It’s official – I now work for food, literally. A couple of months ago, I started working with an organization here called Ooooby doing grant research and now some writing. Ooooby does produce box delivery in the Sydney area. As a thank you, I’m now getting free deliveries for my effort. Jason’s joked that I should change my picture on LinkedIn to me holding a sign that says “will work for food”.
Awhile ago I found a blog post somewhere about making soap with coffee grounds and got really excited. I have a cup of coffee a day and it makes me sad to just throw away the grounds once I’m done (now we have the worm farm so that’s where most of it goes). Anyway, I started saving the grounds from my daily coffee. Eventually I gathered what I thought was enough so I went looking for that blog again. After reading it, and this is embarrassing, I thought it was too much effort so I scraped that idea. But what was I to do with all of my coffee? I then thought about making an exfoliant. A quick Google search told me that I could make a super simple exfoliant with coffee grounds and either water or olive oil. For my first attempt, I followed the instructions that said 1 tbsp coffee for 1 tbsp water or oil. I decided to start with water first, but thought that the amount of water was too much. …
For awhile now I’ve wanted to compost, but in DC we were in a teeny tiny apartment where I couldn’t figure out how to do it. Then, when we moved to Sydney I thought that it wouldn’t make sense to do it here since we’re in an apartment and I”m not sure what we’d do with the compost once it was finished. Finally, I realized that I didn’t care if it was too short a time period to make the investment, or if we’d then have compost that we couldn’t use. If anything, it can serve as an experiment to see how much food waste we generate. And, at the end of the day, if we have too much compost we can give it away to some of my gardening folks. All that being said. I bought a worm farm three weeks ago. You can make them easily if you have the tools, but we didn’t. Instead I just went to the nearest hardware store and bought one. With the kit, I also bought 2,000 …
I’ve made a promise to myself to buy fruits and vegetables that I’ve never heard of before, or have never tried when I find them at a market or store. The idea behind this is that if more people buy these things than more market producers will grown them and the diversity of food that we find in our stores will continue to grow. There’s so much more food out there than what we are given in a grocery store. With that in mind, we went to a market recently that had a number of things I’ve never seen before.
I’ve been working on making meals that don’t need to be heated before eating – so that I can take my lunch on the go and eat it wherever I end up in the city (I mainly do this because restaurants are crazy expensive in Sydney, and honestly, it’s easier). Enter grain bowls! I’m so happy they exist. They add a new twist to my kale salads that we all know I love. Anyway, here’s my first attempt after reading about them. Read more here.
In order to prepare for our move to Australia, I stopped working in January. Before quitting, I was very worried about being bored. I’m now in my second week and I have no idea how I could have thought that. I’ve started taking two courses on Coursera, walking to yoga classes rather than taking the metro, and now I make lunch from scratch every day for Jason and myself. It’s wonderful! Temporary unemployment is turning out to be awesome. One thing that I’ve made a number of times are variations of a roasted vegetable sandwiches. These have turned out to be quite delicious! I started off with a whole wheat sourdough loaf from our local bakery. I roasted most of the vegetables in the oven and then added the bread in towards the last 5 minutes (we packed our toaster). Read more here.
I think it’s safe to say that I love anything involving noodles. I crave them all of the time. So naturally, I try to find healthier recipes to make so I can have them more often without feeling bad about it. A couple of days ago, I found an article on Huffington Post that provided a number of number of vegan meals. One of them was a recipe for Sugar Snap Pea and Carrot Soba Noodles from Cookie and Kate. I changed a couple of things based on convenience, but it still turned out really well. Give it a shot!
By following Conscious Magazine on Twitter, I found the organization This Bar Saves Lives. Think of it as the Warby Parker of snacks. For every granola bar that you buy, they donate the following to either Edesia or Save the Children for distribution. Read more here.
I accidentally found Alternative Apparel last night and am so happy that I did. They have a lot of clean, fresh styles. They even have a workout line! Here’s one of the tops that I like from their website. Alternative Apparel believes in supporting social change through responsible business practices that consider and respect people as well as the plant. Read more here.
If you’ve never heard of the website Rodale’s, take the time to do a quick online search. It’s incredible, they have clothing, fitness accessories, beauty products, food stuffs, and items for the home and garden. Personally, I’m tempted to buy the garland pictured below, hang it against our huge window and hang all of our holiday cards from it with clothes pins. According to this part of the website, Rodale’s is a place for people who care about their health, the environment, and their family, but don’t feel that they should have to sacrifice style, comfort, or quality to live in “harmony with nature.” Rodale’s is also for people who “believe that the people who make your products are valuable human beings who deserve to be treated with dignity.” Read more here.
one-quarter vegan 