Those of you that have been reading this blog for a while will know how keen I am to be green and do my little bit for the environment. I try to be as responsible as possible when it comes to waste and recycling and I like to support companies with an aligned view.
Several years ago I started using Ecover's products because I wanted to reduce the amount of harmful chemicals in my cleaning products. Now I regularly buy their multi-surface cleaner and washing up liquid. I'm also so devoted to their laundry liquid that I can't stand the chemically smell of everything else. All do their job really well, smell nice and are kind to the environment. Where possible I try to put these in as big a container as possible so that I can minimise on plastic waste.
Ecover have recently made a pledge to try to make things even kinder to the environment by changing how they make their plastic bottles. As well as using sea plastic and recycled plastic they have also introduced plant-astic, a green plastic made from sugarcane which is 100% renewable, reusable and recyclable.
It's fantastic to hear about new innovations like this and we need to do things like this to protect our planet and drastically reduce the amount going into landfill. When they're not busy beavering away in a science lab researching new materials the people at Ecover have also come up with this handy infographic to explain what they're doing. I just hope other companies learn from them.
Cleaning the seas, one bottle at a time. Visit The-Splash for more information and to read our pledge.
Discalimer: I wrote this post in exchange for some Ecover products, however I'm such a fan of the brand that I would have happily written it for free!
In my eyes a good experimental recipe is one that gets eaten so quickly that you don't have chance to photograph it for a blog post first. That's exactly what happened to the lovely lunch that Mr C made us all earlier today.
One thing that I am awful at is keeping food leftovers and then doing nothing at all with them. There is far too much food waste in this house and if I'm honest I'm to blame for most of it. There are some dinners (mainly pasta dishes) where I plan carefully and ensure that we have enough left over for LMC and I to have it for lunch the next day too. Where I come unstuck though is where there are smaller quantities of things, or where I've had to buy a larger quantity than I really needed. Then bits of food can end up sitting in the fridge for a week or so until they get thrown out due to developing some strange growth. With Mr C having been off work this last week I've tried to only plan our evening meals and to allow our lunches to be a bit more free-form, based around whatever else we can find in the fridge or cupboards. This has meant that sometimes we've all eaten different things, but I don't see that as a problem. I've not had to throw away any containers of dinner leftovers and that is a big improvement over some weeks.
Now that we're at the end of the week the left-over supplies were running low and the previous night's dinner only resulted in some cooked broccoli and new potatoes left in the fridge. Mr C managed to work his magic on these though and made up a fantastic lunch for all three of us based around them.
First he made a quick cheese sauce on the hob using some milk, soft cheese, grated cheese, plain flour and a touch of seasoning. Into this he mixed the chopped up potatoes and broccoli, along with a handful of cooked ham (the sort you put in sandwiches). This was then all put in an oven-proof dish, grated cheese and breadcrumbs sprinkled on top and then it went under the grill until it was all bubbling and crispy on top. Served up with some bread it was delicious, filling and came with a feeling of satisfaction at not having wasted yet more food. It also ticked the box of being a family meal that really didn't cost very much to make at all - bonus.
My next challenge is to try to use my child-free time tomorrow to come up with similarly easy meals using what is now lurking in the fridge. I really want to try to nip this food waste problem I have in the bud now once and for all, so I'm on the look-out for recipes to use things up. Any tips you might have are gratefully received! If I can do so and also cut our food shopping bill at the same time then it'll be a thrifty bonus.
Pulling meals together from what's in the fridge isn't my speciality. It shouldn't be difficult, but somehow I always struggle and sadly end up throwing away far more food than we should. I'm making a real effort at the moment to change that and reduce what goes into the council compost bin and I'm delighted to say that this last week I've succeeded and come up with a great new simple meal as a result.
Based on the Waitrose Baked Pumpkin Gratin recipe that I picked up on one of their cards a while back I managed to concoct a delicious sweet potato and butternut squash gratin based on what I could find in the fridge.
I love the bags that Waitrose do of butternut squash and sweet potato cubes. When Little Miss C was weaning they were ideal for making up a quick batch of puree for her without all the hassle of having to cut up butternut squash - which I strangely always find troublesome. They've been on special offer recently - hence a surplus in my fridge.
Ingredients
Bag of butternut squash and sweet potato
Some tomatoes
Garlic cloves
Vegetable stock (enough to cover the amount of veg you have)
Single cream
Breadcrumbs
Gruyere cheese
Method
Place all the vegetables in a roasting dish. Pour over the vegetable stock and then place in the oven at 200 degrees for about 45 minutes. At this stage stir though and then add some single cream - enough to cover all the veg, but not to make it too liquid. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs over the top and then grate the cheese over the breadcrumbs. Return to the oven for approximately 15 minutes; until the top is crispy.
You can serve this either as a vegetarian main course with salad on the side, as an accompaniment to meat, or with some nice bread to make it a comfort food supper. It's a great recipe for just using up what you find in the fridge or your vegetable rack and simple to do too.
In this case the sweet potato gave the dish some bulk, whilst the nutty nature of the Gruyere added an extra taste dimension. The whole thing has also made me much more confident of my abilities to cobble something together from what I can find in the kitchen and hopefully in the process has helped to reduce the amount of food we waste.
I had this blog post all planned out as soon as I heard about Walk to School Week (21-25 May 2012). Little Miss C has recently started walking both to and from nursery on her own rather than being pushed in the buggy. Half a mile each way and she loves being able to point everything out to us and tell us about what she's going to do at nursery, or what she's done that day. It's a lovely part of the day for both of us, but the slight spanner in the works this week is that she's got chicken pox so no nursery and hence no walk to nursery. Tuesday is usually nursery day so it seemed right to write about it on the day we usually do our "walk to school".
That's absolutely no excuse for the rest of you though! Walking to school is a great way of spending time with your children and also getting some exercise. Looking out of the window right now the sun even seems to be coming out in support, but as long as you're dressed appropriately even the British weather shouldn't get in the way.
Last year over 1 million children from 4000 schools ditched the school run to walk to school instead. Will you be one of the number this week, or even better are you someone who already walks to school regularly? A big pat on the back to those of you that are, but to the others have a think about it - I realise that sometimes getting to work may prevent this in a morning, but please try to make the time to spend those precious moments with your children by walking with them to school (and home again). Not only will you get exercise and fresh air, but you should be making a saving in fuel costs too - cars are never at their most efficient when stuck in traffic stop-start on the school run!
Walk to School Week is taking part as part of the Living Streets'Great British Walking Challenge and there are lots of fun activities taking place as part of the week, including an opportunity for one class of junior school children to each win a pair of Start-rite shoes - find out more here.
Disclaimer: No payment has been received for this post - I simply think more people should be walking instead of getting in their cars!
Have you ever thought about what happens to food that's still on the shelves of your local supermarket when it reaches its "display until" date? Much of it is still perfectly edible, but as it can no longer be sold it instead often ends up just going in a shop's general rubbish. Wasted food - not nice, but sadly a fact of life in many shops. There are an estimated 400,000 tonnes of surplus food that can reclaimed each year from food retailers here in the UK, but all this food can be turned into healthy and nutritious meals.
Food poverty is another huge problem facing us here in the UK with an estimated 4 million people affected. The current economic situation and rising unemployment is also impacting on this and it is thought that it costs the NHS £13billion a year to deal with malnutrition.
When you look at the above facts it seems staggering to me that both these things are happening here in the UK. A 1st world country, yet food is going to waste at the same time as food poverty and malnutrition. A crazy, crazy situation, but one that FoodCycle is committed to change.
FoodCycle's mission is quite simple:
"We empower local communities to set up groups of volunteers to collect surplus produce locally and prepare nutritious meals in unused professional kitchen spaces. These delicious meals are then served to those in need in the community."
When you see it written down like that it seems simple, yet it's still not easy without the core of volunteers that FoodCycle are also empowering.
Increased unemployment here in the UK means that there are people out of work, especially young people, who often have no opportunity to learn new skills that would help them get into employment. It's all too easy for people in this situation to feel alienated from the community around them and that's how local communities become fractured and break down. What FoodCycle do is to support volunteers and provide them with the skills and tools they need to help within their communities and to serve nutritious meals to those most in need.
Since they were established in 2008 FoodCycle have set up 14 Hubs and two Community Cafes in the UK. At each of the Hubs FoodCycle has helped local volunteers to find local sources of surplus food and free kitchen spaces in which to prepare and cook meals. They also help to build a group of volunteers and work with the community to find the people to serve these meals too - refugees, homeless people, low income families and the elderly for example. Ongoing support is also then provided to help with practical things like cooking skills, insurance, food safety training and ensuring that the Hub has the support and volunteer engagement that it needs to continue.
The Community Cafes are slightly different in that they sell nutritious and affordable food to the local communities where they are based. After our recent Living Streets Great British Walking Challenge walk, Little Miss C and I were fortunate enough to visit the Pie in the Sky FoodCycle Community Cafe in Bromley-by-Bow in East London. Based at the Bromley-by-Bow Centre this cafe really couldn't be any closer to the heart of the local community.
The centre caters for all community needs including helping residents with health issues, learning new skills, finding employment and providing the tools to help them to create an enterprising community. As we sat there eating a delicious lunch (a yummy vegetarian lasagne in case you're wondering!) we could see a huge range of local people coming in and using both the centre and the cafe; older ladies out for an afternoon cup of tea, a group of people with learning difficulties having lunch before a craft class in a neighbouring room, a local mum passing through on her way to a medical appointment with her small children. This is exactly the kind of place that communities should be centred around - somewhere welcoming and with all the tools and support to help local people to build a community that they can be proud of.
FoodCycle's role at the centre of places like this is so important, yet many people I've spoken to over the last week don't seem to be aware of them yet. I'm hoping that this post will hope to change that. There are several different ways to keep up with what they are doing:
If you want to find out more about FoodCycle and their work, are interested in volunteering or want to donate to FoodCycle then please just take a look at their website.
Disclaimer: I have received no payment for this blog post, but as part of the Great British Walking Challenge that LMC and I undertook we were bought lunch in the FoodCycle Pie in the Sky Community Cafe.
Sometimes a physical change of scenery can help you clear your head and see things clearly and that's exactly what happened to me yesterday. I was lucky enough to be invited, along with a handful of other bloggers, to visit Yeo Valley - home of yummy yoghurt and some equally yummy farmers (well, so says their TV adverts!) - to find out more about the company behind all the yumminess and their way of doing things. When I recently wrote here about wanting to use my blog to find out more about the people and things that make me smile this trip was exactly the sort of thing I had in mind!
At its heart Yeo Valley is still centred around a family farm. Records of the Mead family farming in the area stretch back to the 1400s, but it was in 1961 that Roger and Mary Mead first moved to Holt Farm along with their 30 cows. By 1972 diversification had started with the first yoghurt being made from the skimmed milk left over from clotted cream. Sales were made around the valley in their Morris Minor van and that is where yeoghurt history really starts. Roger and Mary's son Tim (and his wife Sarah) now manage the farm and their yoghurts are sold in supermarkets across the country. Their product range has also extended to include butter, milk, ice cream, frozen yoghurt and compotes. That's not the end of the Yeo Valley story though.
What I discovered when I visited was that Yeo Valley as a company also run their Yeoniversity where they share with the public (especially school children) everything they have learnt from their time farming the land. We were given an insight into one of these sessions and I was immediately won over by the company's passion about what they do in the Valley and the value of sessions like this to children, especially those from inner-cities who might not otherwise have the opportunity to visit such stunning countryside.
It's not only children who get to share in the Yeo Valley experience though. There are Farm and Environment Tours and also Food and Gardening ones too. When Sarah Mead moved to Somerset she came with no gardening knowledge and experience, but since then she has built up (with the help of her team of gardeners) six and a half acres of the stunning Yeo Valley Organic Gardens. Everything there is homemade, right from the compost and liquid plant food through to the delicious scones that we were served after our garden tour. These gardens are very much on a par with what you see at many National Trust properties, and the stunning surroundings of the Mendips and Blagdon Lake set them off perfectly.
It is completely impossible for me to do justice to everything that I saw in my day at Yeo Valley in one blog post and as time allows over the next couple of weeks I plan to cover in more detail:
The Yeoniversity and in particular the value of teaching children about farming and the countryside.
The Yeo Valley Organic Garden and the challenges and benefits that organic gardening holds.
Cooking with yoghurt. Whilst at Yeo Valley we were treated to a wonderful cookery demonstration with the Yeo Valley chef, Jamie, and I really had my eyes opened to the possibilities of using yoghurt in a range of recipes. I've got plans to recreate some of these at home and hope to share them with you here. Yeo Cheesecake - including making cheese from yoghurt.
I will update this post with links just as soon as the subsequent posts are written, but now I'm so inspired by what I saw yesterday that I'm off to the garden to make the most of the sunshine and to sort out my little veg plot!
Disclaimer: I was invited to Yeo Valley for their open day with several other parent bloggers. Our travel costs for the day were met and a yummy lunch, cake and tea provided.
With all the warm and wet weather that we've had recently the garden has been shooting up, but it's also been difficult to spend time out there gardening due to it being so wet. Our veg plot is ready for things to be planted, but to be honest I'm a bit behind schedule in doing so.
However, there are a few crops still in the ground that have been growing at speed recently. A long, long time ago I had my first attempts at growing leeks from seed and after a very slow start I'm delighted to say that the above photo shows the first of the crop brought in to our kitchen for inclusion in Saturday night's dinner.
The last week has seen the leeks put on quite a big growth spurt and I actually think they would have been fine to harvest a few weeks back, but it was only this weekend that I actually had the mental capacity to pull together a recipe including leeks with actually bringing them in from the garden.
I'm delighted to say that they were delicious and tasted exactly as leeks should do! I realise that may sound like the obvious, but not all my growing from seed experiments have been entirely successful in the past. The only problem with the crop is just how long they spend in the ground - for someone with a small plot like ourselves that does mean that part of the plot is tied up for quite a long period, meaning that nothing else can be grown there. For as long as we just have the plot space we do I think we'll hold fire on leeks in the future, but if more growing space comes available I'll certainly be planting another crop.
When I recently tried to tell you nearly everything you ever wanted to know about the Nissan Leaf I mentioned my surprise about just how roomy it was inside. It seem that my bland statement wasn't enough though and a group of local parent bloggers decided to test things a little bit further by asking the question "How many mummy bloggers can you fit into a Nissan Leaf", specifically #NissanLeafCar21?
The answer it seems is an amazing eleven mummy bloggers, one daddy blogger (i.e. Alex who is taking part in the Nissan Big Turn On Challenge) and one bump! So, but my calculation 12 and a half people.
What really impressed me though is the boot space - three women in there without any trouble at all!
Those initial thoughts I had of the Leaf being a compact car have been completely blown out of the water!
Somewhere in an editing suite is a video of this fantastic challenge taking place - once it's online I'll be sharing as it really was a hilarious challenge and as you can see attracted a fair bit of attention for the car itself. No doubting that #nissanLEAFcar21 was the star of the show!
Disclaimer: Alex is currently taking part in the Nissan Big Turn on Competition where he stands a chance of winning a Nissan Leaf for his family - you can vote for Alex here and also find out much more about how he's been getting on with the Leaf over on his blog - www.daddacool.co.uk If you're on twitter then please tweet using the #nissanLEAFcar21 hashtag as these count towards his chances of winning.
I have received no financial payment from Alex or Nissan for this blog post. Although Alex has promised that if he wins the car I can use him as a taxi service! :-)
Please don't tell daddacool this as he might get bigheaded - but he actually made one of my ambitions come true this weekend. You see I was lucky enough to be taken for a spin in the Nissan Leaf car that he currently has as part of The Big Turn On competition - #NissanLEAFcar21. It gets better though - he actually let me press buttons! Well, more accurately the touchscreen but you get my drift.
So, why am I so excited? Well, this was actually my first trip in a fully electric car. I've been in a hybrid a couple of times in different foreign cities where it has been in use as a taxi, but not in something like the Leaf. Ever since I first got really interested and passionate about environmental issues electric cars have always fascinated me, but at the same time they've also seemed like something slightly unattainable - mainly on financial grounds - and had a slightly mysterious edge to them.
In particular I've seen the great work that Robert Llewellyn has done with electric cars, especially as part of his Carpool project, and I've always been left wanting to know more. Now I'm delighted to say that I do.
The car itself
From the outside the Leaf looks remarkably like any other car that you might see parked outside someone's house - assuming you ignore all the competition branding that's on this particular model. Alex has already blogged about how roomy it is inside. They've had no problems fitting a family of five in it (two car seats and one adult in the back) as well as a buggy in the boot. I have to say that really surprised me. I'd just assumed that it would be a compact car, but in fact it's wider inside than Alex's usual Zafira.
As soon as you get in the Leaf the first thing that hits you is just how futuristic the whole things looks. All the main dashboard things are controlled from a nifty touchscreen that is located in the middle of the dash. Not only does this control the usual things like the radio (annoyingly not DAB - bit surprising in such a modern futuristic vehicle) and the sat-nav, but also gives you loads of additional information which really appealed to a geek like me.
One particularly cool addition is the reversing camera. Not only do you get a very good quality live picture of where you are going, but overlaid on this is drawn the trajectory of the path that you are going to take based on the current steering wheel position. Definitely removes any excuses for little bumps whilst reversing into tight parking spaces.
So impressed I was that I'm even going to share with you the view as we reversed out of Alex's drive. I should add that at the time it was chucking it down with rain, so there are a few raindrops on the camera, but I am assured that they are not normally there.
Once you've got the Leaf going forwards the geeky information really does go into overdrive (excuse the pun).
You are presented with the above menu which takes you through to loads of information screens detailing how much energy you are using at any particular time, as well as telling you just how far you can go in it.
When driving around I was impressed at just how responsive the car was. I usually drive a diesel estate so this was very nippy in comparison. The lack of engine noise is strange though at first, but I'm guessing you'd get used to this. Whether or not pedestrians, animals and pigeons do is another question...
How far can the Leaf go between charges
If you're someone who struggles with the concept of distances and are just more interested in whether or not you have enough charge to get to somewhere in particular then below is the screen that is likely to interest you most.
As we sat in St Albans this map shows you just how far you can go with the charge that is in the car at that point in time. Reading was easily in our reach, Birmingham just on the limits of our range. The inner of the two concentric circles (the white one) shows how far you can travel in normal driving more. The outer circle (the grey/blue colour) indicates how the range increases if you switch on what is called "eco drive". Eco drive reduces the response and performance, but as payback you can go further on the one charge.
In this case Alex had charged the car three days earlier and since then had done several local errands, but nothing further. You would expect the range after a full charge to be around 100 miles.
The below energy information screen tells you everything you need or want to know about just how much energy the car is using at any one moment in time.
When I took this photograph we were sat on Alex's drive with the "engine" running, but were stationary. You can see that the motor is not using any energy at that moment in time, and that as climate control is off it is also not using anything. There's a helpful note telling you that turning on climate control will decrease the range by 17 miles too.
As the car is switched on though we are pulling something from the battery in powering things like lights, the touchscreen itself and the radio. At that point in time probably something in the region of 0.2 kW.
Once you're actually on the move this information is much more dynamic. The below video was taken as we were driving around. Apologies for the camera shake, but that was mainly thanks to Hertfordshire Highways and their amazing ability to keep the roads full of bumps and potholes!
You can see here what the motor is drawing, as well as the impact of the climate control and other car systems. Interestingly you're here told that turning off climate control would increase your range by 17 miles (as you would expect as that's the figure they told you before you switched it on) but the range is now 75 miles, yet it was 89 before. A-level maths tells me that's only a difference of 14 miles. Somewhere we've gained three miles on our range - no idea where from though.
It's expected that having massively varying loads in the car would also alter the range (from Newton's 2nd law, something that's heavier requires a greater force to move it) but this is not something that Alex has seen in his driving experience with the family so far.
Factors affecting range
Before going on this test drive I've had quite a few discussions with some of my friends over on The Green Living Forum about electric cars and the various pros and cons. One thing that most of them seemed very keen to understand was just how the range of the vehicle can be affected by external factors.
Weather is one thing that comes to mind. On a cold morning you may well need to turn the heaters all on to defrost the car and it's true that this is likely to drain more from the battery than if you didn't have to do so. One little gem that Nissan have come up with though is the ability to communicate with your car from your smart phone. I understand that there is an app for both android devices and iPhones which allows you to turn on the heaters from the warmth of the house. Now, assuming you've been charging the car overnight it's still going to be plugged in at this point so you'll be powering the heaters from the mains rather than draining the battery.
We've been fortunate recently not to have very cold temperatures so it's not been possible to see the effect of the cold weather on how much charge the battery actually holds, but depending on battery technology it is possible that the range would be decreased when the outside temperature is very cold, but then during a journey it may well be the case that things warm up so some of this "missing range" is returned to you.
Range will also be affected by the way in which you drive, but not totally like in a car with an internal combustion engine. In an ICE car it is more fuel efficient to brake slowly, but due to the regenerative brakes in the Leaf you'd actually do better from a driving efficiency point of view if you were to stomp on the brakes - not a driving style that I'm suggesting you adopt.
The above screen had us puzzled a bit at first, but I think what this is saying is looking at the rate of using the battery power over mileage, but at the current point in time and as a driving average. In other words when I took this photo we had just turned the car so it would have a higher rate of using the battery power (0.5 kWh/miles) compared with the average once you are driving (0.125 kWh/mile).
Running costs
The headline figure in Nissan's adverts is that the Leaf only costs a daily amount of £1.91 to charge. Now this figure could be a bit meaningless unless you know which electricity tariff you are on. The £1.91 figure is based on a national average of British Gas economy 7 rates in January 2012. Obviously if you were to choose to have an electric car you would want to study the various tarifs very carefully to ensure that you get the best one for you in your area.
The way that diesel and petrol prices are going at the moment does suggest that in terms of daily fuel costs alone there is no doubt that an electric car if cheaper to run, but what I'm not yet clear on is just how that changes when you take into account all the other costs involved. As the Leaf is a Zero Emissions Vehicle you are currently entitled to a government grant of £5000 towards buying one and you are also exempt from paying the London Congestion Charge. The batteries will need replacing at some point and I'm also not completely clear on whether or not all Nissan garages can service the car or whether only a subset of them can at this point. If you have to travel further away to one then the costs (both in terms or time and charge) need to be factored in.
On the environmental front I am told that the batteries themselves can be recycled once they are taken out of the car, but I'm yet to understand all the factors to be able to work how the manufacturing and recycling eco-footprint compares with that for a modern efficient internal combustion engine vehicle of a similar size.
Where to charge the car
With all this talk of batteries you need to take into account how and when you charge the car. Now this can be done from a simple 13 Amp socket and if you're only doing local journeys then it makes most sense to just charge it at home overnight. If you need to stop whilst out and about on longer journeys you might need to plan a bit more carefully. As part of my research I did find this map, but what it doesn't appear to differentiate between (unless you drill down to look at individual sites) is which charging stations have an annual cost associated with them - another factor that you may want to consider.
The big question - would I buy a Leaf?
Hmmm - a hard one to answer straight away. I was very impressed by what I saw, but being a bit of a nerd there's much more that I would like to understand too, especially in terms of detailed running costs over a longer time period.
We are a one car family and the majority of our driving is in and around St Albans. For this a Leaf would be ideal. We could charge it overnight and probably wouldn't need to worry about it at other times. But, and it's a big but, I do regularly go to visit my parents who live 120 miles away. I normally do this journey with LMC in a couple of hours. It's mainly motorway and I can just keep her entertained in the car for this long without having to stop.
Those of you that will have paid attention will realise that 120 miles is more than the range of the Leaf after a full charge, making this journey impossible without stopping - not something that I'd been keen to do, especially with a toddler. If there was just a bit more on the range then I think I'd consider it (finances allowing) but for us this becomes a bit of a deal breaker.
I'll be watching the electric car technology very closely though to see how things move forward from here.
And finally...
Surely no one buys a new car without looking under the bonnet - so here you go!
Disclaimer: Alex is currently taking part in the Nissan Big Turn on Competition where he stands a chance of winning a Nissan Leaf for his family - you can vote for Alex here and also find out much more about how he's been getting on with the Leaf over on his blog - www.daddacool.co.uk Alex kindly gave me a ride in his Leaf and allowed me to ask lots of questions and play around with it.
I have received no financial payment from Alex or Nissan for this blog post. Although Alex has promised that if he wins the car I can use him as a taxi service! :-)
