Change the World Wednesday – 29th Aug

I have never done this before, honest.

It wasn’t until I opened Eco to follow my link to Reduce Footprints that I realised I have not posted here for a whole week.

I have never done that before, I have never been so lazy, forgetful, inconsiderate, etc before (despite what my ex-wife says).

Now I am on my first coffee of the morning, but I still feel mortified that I had nothing to Fink about on Friday, no Saturday Satire, nothing to moan about on Monday. It’s not at all like me. And, to top it all off, I had my best day ever on the blog, 144 visitors; I’ve never broken 100 before and I did it in style.

Enough of the self-flagellation, today is my birthday, and I get to share it with you nice people. Sixty-one today; you can read my thoughts about it on Closer to Extinction, yesterday’s late night post on Life is a Labyrinth.

Last week’s CTWW post was an eye-opener. I was fully aware that we are often conned by the labels and ingredients on food, but to find the list of ingredients on a simple deodorant spray so extensive, did shock me; especially when I took up the Up the Ante and explored them.

Acerola berries – Crapemyrtle

A little side trip. Here I go off on my tangent. A couple of weeks ago, I was in my ‘new’ supermarket (I have changed for the bulk of my buying) and I spied a bottle of Orange & Acerola syrup, now I love Orange & Acerola combination. So a quick scan to make sure it didn’t have aspartame, and into the trolly. I might add that the label was surprisingly like another brand that I buy and trust; it wasn’t that brand on closer inspection at home. I made a jug. OMG, it was disgusting. It was only then that I put my glasses on and inspected the ingredients. Colour this, flavour that, preservatives, stabilisers… there wasn’t a single natural ingredient, it was just a chemical cocktail. Result, down the drain; lesson learned.

I used to have a large acerola bush in my yard producing fruit year-round, but I changed yards. I now have a small sprout growing from a seed that I found on the street.

On with this weeks CTWW:

This week share ideas on eating locally during the winter months. While “eating locally” may include meats, dairy, etc., for the purposes of this challenge we’re primarily talking about plant-based foods.

 

And then …

Come up with a plan, for your household, to eat locally throughout the year. This might include preserving produce which is currently available in your area, talking to farmers to see if they offer (or would be willing to offer) items during the winter, or growing a winter garden of your own.

This has always been a problem for me. Mainly because of the cost of getting to places where I can buy local produce. One of the very few times I miss having a car.

To top it off, my efforts to produce my own in my little backyard this year have not been as successful as the last season. However, I do have some little green tomatoes ripening, which is good because tomatoes are more than R$6 a kilo at the moment. So expensive, they have simply been off the menu. Now, USD1.50/lb may not sound expensive to you guys, but the normal price is USD0.25 – 0.40/lb. So I will have tomatoes in about two weeks. I still have dried cayenne peppers from my good year, and I have mint and ginger growing as well. Passionfruit will be good this coming year, a dead loss last year. My mamão trees (papaya) died.

So that’s it for this week. I am off to work, then I have a BBQ to prepare.