Radish of Joy...

WOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!

My first home grown radish. Very yummy in a salad with my falafel this lunchtime! Thank you radish you were delicious!

Experiments with soap squishing...

So, I'd been hording a lot of the tiny pieces you get when you've come to the end of a bar of Lush solid shampoo that you can't really use cos they're too small and you end up with millions of tiny bits of shampoo crumbled into your hair that you can't get out, but you can't bring yourself to throw away because shampoo bars are expensive and they smell so good! I gathered all my tiny shampoo bar bits into a silicone cupcake case, put this into a pan of boiling water and waited for the bits to melt together to form a great, big, uber shampoo bar.

After about 40 minutes of simmering it on the hob with the lid on and an overnight chill in the fridge I ended up with this....

Which crumbles into my hair and then I can't get it out, and which, as my mother rightly pointed out, I probably used more energy cooking it for all that time than I saved by reusing my shampooy fragments!

But! I wasn't ready to give up on saving my little bits of soap and shampoo bar, so after much google searching I have decided on this method to reuse them both...

1. Find an old sock or cut off the foot of an old pair of tights (I have gone down the tight-y route this time as I just so happen to have a bag full of old tights I am also hording and hoping to reuse!)

2. Every time your soap or shampoo bar gets to the too-small-to-be-usable stage put it into the sock or tight-foot.

3. When the sock/tight-foot is full tie a knot in the top of it to keep the soapy bits in.

4. The sock keeps all the bits from disintegrating on to you, but you can still lather the soap through the sock, either directly onto your hand or body or onto a sponge or whatever else you use in the shower.

I haven't tried it out yet because my tight-foot of soapy bits is nowhere near full enough, but I think it sounds like it'll work! There are lots of other ways of recycling soap scraps all over the internet, but the way I'm using seems the easiest and the the one that uses less energy.

New favorite websites...

I officially have been spending too much time on the internet!!!

But I have been finding lots of inspiration! I especially like....

http://archive.thenag.net/

The nag - sends you a cheerful 'nag' by email once a month to do something good, like switch your bank to a more ethical one, write to your favorite shop to ask them to sell guilt-free (is there such a thing?!) clothes or use reusable containers for your packed lunch. You can also browse through the site and read other nags and take part in them too. The site registers the details of the 'nags' you have participated in and uses it to calculate data - for example "Nag members have got 398 tupperware lunch boxes. That means they're probably throwing away about 41392 fewer bits of plastic lunch packaging a year" (quoted from thenag.net) so you can see the effect of your actions. Very extremely brilliant if you ask me!

http://myzerowaste.com/

My zero waste - does what it says on the tin really, lots of tips on how to live waste free. I'm quite smug in the knowledge that in our house we already do all the things suggested in the 'beginners tips for reducing waste' and the intermediate! And a few from the tips for recycling pros!

http://www.instructables.com/

Instructables - tutorials posted by clever people, with photographs, to tell you how to make or do just about anything you wish - clothes, food, wooden stuff, metal stuff, garden stuff and I'm especially a fan of the green section!

Think I might turn the computer off for a while now!

Enjoying the sunshine...

I've been enjoying the sunshine, with all my garden friends

Lovely!

My garden...

It's not quite what I'd hoped for,

I've still not been allowed to dig up the flowerbeds at mums house! But I DO have the top shelf of a weird-shelfy thing we have in my mum's garden and I'm inordinately proud of my miniature garden. Look!!



I still only have two garlics growing, the others are looking a bit sad and mouldy and not-growingy, but I'm still holding out hope for them! I transferred some of the lettuces out of a big pot of them that were overcrowded and put them in a new trough (?) so they can grow big and healthy. In the other side of the lettuce trough I sowed some more radish seeds so by the time I've eaten the first lot the second lot will be ready...yuuum!

Vegan Quaker Oat Biscuit Recipe...and Darlek Cookies

I'm not sure how home baked biscuits compare to shop bought in terms of eco-friendlyness, but in terms of taste home baked stuff usually wins! Unless you're me. I usually have kitchen disasters. Which is why I'm really impressed with my kitchen brilliance today!! I found a recipe in one of my mums books for Quaker Oat Biscuits, which my nan used to make for us when we were little, I then found my dalek cookie-cutter and a beautiful idea was born...Quaker Oat Daleks....

I also did some more traditional circle ones too. I love these biscuits! They really remind me of being tiny and arriving at my nan and grandads after a 4 hour drive and being fed home made biscuits out of a huge, white tupperware box. After my baking spree today I took my biscuits to the garden and ate them in the sun with a smile, remembering my nan. And thinking about how awesome daleks are...

Ingredients -
*5 oz self raising flour

*5oz oatmeal

*3oz margarine

*3oz sugar

*4-5 tablespoons milk (I used water instead because I'm vegan)

*pinch of salt

Method -

Mix dry ingredients, rub in margarine, add liquid gradually until it's mixed to a stiff paste, roll thinly and cut out (this recipe makes about 40 biscuits - for the sake of my tummy I halved the recipe this time!) Cook on gas mark 4 for 15-20 minutes until pale golden brown, then leave to cool until crispy....then eat them all up! They're really nice with margarine spread on them as well.

Exciting shoots 'n' fruits...

My garlic is growing, my garlic is growing!!!!!!

Only two of them so far, but I'm still extremely excited! My mum wrapped some bubble wrap round them to help them keep warm and germinate (?) quicker, so the rest of them are still in their bubble wrap bed getting ready to grow! I've also lost the recycled cardboard plant labels - they went mouldy!!! Lesson learned!

I also planted some organic radish seeds, about a week ago, and they've all come up! Eeeeeeeee!!

They were really easy to plant, crocks and compost in a plant pot, then I planted 6 seeds half an inch under the soil (you're supposed to plant them in rows in the garden, each seed 9 inches apart from the next, but I'm not allowed to dig up the garden, so a pot it is, they don't have anything near 9 inches between them, but I'm hoping it'll work!) Mum gave them the bubble wrap treatment again, and within 2 days they'd begun to grow! I made my plant label out of the lid of a plastic takeaway container I found in the recycling, and so far it hasn't gone mouldy!

We also have a mammoth cucumber plant (mum's growing it not me), I think most of the cucumbers are destined for Fluffy's (my giant African land snail) tummy!

Books...

I have too many books!!

This is because I studied English Literature all the way through school and at uni and have a problem throwing books out.

But, I have got rid of some, mostly to charity shops and sold some on Ebay.

The books that really meant something to me I set free with book crossing stickers on. If you haven't heard of it, book crossing is a website where you get a registration number for your books, then put them somewhere someone will find them, like a shopping centre, park bench or train station. You can let other people know where you've hidden your book on the site, but really it's up to fate who finds your book! The person who finds it enters the book crossing number into the website and registers that they found it. Once they've read it they can release it again and write on the site where they've left it, and so on, so you get a record of where your book has been and who's read it. And it's recycling! And you get free books! I once found a copy of 'The Buddha of Suburbia' in Sainsburys - extremely exciting!

http://www.bookcrossing.com/

I'm trying not to buy any new books...especially not when you can get second hand books from charity shops and book shops, library books and, if you're lucky, books for free!!

Junk mail...

I was inspired by this post on the Eco Etsy blog...
http://ecoetsy.blogspot.com/2009/07/eco-tip-of-week-stop-junk-mail.html

...to reduce the amount of junk mail that's delivered to my house - but the site suggested on Eco Etsy is for the US.

A quick google search later, I found this UK website, where you can register up to 5 people from the same address to stop receiving junk mail for 5 years...amd it's freeee!
http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/mpsr/

In 2007 4.54 billion pieces of addressed junk mail were delivered in the UK!!!

http://www.stopjunkmail.org.uk/facts/volume.php

Garlic growing...

My life is a bit strange at the moment, I was supposed to finish uni, find a job, find somewhere to rent and have a lovely eco-friendly vegan hippy-fied house. I have not found a job and I'm back living with my mum. Sigh. So...I'm not allowed to dig up her garden to make a veggie plot. Instead I've turned to a garlic growing empire. I'm not sure where the garlic we buy is from - China produces the most in the world, not sure if it's grown in England much, but growing my own would mean no food miles at all, and has the added excitement factor to fill my unemployed days! (has it grown yet? Has it grown yet? Has it grown YET?!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garlic

I read online that garlic LOVES growing in pots so I got some old pots from my mum (thanks mum!). In the UK we use 500 million plastic plant pots a year!!!!!!!! So if there weren't millions of spare plant pots in the greenhouse I would have used jam jars or cut down plastic bottles or made some out of papermache or something, but as they were there I've made use of them. I also made plant labels with what they are and the date they were planted, out of some cardboard I found in the recycling bin - which will probably go soggy when I move the garlic empire outside!

www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/today_in_your_garden/ethical/

Then I did this (based on many garlic how-to's I found by googling)...
1. Get a bulb of garlic (mine was organic - yey! but from a supermarket - boo!).
2. Separate as many cloves of garlic as you want plants to grow.
3. Fill a plant pot, or container you want to grow a plant in, with crocks (I'm not really sure how crocks work, mum says something to do with draining water, but you need some smashed up terracotta plant pot, or pebbles or bit of polystyrene in the bottom of your pot anyway!) then fill up to the top with compost or soil.
4. Poke a hole an inch deep into your pot.
5. Put the garlic flat end down, pointy end up into the hole and cover back over with soil.
6. Water, I used some nice rain water from mums water butt (thanks mum!). This proved my crocks were really good and drainy - lots of water drained out of my pots!

I have no idea if this will work, I really hope so - I have (hopefully) 6 garlic plants growing, when they're ready I'm going to eat 5 of them and plant the cloves from the other again, so hopefully I'm at the start of a self-perpetuating garlic growing empire!