Went and bought a pressure cooker yesterday!! I had been planning this for a while and had been doing online research but the crunch came when it was time to make the annual stock from the turkey carcass. Suddenly the thought of boiling away for 4 hours seemed a silly idea when it would take a fraction of the time in a pressure cooker. Add to that the fact that our house does not like condensation at all (a wall was blistering on Christmas day despite having windows open and the dehumidifier on!) So an emergency trip to Argos later and one new pressure cooker was mine. A quick read of the instructions and hey presto the carcass was in and 1 hour later perfect stock resulted! The wife was/is a bit dubious re the new cooker - scared it will explode but having seen the stock and now boiled spuds in it today is coming around to it!
So why bother? For me it is all about reducing further our fossil fuel reliance - using the Pressure cooker reduces cooking times by about 2/3 so that is an amazing reduction in gas usage also and so less CO2 production. That can only be a good thing! And in an age of increasing fuel bills hopefully the savings will pay back the outlay on the pressure cooker pretty soon(ish!)
It's funny -having read lots over the last few years about reducing your carbon footprint I have no recollection of anyone recommending using a pressure cooker - but I think they are the way forwards. Many folks see them as a thing granny used to use - but that's not a good reason for not using them - we so often disparage traditional things but our ancestors knew a thing or two we need to get to grips with!! And modern pressure cookers are much safer than the ones granny used!! So get out and get one!!
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Sunday, 28 December 2008
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Would you eat it?
Oh my gods!! Just read this at BBC news - apparently the EU are planning to repeal the laws governing uniformity of fruit and veg (you know the one that means your cucumber must be straight etc!) and people are not happy!! The question is would we eat wonky carrots or forked carrots or blemished apples? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7724347.stm
Of course I would!! Bloody hell in this day and age when money is getting tighter and people around the world have NOTHING to eat can we in the developed world be so arrogant as to reject perfectly good food just because it doesn't look perfect?
It is yet another symptom of how disconnected we are from our food and its production - of course a certain percentage of food will be blemished and less than 100% visually perfect but that is a fact of life surely!! (Should we ban people who are less than perfect? Oh that's right we just bombard society with images of perfection and cause mass neurosis about our image.... another story!)
Carrots get forked roots, carrots are dirty (they grow in soil for crying out loud!) GET OVER IT ALREADY!
Of course I would!! Bloody hell in this day and age when money is getting tighter and people around the world have NOTHING to eat can we in the developed world be so arrogant as to reject perfectly good food just because it doesn't look perfect?
It is yet another symptom of how disconnected we are from our food and its production - of course a certain percentage of food will be blemished and less than 100% visually perfect but that is a fact of life surely!! (Should we ban people who are less than perfect? Oh that's right we just bombard society with images of perfection and cause mass neurosis about our image.... another story!)
Carrots get forked roots, carrots are dirty (they grow in soil for crying out loud!) GET OVER IT ALREADY!
Friday, 7 November 2008
Foraging - the hunter gatherer!
Today I got some free meat and some free firewood (a friend's husband shot some pheasants which were donated to me!! and a place near my work gives away timber offcuts that they would otherwise have to pay for disposal of, so a win win situation!)
Got me thinking again about out disconnection as a society from our food production and from Nature in general. We are so used to our vacuum packed meat that bears no resemblance to the animal from which it came, to standardised apples (we couldn't eat a misshapen one now could we?) and have become trapped in the machinations of the supermarkets and multi nationals. I feel this disconnection from the natural world lies at the root of many (all?) of our problems - we don't work with nature and her cycles but rather subjugate and dominate in an attempt to better what she can do! The results - pollution, climate change, unsustainable growth..........
A large part of my spiritual path is seeking reconnection - reconnection with the land, with my ancetsors, with deity. I strongly believe that we as a people need to reconnect and once again realise we are from the land and without it we die! We need to again reconnect wth the rhythms of the Earth our home and our sustainer.
Part of thsi reconnection is regaining our traditional skills of our forebears - the men and women who tilled this land and stewarded the fruits of the Earth - skills we are losing and may never recover if we are not careful. This was brought home to me by the death of my Grandfather 2 weeks ago today - a real countryman who knew the land beneath his feet, her times and seasons and worked with them. He is now dead and with him dies a tribal wisdom that we risk losing out on if we don't honour our ancestors and learn from them. One of my regrest at his passing is that I didn't ask him about the 'old times' and I learnt more about him from his Funeral tribute than I did during his life!
I for one want to return to a more sustainable and honouring way of life, one that is connected with Mother Earth and her times and seasons, one that makes a much smaller impact on this Planet.
Enough rambling for now - I will look more at this another time.
Got me thinking again about out disconnection as a society from our food production and from Nature in general. We are so used to our vacuum packed meat that bears no resemblance to the animal from which it came, to standardised apples (we couldn't eat a misshapen one now could we?) and have become trapped in the machinations of the supermarkets and multi nationals. I feel this disconnection from the natural world lies at the root of many (all?) of our problems - we don't work with nature and her cycles but rather subjugate and dominate in an attempt to better what she can do! The results - pollution, climate change, unsustainable growth..........
A large part of my spiritual path is seeking reconnection - reconnection with the land, with my ancetsors, with deity. I strongly believe that we as a people need to reconnect and once again realise we are from the land and without it we die! We need to again reconnect wth the rhythms of the Earth our home and our sustainer.
Part of thsi reconnection is regaining our traditional skills of our forebears - the men and women who tilled this land and stewarded the fruits of the Earth - skills we are losing and may never recover if we are not careful. This was brought home to me by the death of my Grandfather 2 weeks ago today - a real countryman who knew the land beneath his feet, her times and seasons and worked with them. He is now dead and with him dies a tribal wisdom that we risk losing out on if we don't honour our ancestors and learn from them. One of my regrest at his passing is that I didn't ask him about the 'old times' and I learnt more about him from his Funeral tribute than I did during his life!
I for one want to return to a more sustainable and honouring way of life, one that is connected with Mother Earth and her times and seasons, one that makes a much smaller impact on this Planet.
Enough rambling for now - I will look more at this another time.
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