Make do, Mend and Minimise in 2015

meritaten

success at last! I was following all the steps as advised by MSE but still couldn't work out why they wouldn't come up as pics! luckily Atrix came in and showed me where I was going wrong!


Flop looks really brownish on the pic - in reality there is a tinge of orange in the wool.

candygirl

meritaten wrote: »

Here is Flop Version 2





and here is Woolly

Omg my little Grandkids would love those

meritaten

TY candygirl! I am really proud of these and cant wait to give them to my granddaughter Ava! I hope she loves them too!

silvasava

Ooh Meritaten - I want a woolly! I'm partial to spiders and he looks lovely

mcculloch29

Did anyone watch Hugh Fearnley - Whittingstall's War on Waste programme this evening? It was excellent, I'm glad I decided to watch it and set Autumnwatch to record instead.
Here is a link to Hugh's petition against waste.

[Deleted User]

It was a very enlightening programme wasn't it? I'm genuinely appalled at the spurious reasons for rejecting perfectly edible produce, goodness me we grow parsnips on the allotment and some are big, some small, some fat, some thin, some wiggly and some straight.....so what? they all taste the same, no difference in flavour, texture , how they cook and I'd never in a million years dig one up and think 'Oh that one's not attractive enough to eat' and chuck it straight on to the compost heap, that's insanity!!! Why do the people who make supermarket policy think that it's perfectly OK to discard so much perfectly edible food when prices just keep rising on what they do sell and people all over the country can't afford to feed their families a decent diet? let alone the fact that the farming family who were brave enough to speak out to HFW were at the end of the programme out of business, that is so far from acceptable I can't find polite words to express my anger!!!

[Deleted User]

I have been think this morning about how my late mum would have thought about today's wastage.I was born and brought up with rationing and I can honestly never remember any food being wasted at all.

It was too hard to come by, and when you have spend as many hours as my Mum and I did queueing for the blessed stuff you certainly wouldn't throw it away.

Peelings were boiled up for either soup or the chickens we raised to eat eventually.The majority of usually veg was bought from the local market stalls and no one thought that wonky carrots were odd they were just food.I have a feeling my Mum would have said that people who dump food can never have gone without and her favourite saying was 'Eat it up your not feeding the devil today lassie ' To her, binning food was feeding the devil :):)
We bought potatoes (when our garden ones had run out ) usually with bits of earth still on them, although my gimlet eyed Mum would 'knock' the earth off on the side of the stall before buying ,as did most housewives in those days Most fruit came from our own gardens we were lucky enough to have a couple of apple trees,we grew Rhubarb,blackcurrants gooseberries and went out foraging for blackberries My Mum would exchange some apples for pears with a neighbour but oranges or bananas were virtually unobtainable for a long time I think I was about six or seven before I even saw a banana .My late Dad brought us home an Orange and Mum carefully peeled it and we shared it between us three children.She used the peel in a cake

Today's throw away society would horrify her with its ideas of throwing good food into waste bins. Perhaps we need a shop run on the same lines as a 'pound shop' with all the 'ugly miss shaped fruit and veg for sale instead of the shops that are filled with sweets and plastic tatt.I would wager that millions of people would be quite happy to buy a wonky carrot or a bendy parsnip I know I would, and most of my family and friends as well Rant over I shall return to being a sweet smiling old granny again :):)

Making do today I shall be making some carrot and coriander soup with my 'past their best ' carrots
Mending I shall be doing some more knitting of my DGS Henry's blankey
Hope everyone has a good day
JackieO xxx

meritaten

I agree with every word of your post Jackie - its one of the things that appals me too! mother nature makes the most wonderful food for us - and what do the supermarkets demand from their suppliers? Uniformity! so the scientists fiddled and tamper with the breeding of the the plants until the supermarkets were happy..........well sometimes wonky actually tastes better! look at the premium charged for 'organic' fruit and veg!

nursemaggie

I signed a petition this morning to ask the government to stop all of this waste it was on change.org

RicardaRacoon

Evening everyone

Just came home from helping at the childrens latern precession organized by the school and the Women's Institute. I didn't counted how many hotdogs I made, but it is funny how quickly you organize yourself and try to find an easy way how to get all the work done. My cats love me very much now by the way as I must still smell of sausages...

I've subscribed to the Charleston course, but don't know yet if it will take place as there aren't enough people yet. So will see if it will take place in the end.

meritaten, I'm sure this must have been the base of a strong bond between you and your FIL!
And Flop and Woolly are really lovely!

Re food waste and "ugly" veggies. I had a discussion with my parents lately and my Dad said he would be fine buying "ugly" carrots, but not pay the full price he would pay for "nice" ones. I asked him why cause when they are chopped up in a soup noone will see if they were straight or bent, thick or thin but he said that shops should not sell "second class" stuff for the full price. Well, I would understand for example for battered apples where you can say you pay less but when you buy 200 g of apple you might only be able to use 150 g as the rest is brown so in the end you pay the same price for the amount you can use. But I don't see what is different about a strangely shaped carrot... Tastes the same as every other one as well...

Will now quickly go to the cemetery to light a candle for my grandad who died 16 years ago today and is still sadly missed. He was a passionated gardener and was a teenager working as farmhand during the war and often went to bed hungry, so I'm sure he would have a great deal to say about people throwing away food mindlessly....

And once I'm back it is sofa, tea, knitting and probably some telly.

have a nice evening everyone!