Day 41

Breakfast - 09.00 - Cornflakes
Lunch - 12.00 - Pesto and Pasta
Tea - 18.45 - Homemade chapatis with ricey filling
Ingredients - Rice, tomatoes, chilli, garlic, corriander (fresh and ground) onion.

Chapatis, how to - Mix brown wholemeal flour with water (just make it up), mix into a dough, knead untill soft and smoothish, roll out into thin pancakes and dry fry on a very hot pan untill brown or expanded.

Day 40

Breakfast - 10.00 - Pesto, left over chicken and pasta (no cereal left)
Lunch - 13.00 - Cream cheese sandwich on freshly baked bread
Tea - 18.00 - Chicken curry with basmati rice.
Ingredients - Jars of organic curry, onion, tomatoes, left over roast chicken.

Tomorrow I head back to uni so I'm cooking for myself again. I'm getting my veg box on Wednesday and my meat from the butcher on Monday so untill then I am going to wing it with what I have in...Thankfully today we went shopping for cupboard supplies so I should be able to survive the next couple of days.

Day 39

Breakfast - 09.00 - Weetabix
Lunch - 13.00 - chilli jam sandwich
Snack - 13.15 - Yeo Valley blueberry yoghurt
snack - 14.30 - Ice cream
Snack - 17.00 - Chicken
Tea - 18.00 - Roast chicken with leeks, carrots and roash potatoes and chicken gravy.
Snack - 20.00 - Weetabix

Day 38

Breakfast - 10.00 - Weetabix
Lunch - 13.30 - Chilli jam sandwich
Snack - 16.00 - cheese on toast
Tea - 20.00 - Fish and Chips with lettuce.

Day 37

Breakfast - 10.00 - Cornflakes and weetabix
Lunch - 15.00 - Cheese and lettuce sandwich and Chilli jam sandwich
Tea - 19.00 - Beef caserole with spring greens, purple sprouting broccoli and mashed potato.
Ingredients - Beef, tinned tomatoes, beef stock, kidney beans, chilli jam.

We went to a different shop for food today (rhymes with dark & fencer) and it was pretty shocking on the organic front. I've been to another branch and decided to let it off because it was a really small shop but todays was pretty sizeable. They had a small selection of organic vegetables but most were from pretty far away (the spuds we settled for were from Israel) and it's really, really infuriating. I completely appreciate that people want to eat anything, anytime without any restrictions with seasonality (who wouldn't) but I feel like importing foods which are available from this country makes little sense. When demanding cheap foods, we make unrealistic demands of our farmers. Just think, when the supermarket sells things cheap are they making their profits smaller or the farmers?

Day 36

Breakfast - 08.15 - Porridge
Snack - 11.45 - Cereal bar
Lunch - 12.30 - Cheese and lettuce sandwiches (with home grown lettuce picked less than 24 hours before)
Snack - 17.00 - Organic cereal bar
Tea - 20.00 - Pesto and pasta

Unfortunately yet again nothing of food merit happenned today, it is my 5 week anniversary with organic food! I have 21 days remaining.

Day 35

Breakfast - 10.30 - Weetabix
Lunch - 13.00 - Chip butty
Snach - 15.00 - Chilli Jam sandwich
Tea - 18.00 - Home made pizza
Ingredients - Home made dough, Cheese, passata, Suma pesto, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes.
Snack - 18.20 - Rhubarb tart
Snack - 21.00 - Rhubarb tart
Ingredients - Home made pastry, Rhubarb compot - Rhubarb, sugar, water.

Frying my chips.

Day 34

Breakfast - 12.00 - Pasta and pesto
Snack - 15.00 - 2x Fairycakes
Snack - 15.30 - Bacon (BBQ)
Tea - 19.00 - Bacon and Sausage with lettuce, onion and bread.

The pesto I had for breakfast was a different one to the one I usually eat, It's from the brand Suma. They make lots of organic produce, mostly tinned. The ingredients were a little different to what you would usually find in pesto, they used no pine nuts but cashew nuts and vinegar. It was good, not as basilly as I like though. Still my basil plant is taking forever to grow so I can't make my own yet!

This evening I cooked our tea out on the barbeque. It was good, if a little long winded owed to the size of the BBQ itself. But it all cooked eventually and I had fun.

Day 33

Breakfast - 10.45 - Sausage and egg sandwich
Lunch - 13.00 - Cornflakes
Tea - 18.00 - Chicken salad.

The salad is made from organic veg box salad leaves and free range chicken. Home made crutons made it delicious.

Day 32

Breakfast - 09.00 - Cornflakes
Snack - 14.00 - Organic cereal bar
Snack - 17.00 - Cheese on toast
Tea - 20.00 - Bacon and tomato risotto.
Ingredients - Risotto rice, cherry tomatoes, stock, bacon, onion (none organic)

The last couple of days have been pretty boring, I've been busy but I'll put more effort in over the coming days!

Day 30 and 31

19/04/11

Breakfast - 09.30 - Cornflakes
Lunch - 13.00 - Cheese on toast
Tea - 17.00 - Lamb curry
Ingredients - Lamb, tinned tomatoes, onion, spinach, garlic, potatoes, chilli, corriander, cumin.

20/04/11

Breakfast - 09.30 - Porridge
Snack - 17.00 - Fairy Cake
Tea - 18.30 - Ravioli (home made)
Ingredients - Pasta - Egg and pasta flour. 100g flour to every egg. Mix it up, knead it untill it's smooth (looks like a big blob of pasta) roll out as flat as you possibly can, cut, boil (for literally 3 minutes) and enjoy.
Filling - Beef mince, garlix, courgette, yoghurt
Sauce - Passata, cherry tomatoes, garlic, oregano, basil, left over filling.

The pasta was half left over from last time we made it and half freshly made today. The frozen isn't quite as good but I think it beats shop bought in taste everytime. It's so easy to make, just takes some effort to roll it out, it shrinks back to almost the original size every time you roll it.

Day 29

Breakfast - 10.00 - Cornflakes
Lunch - 13.00 - Bacon and cheese sandwich
Snack - 13.10 - Cereal bar, organic
Tea - 18.30 - Vegetable fritters with salad and boiled potatoes.
Ingredients - Courgette, aubergine, potato, onion, lettuce, egg, salt, pepper.

My plants are starting to look quite good, the strawberries are producing some fruit and the 'cut and come again' lettuce leaves are looking great!

I made some sustainable cakes too! They're actually pretty good. It's really infuriating that most of the ingredients are imported but I managed to find all British and/or Organic ingredients...

Day 27 and 28

16/04/11
Breakfast - 07.00 - Porridge
Snack - Taster foods at Harrogate Flower show. All were from small English businesses.
Lunch - 12.00 - Pancetta, Cheese, chutney, onion and lettuce sandwich
Lunch - 15.00 - As above
Snack - 18.50 - Cous Cous with basil, oregano and cheese
Tea - 01.00 - Mediterannean chicken with rice.


17/04/11
Breakfast - 10.00 - Cornflakes
Lunch - 13.30 - Cous cous with garlic, cheese, basil and fresh parsley.
Tea - 18.00 - BBQ garlic chicken and bacon with cheese, lettuce and onion.

Today I was debating quitting. I feel like I keep wanting to make compramises with myself and if I'm not going to do it 'properly' then why bother doing it? I'm still aiming to reach my target of 8 weeks (that will mark the end of the semester and I leave England for the summer).

People have made some effort for me lately in terms of food which I really do appreciate. I feel bad when I am a guest and don't eat the things that they prepare (even if it only is a snack). I feel even worse when they make the effort for me but it doesn't quite fit my rules. Thanks for the support!

Day 25 and 26

14/04/11
Breakfast - 10.00 - Weetabix
Snack - 12.30 - Fairy Cake
Lunch - 13.00 - Cheese on toast
Snack - 14.00 - Chocolate ice cream
Snack - 16.00 - Beans on toast
Tea - 20.00 Beany bake

Today Andy and I popped to a new farm shop on the way home from Dads. They sell veg and meat and have an ice cream parlour! We bought 1 litre of Falshaws Farm ice cream. It's made at Rowlands Road, Bury, Manchester. It's not organic but it's pretty close by.

15/03/11
Breakfast - 12.00 - Chip butties
Snack - 16.00 - Fairy Cake
Snack - 16.45 - Yoghurt
Tea - 20.15 - Mince meat pie with mash and cabbage.
Ingredients - Pastry - Butter, flour, water and salt. Filling - Minced beef, onion, carrot, beef stock, pepper, plain flour to thicken.

Today the veg box came. We got less this week than last, hopefully enoulgh veg to keep us going!

We got a small magazine with the vegbox this week it holds recipes and articles about the food. This is one about the way food is produced.



Day 24 - I won a competition!

Breakfast - 09.30 - Cornflakes
Snack - 13.00 - Fairy cake
Lunch - 14.00 - Left over Curry with rice
Snack - Fairy Cake
Tea - 20.00 - Roast chicken with carrots, broccoli and potatoes

Today an OWL Wireless electricity monitor arrived for me. I entered a competition with Marks and Spencer and completely forgot about it. Andy and I set it up and it is pretty cool. You just attach it to the live wire in your fuse box and it transmits data to the wireless gadget.

We had on,
The dishwasher
TV
Freeview
2xChargers
Telephone

This produced 0.199 kg of greenhouse gases per hour.

We then ran around like man people turning everything on...
Oven
Dishwasher
11x halogen bulbs
12x energy saving lightbulbs
9x 60 watt bulbs
laptop on charge
phone on charge
2x printers
PC
Strip light (the kind used for under cupboard lighting)
2x LED lamps
2x External harddrives
2x TV
Freeview box
CD player

This shot the meter up to 1.467 km of greenhouse gas(ghg)/hour. If we let all this run for 24 hours this would consumer roughly 36kg/ghg. Mental.

Day 23

Breakfast - 10.30 - Cornflakes
Lunch - 13.00 - Fried egg sandwich
Snack - 17.00 - Ham and cheese sandwich
Tea - 19.00 - Burger and chips with cheese and lettuce

Tomorrow I'm off to my Dad's for tea. I wonder what they will make me? Will it be sustainable?

Day 21

Breakfast - 09.30 - Weetabix
Snack - 13.30 - Cheese on toast
Lunch - 15.00 - Fried egg on toast
Tea - 17.30 - Vegetable rosti, cold meats, cheese and salad.
Ingredients - Courgette, carrot, potato, onion, tomato, cheese, lettuce, ham, bread.

The weather has been great lately, my strawberries and herbs have been out in the sun, growing nicely.

Day 19 and 20

Firstly, Those of you with twitter, please follow @sustainablekate and spread the word.Secondly, Apologies to those of you who were upset that this didn't get posted yesterday.

08/04/11

Breakfast - 11.30 - Porridge with sultanas
Lunch - 14.00 - Home made bruschetta with sundried tomatoes, basil and oregano with lettuce.
Tea - 20.00 - Chilli
Ingredients - Onion, mince, cumin, chilli (unsustainable), kidney beans, tinned chopped tomatos.

Today I made 'bruschetta' from some old home made bread. I fried/toasted it in a frying pan with a little olive oil then added some homemade sundried tomatoes, tossed in herbs with lettuce. It was delicious!

I also made some buns (It was a very productive day) because i'm at home I have access to a bread maker!! Which I used to make the dough for some white buns. All I had to do was knead and bake it. Delicious.

The veg box also came which I am very excited about, Mum and Dave ordered plenty of ingredients for coming meals...

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09/04/11

Breakfast - 10.30 - Weetabix

Lunch - 13.00 - Cheese bun (see yesterday)

Tea - 17.30 - Curry, Vegetable and Chicken madras.

Dave made two awesome currys tonight, both were 100% sustainable, the chicken was free-range British but not organic.

Vegetable - Ingredients - 1/2 Butternut squash, potatoes, carrots, 3x free range eggs, water, cumin, corriander, garlic.

Chicken - Ingredients - Chicken, 2x Onions, 4x Garlic, chilli, chicken stock, madras spice mix.

Day 18 - Strawberry

Breakfast - 11.00 - Weetabix
Lunch - 13.00 - Fried egg sandwich.
Tea - 18.45 - Fry up.
Ingredients - Bacon, Sausage, Fried egg, Roast new potatoes.

Today I made a cake just a simple sponge with sultanas in it. I fancied something sweet to snack on. However, I got a little bit distracted when it was cooking and it ended up slightly over cooked (burnt). It actually tastes quite good, it looks pretty awful so I won't offer you a photo.

For tea, we had a fry up, The bacon and sausage wasn't organic or free range but it is from Peacock farm in Styal, Cheshire less than 20 miles away.

My strawberry plants are looking good, they are starting to fruit. I think the recent good weather and keeping them indoors has aided them. One of the stalks was drooping under the weight of the strawberry so that the fruit was touching the earth so I picked it and ate it today. It was tiny but still tasted pretty good.

Day 17

Breakfast - 10.30 - Weetabix
Lunch - 13.30 - Pasta with tomato sauce
Ingredients - Tomato, Onion, garlic, basil (home grown)
Tea - 20.00 - Pizza.
Ingredients, home made dough, home made tomato base, onioin, garlic, cheese.

Homemade food is by far the best type of food!

My parents are taking a different approach to my diet than I did when I was at uni. I had more of a 'make what I can with what I can find' whereas they are taking the 'find the ingredients to make whatever I want' route.
Personally I think their method is better, however I think mine was cheaper. :D

Day 16 - Soup!

Breakfast - 09.30 - Porridge with sultanas
Lunch - 13.00 - Chips and cheese on bread
Tea - 19.00 - Home made soup with crusty bread

I made two soups today (insert Victoria Wood impression here) They were basically the same but one had an unsustainable butternut squash in (the horror!) and mine didn't. I made it from scratch this afternoon. For those of you who aren't aware of the soup making process, you chop up vegetables and add them to water or stock and let it bubble away gently for a couple of hours.

Mine was made from : Carrots, parsnip (not recommended for soup), cauliflower, onion, potato, corriander, butternut squash, Vegetable stock.

Also, last night we made an order from a local veg box supplier, http://www.abelandcole.co.uk/. We were pretty pleased to order a variety of things and not only a veg box. We are going to try their beer, rice, mince, herbs, spices and a few different tins. I'm looking forward to it arriving on Friday!

Day 15

Breakfast - 12.00 - Morrisons crunch cereal with yogurt
Lunch - 15.00 - Cheese sandwich
Tea - 19.30 - Fish pie
Ingredients - Salmon, Cod, milk, butter, potato, flour. I didn't cook it so I'm not sure what else went into it.

This morning I headed out for the weeks shop, with a little effort I managed to get almost everything that we needed. I first headed to the farm shop to get some veggies and extras.

Red kidney beans - Organic but from Italy. I still bought them because the company Suma is a co-op which is owned and run by its workers. Unfortunately it is not GB certified organic but still from within the EU so it should be produced to high standards.
Cauliflower
Potatos
Carrots - Washed, this is something I don't understand. Why waste your labor washing vegetables? I did think that maybe this is part of the picking process, they are piced by machine usually. I will look it up.
Onions
I like the idea of the farm shop, local food for local people. However some of the things that they sell aren't local. They had bananas on the shelves which were labelled as organic which is great but it still bothers me how far they have travelled.

At Morrisons I got quite a lot.
Milk - This was organic and British which is perfect, one of the only things I can get without fail almost everywhere. It makes me happy, all we need now is a shift with the other products and we are on our way to sustainability.
Cereal - Organic again, something which pleased me, I got two new varities. Weetabix style cereal and some with mixed fruit in it. It's a nice change to have some variety and choice.
Yogurt - Yeo Vallery Organic
Sultanas - I was put off by these previously because it doesn't specify where they were produced but I need more variety in my breakfasts, there is only so much plain porridge one person can eat!
Tomatoes - British but not organic. This makes me sad. I know they aren't in season yet which means  they shouldn't be on the shelves. We should be using preserved toms such - Passata, puree etc.

Also on my list was butternut squash and chillis, I could only get these which had come from South Africa and Kenya which isn't ideal  but as I was shopping for 4 people I can't exactly push my opinions on them totally!

The main thing I needed to buy was fish and minced beef. I got the fish quite easily, I had the choice of organic farmed fish or none organic wild fish. I'm no expert but from what I do know about fish farming it is NOT ethical to the fish so I went for the none organic wild fish. Slightly more expensive (sorry Mum) but everyone agreed the best choice in terms of ethics and it tasted a lot more like fish than its alternative.

I couldn't find organic mince so that is my task for tomorrow.

I am starting to get horribly infuriated with the food that is available, or not available as the case is more often than not. I know I have made it my business to learn about food production and environmental issues because it is something that I am passionate about but I feel that everybody should know at least the basics. If everyone starts to make some small changes then between us we can make more of a difference. We can change the way food is produced with our wallets. By removing the market, we remove the need for production. If consumers move to more ethical products, production will move too.

Choose Organic, Choose Local.

Day 14 - Lasagne

Breakfast - 11.00 - Cheese on Toast
Tea - 18.00 - Lasagne, Jacket potatos, Garlic bread.
Ingredients - Home made lasagne, diced beef, onion, garlic, tomatos, basil.

Mum and I made home made lasagne today, it took us forever to roll it all out. Making pasta for 6 people takes forever! Investing in a pasta machine is well worth it if you are going to make a habbit of it!

Tomorrow I am off to do a big shop for the week. I have a few destinations to go to. First stop the local farm shop to get all the veg that I can, then a healthfood shop for dried beans and a few other bits, then off to Morrisons for some line caught fish.

Day 12 and 13

Yet another double whammy...

01/04/11
Breakfast - 10.00 - Porridge
Lunch - 12.30 - Beans on toast
Tea - Burger with cheese and home grown lettuce


02/04/11
Breakfast - 10.00 - Porridge
Snack - 17.00 - Cheese and a tomato
Tea - 18.00 - Toad in the hole (Sausage and vegetables in a yorkshire pudding)

Today is my first day at home from Uni for 4 weeks and my parents have been busily sourcing some food for me to eat! Tonights tea was toad in the hole but they couldn't find any sustainable sausages so I had some diced beef in mine, it was pretty good. I was really hungry because I hadn't eaten since breakfast and they had no snacky/lunch things in.

Tomorrow my grandparents are coming round for tea and we are having lasagne so I'll be making home made pasta again for it. Hopefully it will turn out well.

This is the insect that came with my salad. I haven't named him yet but I am open to suggestions.