Ofally difficult / meaty matter / insert your own pun here
I've been on something of a green revolution recently.
It started last year when we were in the US where I picked a book called Green Chic. On reading it, I found myself frequently thinking the author was wussing out. Not willing to take even *slightly* cooler showers, let the toilet mellow even once between flushes or give up chilling her glass of wine to perfection? Okay, so I can understand why not all women like the idea of using reusable sanitary supplies, but to dismiss it out of hand with a simple "ick", without exploring any of the options seemed a little silly to me - or is that a marker of my own attitudes these days?
What really got me thinking was the really quite inspiring Green as a Thistle blog run by a Toronto-based arts and entertainment reporter, who has now published the book to the right about the experience. What seemed like a very simple premise - one small change every day for a year - actually ends up being quite a challenge, as the poor girl had to remember all of them day to day, and come up with them all in the first place - and as she found out during the year, even the really good companies have their drawbacks (Neal's Yard and Method, both of whom are lovely and pretty clear about their objectives and values, insist on continuing to use SLS despite the concerns raised by its use), which makes being really green without moving to a small house in the woods extremely difficult. No wonder so many environmentalists lack a sense of humour; they're too exhausted.
Anyhoo, both Vanessa and the good people at Riverford extol the virtues of eating locally - and therefore seasonally - produced food. I try. Seasonal generally means fruit and veg, which for us is mostly taken care of through Riverford's weekly deliveries. But until today, when I was checking off a piece on the 'food revolution' Labour wants to start in Britain, I hand't realised how wrong it seems to me to focus on just this. There's the massive issue of food wastage, of which we're all a little bit guilty, there's the method of production and there's the fact that most of us are omnivores.
I am not giving up sausage sandwiches any time soon - although it's been ages since I've had a bacon butty, so perhaps I've uninentionally given up those - but I am trying to figure out how I can eat less meat without foregoing the protein fix I need at lunchtime if I'm not to keel over within an hour of eating. Don't tell me to try a stirfry for work lunches - you try making them at 5am or stomaching one that's gone soggy and brown after being made the night before an early shift.
This is when I really do think growing up with supermarkets has done us an immense amount of damage. In one of Jamie Oliver's books is a chart showing every commonly eaten animal and the cuts of meat you can get from them, the sort of image I remember being fascinated by when it was in poster form on the wall of the local cash-and-carry when I was about four, and that you still see on the odd butcher's wall.
But generally, you don't see them on butchers' walls because you don't see butchers. I don't know where our local one is, and I'm a little nervous about finding them and asking for all those other, economical, obscure cuts of meat - and whether you can buy ear and cheek and all the other bits that usually go to waste anywhere than a specialist outlet.
It's much easier to shower in the semi-dark, wear the same pair of jeans till they're about ready to walk off on their own and get wise on the sorts of plastic I can recycle via the council or Tesco.
