Monday, 19 July 2010

Sustainability Mondays: the lazy edition


It was more of a social than a sustainable weekend this weekend, with a house full of people. So there's not a lot to report this week.

1. Plant Something -
  • Sowed swedes, turnips and white beetroot seeds.
  • Planted out sweet pepper plants
2. Harvest something -
  • spinach
  • broad beans
  • peas
  • onions and onion thinnings
  • garlic scapes (found a few more)
  • lettuce and salad greens
  • pak choi
  • baby carrots
  • lots and lots and lots of herbs
  • strawberries
  • the last few morello cherries
  • zucchinis
  • beetroot
  • chillies
  • eggs! I always forget to mention them. Lavender gives us roughly four each week, which is enough for the two of us.
3. Preserve something -
  • Plaited up the garlic
4. Waste Not (reducing wastage in all areas)
  • The usual things
5. Want Not (preparing for shortage situations)
  • Bought 20 more kilner jars to have them on hand when needed
  • Bought a deeply discounted hand-cranked flour mill
  • Did my tri-weekly bread baking (not with the new flour mill, which hasn't arrived yet)
  • Mr. G. filled and rotated our "emergency" jerrycan of diesel (we live some drive away from the nearest services)
6. Build Community Food Systems
  • The usual: blogging about it and talking about it obsessively to anyone who'll listen
  • Provided lots of veg gardening advice (possibly whether wanted or not) to two veggie gardening newbies
7. Eat the Food
  • Made pad thai with everything from the garden except for the rice noodles and sauces
  • made fresh salsa and poached eggs in it for brunch
  • Used some of the preserved apples from last season, and Grand-Marnier soaked dried fruit and nuts from the "to make fruit cake" stash, to make an apple and minced fruit tart. Absolutely delicious and very popular with said guests.
8. What I bought:
  • Nothing. I've bought no food at all in the past week.

4 comments:

Tanya Murray said...

Well done on your achievement. It's a good feeling when you can feed yourself without having to buy food.

Geodyne said...

One of the best feelings, I'd say. Especially when that included feeding a house full of people!

Tanya Murray said...

I use the Fowlers Method for canning which is not in vogue now for vegetable canning because of risk of botchelism. I did follow directions to the letter and processed twice. In America they use pressure canning as the accepted safe method for vegetables (due to the low acid content). I love zucchini soup and we were so pressed for space in the freezer.

Geodyne said...

Good to know, thanks.

I was looking at buying a pressure canner this year but as most of my preserving is high-acid vegetables I've decided that this is not the year.

We spend a lot of the winter away for work and always turn the freezer off when we're away, so freezing is only suitable for short-term storage for us.