Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Yummy Greenness..

From the garden....



To the Kitchen.....












To my Lunch....












This yummy salad consisted of salad greens, kalamata olives, and steaming hot cashew/chickpea balls. Yummo! And I followed it up with some raw brownies.


mmm... delish!

Saturday, April 25, 2009

A Very Heavy Footprint

Sorry for the big long break, but I've been busy - more on that in another post. I've been catching up on reading everyone's blogs and this one is worth a big shout out. I've been on a bit of a mission since reading an article in the latest edition of Yoga Journal on being responsible for our own trash and this blog entry has really driven it home for me.

Oh She Glows

The photos were shocking and distressing. Angela has some great ideas for reducing our footprint on the planet and if I add some of the tips from the yoga article I should be able make a bit of a difference at least to my little corner of the world.

In the article by yogini Adi Carter, she writes that in order to be mindful of how much trash she generated, she challenged herself to carry with her all the trash she would normally throw away. She carried it in a shoulder bag.

So my list:

I'm already very water conscious - because of where we live, so I don't need many changes there.

  • Avoid single use paper products - this is going to be hard, because of my allergies. I find paper towels are really good for my really sore hands - but I'll find an alternative. Substitute hand towels for paper towels, hankies for tissues, cloth napkins for paper.
  • Try and buy bulk where possible, take own bags - reduce amount of purchases in plastic. This should be fairly easy as I make everything from scratch anyway. I just need to take my own bags to Pantry Man.
  • Take my own bags shopping. Refuse bags when offered. Take a big shopping bag or basket.
  • Buy clothes on Ebay or second hand shops. Not an easy one here. But I will persist.
  • Grow own vegies - doing that! Going to be doing that in a big way soon... hint hint..
Onwards and upwards! Together we will make our critters lives a little better.

Caio!

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Quick Rant

This is a really quick vent. Firstly, background - how did a vegan end up with cows? We live in the wheatbelt area of Western Australia, which is funny because people only have sheep, cows and grow oats - no wheat. But anyways, we only had sheep. My hubby worked on a local bio-dynamic broadacre farm, and I naively believed that because they were organic that they would care for their animals. But apparently not! Money is money, and these people like that very much.

Short story long - hubby came home quite distressed as this man's cows were starving, and he wouldn't let hubby feed them. As hay is expensive. Eventually we decided to buy a group of cows off him to save their lives. It was very distressing. He made us pay full price, but did give us vendor terms. ie, he deducted it from our wages. We were pretty broke for a long while!

We bought 5 cows, and they were literally starving. One of the girls couldn't even stand up. Their ribs were sticking out and their hips looked all bony and painful. One of our neighbours sold us hay at a reduced rate to help us out. And those gorgeous girls survived and were incredibly healthy when a neighbour took them off our hands with the promise they would never be killed.

And my love affair with cows began!

Anyway the vent - he is doing it again! He was reported to the RSPCA and we saw an improvement for a long time. But I drove past last night and his cows are all looking hungry and bony again!