Julie Boulton (the greening of) — Issue #8
Sometimes I feel like a not very good personal trainer. The kind that manically yells out instructions to my clients — who are may children — but they continue to just lie on the floor refusing to even do one push up. I feel I say these phrases constantly: clean up your room, put your washing away, turn off the iPod, eat your spinach, don’t waste food but nothing ever changes: the rooms are still messy, the washing lies on the floor, the iPods are hidden under pillows (still on), the spinach remains on the plate forever and a half eaten apple is casually tossed aside. But sometimes something surprisingly sinks in and your client/child may, seemingly out of nowhere, do ten push ups or become just as obsessed as you about one of the things that you have been lecturing about for weeks — like not wasting food.
Last Thursday morning I was deciding between one of my seven outfits for work — it was designated Blue day so I wasn’t really deciding as much as I was hiding from my children in the bathroom — and I thought kids were happily occupied with making their lunches. 8 year-old loves avocado so was making an avocado sandwich. After she had finished, she tasted some of the left-over avocado on the knife. And that’s when the morning began to unravel. Sobbing hysterically, she informed me that the avocado was not good — that kind of stringy, unripe not good that is just not good! That wasn’t what was causing the tears though — it was the fact that the sandwich that she had just made was inedible and she wanted to throw it out but she was conflicted because she knew that throwing it out was wasteful.
I felt terrible. I may have taken this whole waste nothing concept a little too far with the 8 year old. But then again, given the amount of waste that we are all responsible for, (statistics below), maybe it is not such a bad thing that she was so committed to the avocado that she had just spread. It took time to grow, pick, pack, ship and shop for that precious little green thing. Even if it wasn’t so good for sandwiches, it has plenty of other uses that we should think it worthy of as opposed to the compost. So we rubbed that avocado into our hands and nails, conditioned our hair, enjoyed a quick face peel and then, with a new sandwich, off we went, (with her room still messy, iPod hiding under her pillow, washing not put away and a plate of spinach remaining uneaten on the kitchen bench).
Have a great week!
jb
a (not so fun) fact
If food waste were a country its greenhouse gas emissions would be third largest in the world (sitting behind the US and China)!
“…food that is produced but not eaten each year guzzles up a volume of water equivalent to the annual flow of Russia’s Volga River and is responsible for adding 3.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases to the planet’s atmosphere. Similarly, 1.4 billion hectares of land — 28 per cent of the world’s agricultural area — is used annually to produce food that is lost or wasted.”
UN Food and Agriculture Organisation
handy resource(s)
You don’t know what to do with leftover food or food just past its use by date? Don’t despair — there are so, so many ideas out there! Bananas can be used for curing insect bites, cleaning the leaves of plants and shining your shoes. Carrot pulp from juicing can be used to make tasty veggie burgers and carrots deemed unfit for supermarket display can be turned into carrot vodka. Avocado makes for a great hand-cream or face scrub as does out-of-date yoghurt, (I once discovered the joys of this as I was lathered up with a tub or two of recently expired strawberry yoghurt by an adjuma at a korean jimjilbang — an experience I shall never forget). And I have been using a coffee scrub all week made from the coffee grinds from my espresso maker mixed with coconut, salt and cinnamon.
Dan Barber is a bit of a gun at this stuff — see below for links to a few great articles by him or about him on what he is doing as a master chef to rescue food. Some more ideas to deal with food waste include setting up a community fridge, using a food sharing app, making jams and chutneys from leftover, rotting fruit and veg or just chasing up your local supermarket chain to make sure they are fulfilling their commitments (see comment 2 in the link about Woolworths — it sounds encouraging).
Whatever you do though — don’t throw your leftover, out of date, slightly mouldy food in the bin to go to landfill! Compost or worm farm it instead!
Worm Farm Kits, Vermi Hut, Bokashi Bins, Compost Worms and EnsoPet Waste Solutions — www.wormtech.com.au
wormtech, compost worms, worm farms, bokashi kits, biolocical organic fertiliser, ACTIV8, Compost, vermi hut, organics recycling, wormfarm starter kits, wormfarm,
How I Turn Wasted Food into Michelin-Starred Meals — MUNCHIES — munchies.vice.com
We pick and we choose, we go to the farmers market and we cherry-pick ingredients: eggplant, the perfect tomato, fall squash.
The dish that changed the course of top chef Dan Barber’s life — www.goodfood.com.au
Acclaimed chef Dan Barber reveals the dish that turned his passion for food into a life-long love.
Rubies in the Rubble — rubiesintherubble.com
Rubies in the Rubble is a sustainable food brand, making high quality relishes and jams out of surplus produce that would otherwise go to waste.
How Tinder Food Apps and Dumpster-Diving Restaurants Could Help End British Food Waste — MUNCHIES — munchies.vice.com
Every year, Britain sends 13 million tonnes of food to landfill — something new initiatives like “zero waste” London restaurant Tiny Leaf and Olio, an app that lets you swap unwanted food with people nearby, hope to combat.
OLIO — The Local Sharing Revolution — olioex.com
Welcome! OLIO is a free app connecting neighbours and local shops so surplus food & other household items can be shared. Featured by the BBC, Wired, TimeOut
The People’s Fridge — YouTube — www.youtube.com
We believe too much food is discarded unnecessarily. We believe it should be redirected to those who can use it. Head to our crowdfunder to learn more: http:…
Committed to Reducing Food Waste | Woolworths — YouTube — www.youtube.com
i’m reading/watching
Joost is a dude! He is kind of a guru in the Melbourne, possibly also Australia, and he certainly should be worldwide. Here is a profile on him to check out.
The house that Joost Bakker built — www.theaustralian.com.au
THIRTY years ago, if someone had foretold of people walking around the streets plugged into mobile phones, theyd have invited the same sceptical bemusement that dances across my face as I listen to Joost Bakker dream of cities and suburbs where roofs are covered with nutrient-rich soil to support skyline garden plots capable of cultivating vast quantities of food.
You could also buy my children’s book all about food if you want to know more!!
books — Julie Boulton — www.julieboulton75.com
Where did my dinner come from?
on the blog
Two stories. One about all the things you can do with a banana and one about not sweating the small stuff — or 2 minutes of lost concentration!
meet brad. the banana. — Julie Boulton — www.julieboulton75.com
More info on what to do with a banana that I have called Brad.
12 minutes of lost productivity is not how I want to look at my life — medium.com
12 minutes. Apparently, this is the time it takes you to regain concentration on a particular task once interrupted, (some studies say it is double this so is more like 24 minutes, but I’m going with…
snap, snap
Not only did I spot love matching (my most favourite thing in the world) but IKEA proudly informed me that their food waste is collected, composted and distributed to local businesses in Canberra.
