River cottage

I guess i'm making up for lost time, i havent been able to post for awhile, either that, or i'm just procrastinating....

Anyway... I love watching/reading about people who are leading the kind of life i'd like to have...
Living in the country, running a smallholding, and so on...
I really like shows like "River Cottage Spring" if you are in oz you can watch it on Iview
but I have to say that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a little, well, annoying. His heart is definitely in the right place, and his shows are great.

But i can't help feeling jealous of his beautiful cottage, with its pretty vegetable patch and its neat paths. And all his employees..... no wonder the house is neat and tidy, his rows of vege are straight and weed free.... He has a team of gardeners and people to look after his livestock.

He is, if not rich, comfortably well off and a bit out of touch with "poor" people, (like me), who out of necessity, put budget ahead of other considerations. When you are living on $250 aud a week, which is what the single parents pension is, nearly all of that goes to rent. So even a couple of dollars more a kilo for free range, or organic food, is simply impossible. Instead of belittling people for choosing cheaper food, we need to educate people about growing their own, and preparing food from scratch. (Which I admit he is trying to do... in his own way... but still average Jill will be intimidated by the fact he has loads of people to help him.)

I cannot afford organic, free range meat, so we simply do not eat meat. If we could harvest our own meat, and be sure of the animal's quality of life and it being chemical free, i'm sure we would eat it sometimes, well not me but HH definitely. We generally can't afford organic fruit and vege either, so we try to grow as much as we can ourselves, which isn't easy, living in a rental and working/studying/parenting fulltime.

Obviously, I don't have a solution or I would be living it already. I think generally simplifying where you can is the answer. Eat simple food, which is as ethical as possible. Take baby steps, for example, buy free range eggs, before jumping in and setting up your own chicken coop. Eat at home more often, and prepare as much food yourself as you can, before agonising over the environmental costs of rice farming, or soybean production.

Just start where you're at.... Bloom where you're planted... and don't beat yourself up if you can't keep up with the Greenes'...

This quote from Homemaker Ang kind of sums it up:

"Instead of eating the white bread we all grew up on, one of us decides to break the mold and start buying whole wheat bread at the grocery store. We feel so proud of this accomplishment because we are feeding our family more healthy than how we grew up. Then we meet a woman who buys organic whole wheat bread from a posh health food market, and she meets a woman who bakes her own organic whole wheat bread in her bread maker everyday! Then she meets a woman who bakes her own organic whole wheat bread but kneads it by hand everyday rather than using a bread maker…. But she meets a woman who grinds her own organic wheat berries each day and bakes her own organic whole wheat bread and then she meets a woman who GROWS her own whole wheat to bake her own bread but this lady even meets a woman who grows her own whole wheat but hers is actually organic! YIKES! I could keep going on and on couldn't I…?"

She goes on to say "Ps. I don't like the woman who grows her own organic whole wheat…"

"You really should clean that, it's a disgrace!"

Fridge words

I love fridge words and the stream of consciousness poetry that some people create with them. However, I do not love the price. :)

So in the spirit of anti-consumerism and "refuse to consume", I made my own. Use any words you like, mine all lean towards ethics, creativity and politics. Include pronouns, adverbs and determiners, if you want to make up a narrative. Try to be creative. Pick strange words, e.g. "dastardly", or "autohagiographer". Pick a theme, use words from a poem or quote you love, or only pick silly sounding words.You can also include names of friends, family and pets. If you've got kids who have sight words or spelling lists to memorise, you could make them a set. Hmmm, fun, (yawn) better yet get them to make their own!

Materials:

• Sturdy card board or construction paper. I got some sheets for Christmas from my Mum and Dad, they came wrapped around a piece card board, I don't know why. I kept the card board, as you do.
• Magnetic strip. I used strips of magnets from off the back of those ubiquitous calendars politicians and real estate agents bombard you with at this time of year. Promotional magnets and magnetic business cards would work well, too. They are surprisingly easy to cut with normal scissors.
• Pens, Pencil, Ruler, Scissors, Glue. I used Glustick, but I would recommend using something a bit stronger, maybe UHU power stick, or craft glue. The magnets are slick, so you need something that will adhere to plastic.
• List of words.

Step 1: Write your words onto your cardboard. My handwriting is notoriously messy, so instead of trying (and not succeeding) to make all my letters neatly identical, I used a variety of pens and font styles. If you like, you could print out your list , then glue the paper onto your cardboard.

Step 2: Stick your magnetic strips to the back of the cardboard. Tip: Do this before you cut out individual words, working with one large piece of cardboard and a few pieces of magnetic strip is easier than dozens of teeny pieces of cardboard and magnet!


Step 3: Cut out the individual words.


Voila! Fridge words! Have fun :)