Thali Takeaway

Ever since I ate in the Thali Cafe in Montpelier many years ago I have dreamed of having a tiffin takeaway.  But it is only now that we have our very own Thali Cafe on North Street that this dream has finally been realised.

Last night we feasted on lamb meatballs, spinach and potato curry, dhal and fragrant basmati rice, collected and served in our brand new insulated tiffin carrier.

After we'd finished we washed and dried it and put it aside, waiting for its first refill.

As they say in these parts, gert lush!

43/365

Takeaway - Mumbai Style

This evening The Thali Cafe opened the doors of its latest restaurant, in the Tobacco Factory on North Street.  Which means that, not only will I be able to treat myself to one of their delicious thalis (Indian meal served on the plate from which it gets its name) without the prospect of a long walk home afterwards, but I shall also at long last be able to join their award winning Tiffin club.  Hooray!

The tiffin is a Mumbai lunchbox, lovingly prepared by a dutiful wife, packed in a multi-tiered stainless steel container, and transported across the city, via a network of bicycles and suburban trains, to arrive on her husband's desk at 12:45 sharp.  The system is so efficient that for every 6 million tiffins dispatched only one fails to arrive.  Beats a soggy ham sarnie or a greasy pastie any day.

The Thali Cafe tiffin is much less complicated but equally attractive.  £24.95 buys the container, filled with your choice of thali.  When you've eaten, instead of being left with a stack of containers for the black box, you have a receptacle ready for your next visit.  Bingo!

If it wasn't for the fact that today's a Fast Day I'd have been queuing outside the front door at 6pm.  But it won't be long before I'm trying out the new kid on the block,(especially as my husband brought home a voucher for a free thali)!

PS  For more on the tiffin carriers of Mumbai see this Guardian article

10/365

Bin Day

9/365

Recycled Wreath

Bristol Harbour Festival: Pictures not Words

 

  

The Feeding of the 5000

Every year thousands of tons of perfectly edible food is sent to landfill sites.   We tend to blame supermarkets and the food industry and they do have to take responsibility for food waste caused by packaging errors, out of date promotions, discontinued lines etc.  But half of the food thrown away in the UK comes from our own homes - and more than half of this is food we could have eaten or drunk.

At the same time there are over 4 million people in the UK who cannot afford a healthy diet, including the homeless, the elderly, disadvantaged children, refugees and people suffering from mental illness.

Fareshare aims to marry the two issues and offer a solution by redistributing surplus food to those who need it.  No waste.  Better health.

To illustrate the magnitude of the problem Fareshare Southwest hosted the Feeding of the 5000 on College Green yesterday, when they served a vegetable curry prepared from a ton of donated vegetables.

I volunteered for duty as a steward and was assigned to recycling bin duty, helping diners to dispose of their waste in an environmentally friendly manner.

The sun shone.  Crowds descended.  Queues formed.  Curry was eaten.  Children potato printed.  Bands played.  Cooks demonstrated.  Awareness was raised. 

Less food will be wasted?

I hope so. 

Day 28 - Trash aka Rubbish

Rubbish to humans, a feast for my worms!  Nom, nom!

Made me Smile!

Tobacco Factory Market - Sunday 31 July 2011

I love the creative use of an old wine crate and a cup and saucer.

If you'd like one for your garden log on to http://www.herbbox.co.uk/.

Grazing

This morning I received my eagerly anticipated Graze box. I'd taken advantage of an offer in this Sunday's Observer and ordered myself one free box, to be followed next week by a second for £1.

Graze is a brilliantly conceived scheme which delivers healthy snacks to hungry office workers. Subscribers register and are asked to rate a long list of foods including seeds, nuts, dried fruit, flapjacks, olives, focaccia etc. They then choose a date to have their box delivered directly to their desk. Each cardboard box contains four snacks in individual plastic containers. There is a paper napkin and a pick for the olives. There is also a tiny personally addressed booklet detailing the nutrional details of each snack and another with more general information about the company. Genius!

My first box contained a West country cheddar, red onion and chutney focaccia, green olives in a citrus marinade, a bento mix and an americas nut mix. The focaccia was slightly stodgy but the bento mix was spicy and the americas nut mix crunchy. I haven't tried the olives yet.

Graze boxes are normally priced at £3.29, which is probably not unreasonable given the quality of the products and the impeccable service, but they're too expensive for my budget, so I don't think I'll be ordering any more, or at least not on a regular basis.

There is inevitably packaging involved - a cardboard box secured with two plastic bands, four plastic punnets, a paper napkin, a wooden pick and two booklets - but the claim is that these are either biodegradable, recyclable or recycled. I'll certainly be be able to recycle everything except the plastic bands and the plastic seals on the punnets.

It would, of course, be much cheaper and more environmentally friendly to buy larger quantities of these snacks and carry portions of them in to work in reuseable containers but, given that there will always be a significant proportion of the population who will not do so, and who would otherwise be opting for a chocolate bar or a packet of crisps, I reckon it's a welcome alternative.

Gardening Leave

It's been a brilliant sunny weekend and I've spent most of it in the garden.

On Saturday morning I joined the Grow Zones team in Niall's garden where I helped to plant potatoes and seeds while 'the lads' chopped branches for firewood and charcoal. Niall had gathered together an unusual collection of planters, including two old suitcases, a couple of Ikea bags and a few drawers! For photographs pop over to Steve's blog.

The rest of the time has been spent in our own back garden. Most of the seeds I planted in April have germinated (I'm still waiting for a couple of tomatoes, Thai basil and chili) and the seedlings had outgrown their tiny pots. The potato plants are growing rapidly and needed earthed up. The soil's almost up to the top of the container. One more top up should do it. Alan planted the two bushes we bought last week - a gooseberry and a redcurrant. They're the first fruit bushes we've grown and I'm looking forward to crumbles and jelly later on in the year.

However it wasn't all work, work , work. We found time to drink cups of tea, test the girls on their revision, admire the poppies and spot the frogs. This morning I made a frittata with chard from our rockery and this evening we had our first barbecue.

All in all it's been a very fulfilling weekend.

49 before 50

This summer I'll be 50. Although I don't feel it, and hope I don't look it, I shall nonetheless reach my half century later this year. So, in anticpation of this momentous day, I have devised a list of 49 things I would like to do before I'm 50. Phew, I'm going to be busy!

1. Catch the ferry to Bees Tea Gardens
2. Bake a brioche
3. Watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy in one day
4. Knit myself a scarf
5. Teach my daughters how to knit
6. Make a Cornish pasty
7. Walk to Bath along the cycle path
8. Make my will
9. Make a year's supply of marmalade
10. Sort through my photographs
11. Have our Amsterdam poster framed
12. Grow half a dozen vegetables in our back garden
13. Paint the front door
14. Make a birthday card from recycled materials
15. Work my way through my piano book
16. Make tablet
17. Watch a Bollywood movie with my daughters
18. Make a note of all my friends' birthdays
19. Read a French novel
20. Buy an address book and make a note of all my friends' addresses
21. Reduce my BMI to 20
22. Write to all the people who sent us Christmas cards
23. Reduce our landfill waste to 100g or less per week
24. Write one letter a month for Amnesty
25. Read at least one book a month
26. See at least one film a month
27. Phone my sister once a week
28. Clear out my wardrobe
29. Book tickets for Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory
30. Make Pashka at Easter
31. Give up something for Lent
32. Take up something for Lent
33. Bake Hot Cross Buns on Good Friday
34. Remember to use the shrink wrap egg decorations at Easter
35. Follow the longest trail in Leigh Woods
36. Take a picnic (and some friends) to Brandon Hill
37. Visit the Georgian House
38. Make butter
39. Learn to crochet
40. Make my daughers something for their birthdays
41. Cook a special Valentine's dinner
42. Preserve lemons
43. Have the piano tuned
44. Devise a 4 week menu
45. Attend evensong at the Cathedral
46. Arrange our classical CD collection
47. Book tickets for the BBC Proms
48. Grow giant sunflowers in our front garden
49. Organise a 50th birthday celebration

To record my progress I have started a new blog called (wait for it!) 49before50 which also give me the opportunity to try out blogging on Wordpress.

Organic Food Festival

On Saturday I visited Bristol's Organic Food Festival. I love this annual event which gets better and better every year. My personal highlights were:

• Listening to a talk by the West Country's very own Self Sufficientish duo where, amongst other things, I learned how to make an insect house using a plastic bottle and corrugated cardboard. They were so reassuringly down to earth and unpretentious.


• Watching a cookery demonstration by Sophie Grigson, she of the amazing ear rings. On Saturday she was wearing ones that looked as if they had been made from a tin of pilchards. She prepared a selection of 'white' dishes - a chowder, a Thai soup and junket.


• Being given samples of organic recyclable female sanitary products and discovering that I can buy them locally


• Watching another cookery demonstration by Xanthe Clay, whom I had never heard of, but who created several dishes from one duck including confit, which my daughters loved during their recent exchange visit to south west France, and which I would like to recreate for them at home.


• Discovering Dove Farm's Ezekiel Bread Mix and picking up two packs for £1 each. It's a savoury loaf which apparently goes very well with cheese.

My only reservation about the festival is the amount of waste it must engender but I was pleased to note that most suppliers appeared to be using recyclable containers and utensils and the site was well supplied with recycling bins.
PS If the mention of Sophie and Xanthe's dishes has tickled your taste buds then you will, hopefully soon, be able to access the recipes on Bordeaux Quay's website. However you'll have to wait as they are not there yet.

Holiday Recycling

Our fortnight in St Ives was my first holiday since I started taking zero waste more seriously, and I discovered that it is not so easy to achieve as when I am at home in Bristol.

While we were waiting to collect our keys to the cottage we had a cup of tea in the beach cafe. The tea came in a corrugated paper cup which wouldn't have been too bad if there had been a paper recycling bin to pop it in, but it had a plastic lid and the milk came in individual plastic containers.

I hadn't realised how accustomed I'd grown to separating my rubbish and I missed my compost bin and wormery. We looked for the glass bottle recycling bins but they weren't where they used to be and we thought we were going to have to bin our bottles until we discovered a row of colourful recycling bins at the far end of Porthmeor Beach. There was another on Porthminster Beach. So we were atleast able to recycle paper, glass and plastic bottles and aluminium cans.

I was pleased to see that cloth shopping bags were available at the Coop, Seasalt and the excellent Fore Street Deli. They weren't expensive and were rather attractive. In fact, if I hadn't already had such a collection I would have been tempted myself.

How to Recycle Plastic if you live in Bristol

On my way to the pub last evening my attention was drawn to our local Aldi car park by a loud rattling noise. I peered through the bushes to discover that it was caused by a Recresco van emptying the plastic recycling container. I've never given much thought to how the container is emptied but I now know that this is achieved by connecting it to the lorry with a large plastic pipe and sucking the bottles out into the lorry where they are compressed. Apparently plastic is very expensive to recycle on account of its volume, and compressing it to a tenth of its original size makes collecting and transporting more efficient and therefore more economic.

I'd been minded to contact Bristol City Council to clarify exactly what kind of plastic I could legitimately place in the recycling container, but seeing the Recresco lorry prompted me to go straight to them instead. Their website was most informative and I have pasted below their definitive instructions regarding the recycling of plastic using their containers. This has cheered me up as it allows me to recycle even more than I thought I could!

WHAT CAN I PUT IN THE PLASTIC BANK?

This is a question we are asked a lot! It's difficult to list every single type of plastic container, there's just too many. So here is a guide:

We would like Plastic containers with ID numbers 1-2 as long as they are not excluded in the list below. If there is no Plastic ID on the item, the general rule, “Plastic Bottles” should be followed. This is because most plastic bottles are type 1 or 2. So you can be fairly certain that your plastic bottle will be acceptable. Any of the items described above can be recycled regardless of whether it has been recycled previously, that’s the great thing about recycling!

LIST OF UNACCEPTABLE ITEMS

We do not accept:

- Plastic Type 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,

- Plastic Toys

- Plastic Bags

- Cling Film or Bubble Wrap

- Non Plastic Items

- Video Cassettes- Drain Pipe
Any items that do not fit through the round opening in the bank as these damage our machinery.

The Tate Bedminster

I mentioned in my birthday blog that I had received a card from my younger daughter which I was going to stick up on my kitchen cupboard door. So I thought I'd lead a guided tour around my existing collection.

I'm starting with the corner cupboard. Top left is a list of Riverford organic fruit and vegetable boxes, out of date as they now offer many more than the three boxes featured. They have an excellent website from which I order online. A couple of weeks ago we ordered our first meat box. Some of it's still in the freezer but what we've eaten so far has been excellent, the porchetta being particularly delicious.

Immediately below is a Corn Street Market postcard which I will deal with later.

Bottom left is our refuse collection schedule. Bristol's making serious attempts to reduce the amount of refuse that ends up in its landfill sites. We have a weekly kerbside collection (paper, cardboard, glass, cans, kitchen foil, battery, shoes, rags) and a kitchen waste collection. All other rubbish is collected fortnightly. Christmas trees are collected in January. Plastic bottles have to be taken to collection points in supermarket car parks (why do they make it so difficult for pedestrian recyclers who have to take their lives in their hands to reach the bins?). A recent development is the tetrapak recyling point in the Asda car park. The recycling website is reasonably helpful.

Bottom right is a flyer for St Nicholas Market. This is a vibrant shopping centre in the heart of Bristol. Running right through the centre is a row of stalls selling the most tempting food from around the world - pasta from Italy, olives from the Mediterranean, pies from Bristol, Jamaican curries, fresh soup and salads, wheat grass juices, North African couscous, local sausages, Portuguese stews and Welsh cheese. Oh and round the corner there are more curries, this time from India, and a whole food cafe. I sometimes pop in for lunch on Wednesday and am spoilt for choice.

On the open cupboard door is a picture of Nelson Mandela, one of my heroes, about whom I blogged on his recent 90th birthday. What more can I say? The man is truly a legend. I keep his picture here to remind me to continue to strive to be one of that great generation.

The two postcards below were picked up at Bristol's recent Ethical Expo. They advertise Fig1 a shop in Totterdown which sells fairly traded goods. I'm very rarely in that part of town so I can't claim to have shopped there but I liked the artwork and the messages they illustrate.

So there it is. Part 1 of my collection. Part 2 to follow.

Brushing for the Planet

Ever since I read Amost Mrs Average's blog about her wooden toothbrushes I have been worrying about the impact my dental hygiene routine has been having on the planet. I almost certainly don't change my toothbrush as often as is recommended, but when I do it eventually ends up in our local landfill. I use the word 'eventually' advisedly as we keep a supply of old toothbrushes to help in cleaning things with grooves and other inaccessible recesses. Mrs A had discovered wooden toothbrushes and had just ordered one for each member of her family. I wonder how she is getting on with them. I admired the concept but baulked at the price tag of £4.25.

So I continued using my nasty plastic brush until today when I came across the Preserve toothbrush in our local Sainsburys. This brush is made from recycled plastic including yogurt cups from a nearby supplier. It comes with a reusable travel case with ventilation holes. When it's time to replace it you can send the brush and its case back to Preserve to be recycled into plastic lumber for picnic tables, boardwalks and decks. And it only cost £1.99 (although I seem to remember it being on special offer at the moment).

To be fair Mrs A did mention the Preserve brush in her blog but was put off it by the need to ship it back to the States for recycling. Well she need worry no longer because the bush and case can now be returned to an address in Haverhill.

I bought two brushes for the girls for their trip to France. I shall be buying another for myself as soon as my current brush is too worn out to be any longer effective

In Praise of Morris

William Morris said “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”.

I first read these words in the window of a shop down a side street in St Ives and they struck me then, as now, as being a very wise principle by which to manage one's possessions.

I am, by nature, an inveterate hoarder, the result of which is a cluttered house. Friends are kind enough to say it looks lived in but I know it's often a mess. Not only is it difficult to keep clean but it's also a terrible waste of stuff that would be better off elsewhere.

Lately I've been attempting to 'downsize', in other words, get rid of stuff. It's not always easy but there is a real sense of liberation in filling a charity shop bag and carrying it out the front door.

The other side of the equation is attempting not to acquire any more stuff to take its place. This is harder but William Morris' maxim might help.

Our Daily Pinta

This afternoon I answered the door to a man from Dairy Crest trying to drum up trade for doorstep milk deliveries. I was able to tell him that we not only use this service but are also very pleased with it.

Our milkman's called John Mills. He delivers a daily pint of semi-skimmed milk and a weekly pint of pink grapefruit juice. The milk costs 54p per pint and the juice 91p per pint. We could buy our milk from our local Tescos where it is considerably cheaper at 42p per pint. However for various reasons we have decided to stick with John. It gives him a job, saves us from having to venture out in the mornings, is fresh, local and flexible and uses electric powered floats and recycled glass bottles instead of plastic cartons. While researching for this post today I discovered that I can amend/cancel my order online and have a sack of compost delivered along with my daily pinta!

Doorstep deliveries have declined dramatically over the last couple of decades. According to DEFRA only 7% of milk is delivered to our doorsteps today, compared to 30% in 1984. 65% of milk is bought from supermarkets and 23% from convenience stores. In order to boost sales milkmen have set up a website (http://www.findmeamilkman.net/) which allows visitors to discover whether their address is covered by a milk round.

The truth is that we do not buy all our milk from John. The girls drink 2-3 pints of full fat milk a day, which we buy in 4 litre cartons from a supermarket. We also have 2 litres delivered by Riverford along with our organic fruit and veg box. We can't(?) afford to spend £2 per day on milk so we compromise. That's life, I guess.

Global Worming

I have now fulfilled a long term ambition (see previous post) and bought a wormery. Alan and I visited Bristol's first ever Ethical Expo yesterday morning where Bubble House Worm Farm had a stand. We were so impressed with their Herb Planter Wormery, and their tag line ('promoting global worming') which I nicked, that we bought one and carried it home in the bus. I don't know how the passenger in front of me would have felt had he/she known that the container on my lap was full of hundreds of wiggly worms. The girls were not terribly impressed but I hope they will be won over when they see them in action. I would have given you the link to their website but it is temporarily out of action.

Th expo was perhaps not as big as I expected and there wasn't nearly enough food for me, but it was nonetheless very interesting and informative. Well done to the organisers. One useful piece of information that I did pick up at the council's composting stand, is that in a few weeks' time there will be one of five new Bristol Tetra Pak recycling collection points at Asda Bedminster. I have started washing out and collecting juice and milk cartons, which a friend of mine was going to take to an out of town site. Now I will be able to recycle them myself. Well done Bristol.