the leftover vegetables and some proper corned beef from the butcher to make bubble and squeak for my lunch the next day. And that's the best bit of all. Ed doesn't realise, but that's the real reason I served him sprouts the night before.

Make a Christmas Gift

How are you doing with the Make a Christmas Gift Challenge? I have to confess, I haven't yet started on dad's waistcoat. I did do a lot of sewing though. I made historical costumes for two of my children. Their school organises historical days each year, and sends home a description of what sorts of clothes the children should wear on the day to get into the feel. The teachers dress up too, it's always great fun. Last year everyone was1 Vikings, and the year before it was WWII. This year they were Tudors.

Dad, if you could email me or phone me with your chest measurement. That's all I need to know to make you a waistcoat. I promise I'll get stuck in straight away. I enjoyed making the kids' costumes and I'm in the mood to do more garment sewing.

22 of you voted already to say you have started making Christmas gifts, so I'm definitely behind the field but I'm determined to catch up. If you haven't already voted, why not? You can find the poll in the right-hand sidebar.

R.I.P. Hugg

Two days ago Hugg died. Hugg used to be one of my favourite websites - run by the fabulous Treehugger, it was like Digg for green stories. I used to submit Bean Sprouts stories to Hugg to get a few more hits here, and a few of them made the front page. I never made the front page of Digg. And I also read Hugg to get a heads-up on upcoming green stories. It rocked.

But really Hugg had been sick for a long time. It started to die about a year ago, when Treehugger relaunched it with much fanfare. Except new Hugg was a bit like new coke. It sucked. It wasn't half as good as old Hugg. The readership of Hugg dwindled. The amount of traffic it brought to Bean Sprouts dropped to about nothing. The number of good stories on there dropped to only slightly more than nothing. And I gave up on it. So it's not really a surprise that Treehugger gave up on it too.

R.I.P. Hugg. We really need something to replace you.

Remembrance Day

Today is the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War. On Sunday I attended a remembrance service at Poynton church. My 7-year-old son, Sam, was there with his beaver scout unit, dressed in his uniform and marching in the parade. Inside the church a young local man who had just returned from Afghanistan spoke about his experiences. As we all stood by the war memorial for the two minute's silence at 11am, I watched the cub scouts shivering in their shorts and wondered what they made of it all. I think perhaps in a world where they are mostly pestered by their parents to wrap up warm, they must at least have understood that this was something important. Important enough that hundreds of people gathered on a sleety November day to shiver together with heads bowed.

I stood in remembrance services as a child myself. I knew what they were about. Well, sort of. They were about The War (we still say "The War", as if there was only one war. As if war is now over. As if). They were about the Men Who Died (and the men who lived, and the women who died and lived). Ah, forget it, I didn't really understand at all. When I stand in remembrance services now I look at my sons shivering in their scout uniforms, standing next to boys who look hardly older in their army uniforms, some with medals already on their chests. And I shiver too.

But I still don't understand. I haven't been to war. Nobody I know personally has been to war whilst I've been alive. I try to imagine what it would be like if my children joined the services and went somewhere like Afghanistan or Iraq. I understand more now than when I was a child, but I still don't really understand.

I hope I never understand. I hope my kids never go to the front. I hope we will soon bring our boys home from Iraq and Afghanistan. I hope we learn to quit meddling with other parts of the world - we only ever make things worse in the long run. I hope we use our brave servicemen and women to defend our own country if need be and to do peacekeeping services around the world, but not to make war. I hope we equip them properly for that job, and repay them properly for their service, take care of their families properly and take care of them if they are injured. I hope Britain never starts a war again, and I hope we never again join the cause of a nation that starts a war. This I hope, and I pray.

Pumpkin Pie

I made pumpkin pie today, as I do every year from the scrapings of our Hallowe'en pumpkins. This year I used ready-made shortcrust pastry for a change. After all, the pastry isn't the best thing about the pie, it's really just a shell to hold the spicy pumpkin-flavoured custard. So why take a lot of effort over it if you don't want to?

Delia Smith got a lot of stick a little while ago for teaching people how to cheat at cooking. I don't understand why though. I'll take Delia over ten of your Gordon Ramsays any day. I understood what Delia meant, and I think it showed a deep understanding of the difference between good food and bad food. Take instant powdered mashed potato for example. It's a travesty. It's not food at all. It's some sort of fake food substitute. Here are the ingredients (I found them on the web):
Potato (82%), Full Cream Milk Powder (15%), Salt, Emulsifier: Mono and Di Glycerides of Fatty Acids, Antioxidant: Ascorbyl Palmitate, Natural Colour: Curcumin

It can't do you any good to eat it and it doesn't even taste nice. But frozen mashed potato is a different kettle of fish. The ingredients are:
Potato, Milk, Butter (2%), Salt, White Pepper.

I don't know how you make mashed potato, but that's exactly how I do it. And that's what Delia was trying to say. Use your brain. Distinguish good food from bad food. You don't have to make everything from scratch. Even top chefs don't do that. I know how to make butter from scratch but I only do it once in a while, for fun (or by accident). Most of the time I buy my butter like everyone else, top chefs included. I know how to make bread from scratch. Is it cheating if I buy a loaf instead? How about if I buy it from a farmer's market instead of from a supermarket? Is that less cheating? Why?

What matters is not that you make every damn thing from scratch every time, but only that you know good food from bad, and that you choose the good food most of the time. If having access to ready made pastry means you make apple pie at home from apples, sugar and cinnamon, rather than buying Mr Kipling's apple pies (ingredients: Wheat Flour, Apple (21%), Sugar, Vegetable Oil, Glucose Syrup, Dextrose, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Modified Maize Starch, Humectant (Vegetable Glycerine), Salt, Acidity Regulator (Malic Acid), Raising Agents (Disodium Dihydrogen Diphosphate, Sodium Bicarbonate), Preservatives (Potassium Sorbate, Sodium Metabisulphite), Gelling Agent (Sodium Alginate), Adipic Acid, Milk Protein, Flavouring) then I think ready-made pastry is a really good thing.

Remember, Remember

Eleanor reminded me last night to shut Tic Tac, our cat, indoors all night. It was Bonfire Night here in England and animals can be traumatised by all the bangs and flashes.

It was good advice and I intended to follow it. But I had felt flu-ey all day, and I fell asleep (or perhaps "passed-out" would be more truthful) at about 5pm and slept through until 7.30am. So I never did lock the cat flap last night.

This morning when I woke up Tic Tac was not about. This was worrying as he is the most intensely sociable cat I have ever known. He is always there when the family is assembled, trying to join in the activity and the conversation and generally thinking that he's a human being. I went out into the garden and called his name over and over. And Ed walked up and down the crescent looking for him, to no avail.

Then when I was ushering the kids into the car to take them to school, I heard something. With difficulty I persuaded the kids to be silent and we could clearly make out the sound of a cat mewing. We tracked down the sound to our garage. Ed had accidentally locked him in when he locked up his motorbike for the night (I told you the cat follows us around and tries to join in with everything we do).

So Tic Tac had been locked inside for Bonfire Night after all. Perhaps the angel of cats was looking after him when I was too poorly to do it myself.

Portrait of Tom

My sister Steph has gone home. We always have a great time when she's here. This time we spent a lot of time celebrating Hallowe'en - decorating the house, carving pumpkins, organising costumes and face-painting for everyone, children and grown-ups. We made mock pumpkin soup and stuffed squash. We got together with our other sister, Lindsey and her husband Andrew and had a lot of fun. We also painted some of Tom's Warhammer miniatures - his latest hobby is fantasy wargaming.

But mainly we did art. Steph taught me to use soft chalk pastels. I'd never used them at all before she arrived. I did a number of drawings with the pastels under Steph's guidance, but I'm happiest with this one of Tom. In fact, I've framed it and hung it in the living room.

Sunday Funnies

George Carlin on saving the planet.

Cartoon by Marc Roberts at Throbgoblins. Click on the panel to read the whole strip.

November Challenge - Make a Christmas Gift

Assumption #1 - Sometimes you get to Christmas and wish you had given hand-made gifts instead of buying everything from Argos (or wherever)

Assumption #2 - One year you decided to give only hand-made gifts for Christmas, and ended up with a nervous breakdown because you couldn't possibly do it all in time

Assumption #3 - At least once you decided to make someone a hand-made gift for Christmas but didn't get it finished in time. In fact you never got it finished at all

So, this year is going to be different. I'm going to give at least one hand-made gift this Christmas, but no more than three. And they're not going to be huge and time-consuming. They're going to be of a size and scale that is achievable without me being committed to a mental institution. And I'm going to start now. This week. That's November's challenge.

I have already agreed with my dad that I am going to make him a waistcoat for Christmas. he and I picked the pattern together, and bought the fabric and all the notions. All I need are his measurements. So dad, I'll be emailing you a list of the dimensions I need. If you can't do them yourself, you'll have to ask one of your friends to measure you. Once I've got the measurements I'm going to get stuck in, and it will be finished in plenty of time. I've made garments many times before, so I know how long it will take to do. It's not so quick and easy that dad might feel I hadn't spent any time or effort on his gift. But it's not so big and time-consuming that I won't have it finished in time (like dad's quilt which is still half-quilted). It's just the right size for a hand-made Christmas gift project.

If you'd like to join in, choose a realistic gift to make for someone this Christmas, and get started as soon as possible. Tell me what you have decided to make, and keep me posted about your progress. And don't forget to vote in the poll in the right-hand sidebar to say when you've done it.

Pumpkin Ale

Pumpkin Ale by Badger. Is it just me or is "real ale" getting crapper? This gimmicky "bitter" actually had very little bitterness and an overload of sweetness and fizziness. The flavour wasn't very complex or interesting. I could maybe detect a hint of pumpkin and clove flavours like it said on the label. But to be honest if it didn't have "pumpkin" printed on it, and a cute carved pumpkin on the cap, I don't think I would have said "ooh! tastes of pumpkin" just from drinking it.

If you like Hobgoblin by Wychwood you might like this. They're similarly sweet and fizzy. Actually Hobgoblin is rather better than this, the flavours are darker and more complex. Pumpkin Ale could be an interesting thing to serve at a Hallowe'en party where the company and the atmosphere are more important than the food and drink. I'm sure it would taste a lot better if you were wearing fancy dress and listening to "The Monster Mash". But I won't be buying it again after today.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Un-Shopping

My sister Lindsey and I went through my wardrobe and yanked out everything that doesn't fit me any more, everything too ratty to wear any more, and other things that needed de-cluttering. We also discovered some things I haven't worn for ages, and things I had forgotten I owned, and Lindsey suggested different ways of combining items into outfits I hadn't thought of before. Then she took some things from the "give to charity" pile that she wanted for herself. It was a lot of fun.

The next day she brought me some things from her own wardrobe that she didn't wear any more and thought would suit me, or would go with outfits I already had. And we hit the local charity shops and found some great bargains. We bought a few items new, too, from a shopping list we devised of "must-haves" (e.g. that brown skirt you have is fabulous but you really need a couple of matching tops and a brown belt to go with it).

So now I have a totally new wardrobe of outfits to wear, but with a minimal budget. And Lindsey and I had a great time together doing sisterly girly stuff, dressing up and trying different looks out. I get the point of retail therapy. I understand why people like to go to the shopping mall for a day as a leisure activity to cheer themselves up. I understand the pleasure of coming home with an armful of trophies from your day of 21st century hunting-and-gathering. But my green instincts rebel at the wastefulness of shopping for the sake of shopping, and treating clothes as if they were disposable. So it's nice to find ways of getting the same retail rush with a clean eco-conscience.

Hen House Cleaning

I thought I was so clever, using shredded waste paper as chicken bedding. But the problem is that shredded paper, when combined with chicken poo and left to dry, becomes a kind of combination of papier mache and adobe. It's almost completely impossible to remove from any surface it adheres to, including hens' ankles. On the other hand, I may have inadvertently invented an exciting new environmentally-friendly building material.

Yesterday's News

Steph and I went to my favourite art and craft supplies shop, Fred Aldous in Manchester. And one of the things we bought was a set of coloured pencils made from recycled Chinese newspapers. The newspapers are so tightly wrapped around the coloured lead that it feels like a normal wooden pencil, and can be sharpened with a regular pencil sharpener. But you can read the text on the outside of the pencil (if you can read Chinese). The packaging seems to be made of Chinese newspapers too. Very groovy.

You can also buy them online for £2.99 from Giftmonger.com

My Biggest Fan

If you are drying clothes indoors, either through choice or necessity, an electric fan speeds it up considerably but it still uses a lot less juice than a tumble dryer.

Sunday Funny

Sorry I didn't post yesterday. I haven't vanished again. But my sister Steph has arrived for a visit over half term. We've been learning to draw in pastels (well I've been learning, Steph is already very good at it), decorating the house for hallowe'en, shopping for our brother-in-law Andrew's birthday presents (happy birthday Andrew!) and generally having lots of fun.

Since it's Sunday, here are some funnies:

After an exhaustive three year study, scientists at the University of the Isle of Dogs, East London, (UIDEL) have discovered what they think could be the real cause of global warming - people all over the world hanging out their washing to dry writes special washing correspondent Barry Rooster.

The boffins say that when freshly-laundered clothes - especially whites and light coloureds - are hung on washing lines, they reflect the sun's rays upwards, leading to an increase in the greenhouse effect.

Head of Research Gunther Smallpiece comments: "We've previously been told to reduce the temperature on our washing machines to save electricity, but this is fact counter-effective. We will recommend to the government that the population use the full drying cycle on their machines, instead of hanging the garments outside in the fresh air". And he goes further: "This is so serious, we'd like to see hanging washing outdoors to be banned in the same way as smoking indoors.""We'd like to see it become, if you like, a 'hanging offence'!", he jokes, proving conclusively that even dull scientists do have a sense of humour.

From The Spoof.

Cartoon from Throbgoblins. Click on the panel to read the whole strip.

How Bean Sprouts Can Help You Survive the Credit Crunch

So, the Credit Crunch. Funny to think that when Bean Sprouts began its sabbatical at the end of August, the credit crunch was part of the lesser-read financial news. Now it seems like it's on the front page every day. Today, for example, the announcement that Britain has officially entered an economic downturn and in all probability is in recession. So how can the Bean Sprouts archives help?

Well there is a wealth of articles in the archives tagged "frugal" which can help anyone who is tightening their financial belt. By far the most popular is How to Make Greek Yogurt, and if you don't like the Greek stuff you can also find out how to make regular yogurt and how to make Philadelphia-type soft cheese. You might also want to check out the very popular How To Get Started With Chickens - Part 1 , Part 2 and Part 3.

It's also worth looking at the posts tagged "foraging" to find out if you can pick any leaves, fruits, nuts, berries or mushrooms and get food for free. You can also find out how to make them into wine, jam, liqueurs, chutney and so on.

You might also consider signing up to Freecycle or one of the alternatives. You might want to join the Freeconomy community.

For a more general discussion of using your brain to reduce overconsumption without hardship, check out Money-Saving Toothpaste Tip, and if you're feeling blue and deprived then watch The Story of Stuff and console yourself that by saving money, you're also saving the planet. Find out Why You Should Know Your Hourly Pay. And if you're wondering why we're all in this mess in the first place, find out what sustainability means and think about why anybody could seriously expect that the economy can keep on growing forever.

Cartoon from Throbgoblins. Click the panel to read the whole strip.

When is an A-Rated Appliance Not?

When is an A-rated appliance not an A-rated appliance? When it only last 2 years before irreparably breaking down. Five years ago we bought a White Knight A-rated tumble dryer. As far as I know it was and still is the only A-rated dryer available. We really liked it. It has some nifty features like reverse tumble - it changes the direction it tumbles every few minutes, so your clothes don't end up in a tight sausage, bone dry and hot on the outside and wet in the middle. It has a sensor, so it goes until the clothes are dry then it stops automatically. I used this feature to test the tumble dryer balls a couple of years ago. You can set it to full-eco-mode where it takes all day to get your clothes dry but uses very little energy in doing so (this is the A-rated mode), or you can set it to murder-death-kill-mode where it blasts your clothes dry in an hour or so. But even in this mode it seems very gentle and I have stopped being fussy about what I tumble-dry and what I air-dry because nothing has ever shrunk in this dryer.

But just over two-and-a-half years after we bought it the drum ripped clean off the bearing leaving a huge ragged hole in the back of the drum. We inquired about getting a replacement drum but it was totally uneconomical - it cost more to do this than to buy a whole new appliance. So we bought another identical dryer. After all, we liked the model very much. Maybe it was a freak manufacturing fault which made it fail so quickly. But just in case it wasn't, we took out the optional 5-year-warranty.

It is more "green" to replace a part than to replace the whole appliance

We're very glad we did, because 2 years and 1 month after we bought it, the exact same fault happened again. And this time the warranty-people have ordered a replacement drum. I don't know why it is economical for them to do it when it wasn't economical for us, but hey-ho. I feel a bit ambivalent about this. It is more "green" to replace a part than to replace the whole appliance, so that's nice. But if they had just sent me a cheque to buy a new dryer, I would have avoided this model like the plague. I feel sure the new drum will also fail in another two years - or more likely in about 3 years, when the 5-year-warranty has expired.

How much energy have I saved by using an A-rated appliance compared to another appliance? I don't know. it depends on exactly how often I have used it, which varies from season to season. And it depends on how much I have used it on A-rated mode and how often I used it on regular mode, which also varies. I put slow-mode on when Ed is at work all day and I just tune-out the sound of the endless rumbling. But in the evenings and at weekends when Ed and the kids are at home I put it on fast-mode. There is enough noise in the house at those times without adding to it.

the embedded energy of the appliance

But how much energy is there in the extraction and processing of the materials that made the appliance? How much energy was used in its manufacture and transport? This is the embedded energy of the appliance. Think of it like the cost of owning a car - if a car is very cheap to run, then that's nice. But if it is very expensive to buy in the first place then that weighs against the cheapness of running. Maybe it still works out cheaper overall, as long as you keep the car on the road long enough. But if you buy an expensive car that breaks down after two years, then it's always going to be uneconomical compared to a car that lasts a long time. I don't think the White Knight dryer deserves to call itself A-rated if it only lasts two years, because I suspect the embedded energy outweighs the energy savings in use.

it is better to dry clothes on the line, and I do this when I can

P.S. yes, it is better to dry clothes on the line, and I do this when I can. But it has rained in England almost without let-up for the last two years. OK that's not strictly true, but it feels true. We have certainly had an unusually wet period for two years now. So line drying has been difficult, and I find a dryer is an essential emergency back-up when every surface in the house is covered in wet clothes and the kids need clean school uniforms by the morning.

Sad News

On Saturday I spent some time in the garden sketching things in charcoal, including the chickens. They all seemed fine. On Sunday I got dressed up in old jeans with holes in them, an old faded t-shirt, marigold gloves, headscarf and wellys (with a fetching cow-skin print) and went to clean out the chicken coop and run. It's a mucky job, and long overdue this time, but satisfying. I spotted one of the new Rhode Island Reds lying in the run, apparently dead. She moved a little when I went to investigate, but shortly afterwards she did expire.

I don't know what was wrong with her. She had seemed fine the day before. All the other chickens are healthy and well except for a mite infestation, which is why I went out to clean the housing and treat it. Anyway mites on a chicken are like fleas on a dog - they're annoying but not lethal. There was no sign that anything had got into the run or harmed her. She was only 18 months old.

We have two older chickens, both hybrid layers, which we got at the same time and have always got along well with each other. Then we got two Rhodies in January, and they were pals with each other but the older girls bullied them a bit. Well whilst I was cleaning the hen house, the surviving Rhodie went over to her dead sister, lowered her head to her and made soft clucking noises. I don't think we should anthropomorphise animals (anyway, they don't like it), but it was impossible not to interpret it as saying something like "Elsie? Are you OK? Elsie, what's the matter? Get up!" And she pecked at the dead bird a couple of times as if prodding her to move.

I buried her at the back of a flower bed. I might pop a few spring bulbs on top later.

Did You Miss Me?

Sorry for the long break. Nothing horrible happened to prevent me from posting but thanks for all your concern, I'm really touched. After I came back from London, dad came to stay for a few weeks. I kept telling myself "I'll get back to blogging when things get back to normal", but somehow I didn't. Call it "the blogging blahs", call it getting out of the habit, call it sheer laziness, I don't know what.

I've got a new guitar, the first guitar I have ever bought for myself, so I've been playing a lot. I have been learning to draw and putting my drawings on a "secret" (or at least un-publicised) blog purely so my family far away can see them. But some of you have found it, you crafty things. I'll probably put some drawings on Bean Sprouts when they are relevant to the posts, but this isn't going to turn into an art blog. It will remain about living sustainably and our family's search for the good life. I've been watching old musicals with my 8-year-old daughter, like The King and I, and Calamity Jane. That's been a lot of fun. One of our chickens died from unknown causes. The allotment has been utterly neglected, we're thinking hard about what we want to do with that. Sam turned 7. I'm looking forward to Hallowe'en, Stephanie will come up then and I'm sure we'll hook up with Lindsey too. Life has been going on as it always does.

I already have ideas for the next few blog posts. More about our chickens, about keeping chickens in general, and particularly about pest control. When is an A-rated appliance not an A-rated appliance? And getting started making home-made Christmas gifts, but realistically. It may take me little time to get back into the "post every day, or more" habit. But I'm back now anyway, and it feels good. I missed you guys too!