January 16, 2009

Green with London Envy

Posted by greenlivingedinburgh under Climate Change Actions, Community, Compost, Fair Trade, Food, Gardening, Organic, Recycled, Relocalise
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turbinr1We’re just back from visiting friends in London and I have to say, I have London envy.  That city is very much in the green at the moment.

Our friends live in a flat in the SE1 district of London (that’s the area south of the Thames covering Bankside, Borough, Bermondsey and Elephant and Castle). It is a very urban area, near a lot of major tourist attractions (including the Millenium Pedestrian Bridge), and yet they have access to all sorts of environmental programs.  Pretty much every scrap of packaging waste is picked up at their door for recycling.  They compost all their kitchen scraps at a nearby community garden.  They do their shopping at the fabulous Borough Market.  A massive, open air market that operates three days a week and is chock full of local and organic foodstuffs.

And London is taking resilience seriously, especially in relation to food security.  In the most recent copy of the Jellied Eel, there is an article about Rosie Boycott, who was appointed by the mayor to be London’s Food Champion, and another blurb about a program launched by Rosie and the mayor to establish 2012 new growing spaces by 2012.  This latter program actually seems to have teeth to it, in the form of available cash.

I tell you I’m green with green envy.  BTW, the photo of the wind turbines was taken from through the window of our B and B (hence the poor quality).  These two turbines were spinning away on the top of an office tower, generating electricity.  That’s the sort of progress I love to see.

 

January 5, 2009

The Boxing Clever Cookbook: Local, Seasonal, Organic

Posted by greenlivingedinburgh under Edinburgh, Food, Organic, Recipes, Reskilling
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Relearning to cook where you are is a challenge in a era of still cheap imports.  What do you do with the seasonal produce of a northern nation like Scotland or Canada?  How do you enjoy cabbage every week or cope with a bulk drop of carrots?  How do we learn to cook in cycles all over again?

The Boxing Clever Cookbook was put together to help members of the Earthshare box program put their produce to good use.  It offers a whole year’s worth of recipes, organised by month.  Earthshare is a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program based in Forres, Moray in North-East Scotland.  Though Earthshare is many miles from us here in Edinburgh, their cycles of vegetables seem to match those of our local organic farms.

Here in the winter months it’s cabbage spiced, souped, sauced and sautéed.  Carrots puréed, gingered, even made into Christmas pudding.  Some days I gaze longingly at the recipes for elderflower fritters and cucumber salsa, but for the most part the variety of techniques and seasonings keep me cooking through the low light and chill of the Scottish winter.

CSAs have been going in Canada since the 1980s but only started here in the U.K. in the mid 1990s.  Earthshare was one of the early ones, beginning in 1994.  In a CSA scheme,  customers pay the farmer upfront, at the beginning of the year, for a share of the harvest.  In this way the farmer doesn’t need to take out a loan to buy supplies for the growing season and has a guaranteed income even if unforeseen events over the year reduce yield.

As far as I know, there are no CSA schemes in the Edinburgh area.  We get a box of vegetables from a local organic farm each week, but we pay on a monthly, rather than yearly basis and so do not assume any of the farmer’s financial risk.  However, because our vegetables are still locally-sourced, the Boxing Clever Cookbook has been an enormous help in enabling us to eat all our dirty  vegetables.  The cookbook offers of cornucopia of cooking methods, providing culinary variety through technique rather than cheap oil, helping northern nationals eat happily ever after.

The Boxing Clever Cookbook, by Jacqui Jones and Joan Wilmot is available from their website:  www.theboxingclevercookbook.moonfruit.com

 

January 2, 2009

At Home Resilience: Sauerkraut

Posted by greenlivingedinburgh under Appropriate Technology, Food, Reskilling
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sauerkrautSauerkraut is a staple food in our household.  It’s tangy and yummy and oh so good for you with all its friendly lacto bacilli and vitamins and enzymes.  Of course pasteurization destroys the friendlies and much of their nutritional products.

In Canada I used to be able to buy organic unpasteurized sauerkraut at the health food store.  Unfortunately, such a product is not available in Edinburgh.  So in order to obtain living sauerkraut, I had to make it myself.

I’m a bit of a nervous pickler.  I’ve had Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions cookbook for several years, but until now I’ve skipped over the fermented vegetables section.  The idea of skimming white mold off of fermenting cabbage is one of those things that has put me off of making my own sauerkraut.  Fortunately there have been some technical advances in home vegetable fermentation.  Did I mention that I’m a low-tech gadget geek?

To take some of the risk out of sauerkraut making I bought two “Perfect Picklers“.  These are 1-quart jars with water-based air-locks in the lids to keep the pickling environment anaerobic while allowing gases to be released.  The kit also comes with a ceramic ramekin to serve as a weight to keep the vegetables under the brine.

I made pickled turnip, like you get with Lebanese food and kebabs, and sauerkraut.  Both pickles turned out perfectly with very little mussing and fussing.  Surprisingly, to fill a 1-quart jar of sauerkraut requires quite a large cabbage, I ran out and so had to top up the jar with shredded carrot.  It takes 4 days at room temperature for most pickles.  Once the fermentation is finished, the pickles keep for 4 months in the fridge, but  at the rate that we’re eating them, they won’t be around that long

The technically gifted could probably whip together a perfect pickler with supplies from the local brewing store.  For the rest of us, the Perfect Pickler ships worldwide from the U.S.  I received mine within two-weeks of placing the order.

Perfect Pickler Inc., 12 Burgust Street, Apopka, Florida, USA 32712

 

December 30, 2008

Touring a Greener Side of Edinburgh In the Holidays

Posted by greenlivingedinburgh under Community, Edinburgh, Education, Gardening, Transportation
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johnston-terrace

Mike and I were fortunate enough to spend a good part of this perfectly crisp, perfectly blue-skied winter day with Jean Bareham on one of her special holiday-themed Green Yonder tours: The Green City Wander.  Jean took us to some little known and some well known green spaces in and around the Royal Mile, sharing her knowledge and passion for these places and their history, for nature and for the people who lived and live nearby.  As a reward for braving the cold we were treated with mulled wine, hot chocolate and mince pies at the Scottish Storytelling Centre afterwards.

I discovered Green Yonder tours before we moved to Edinburgh, surfing for green tourism attractions.  We went on our first tour, Inspiring Gardens, before we’d even celebrated our second-week anniversary here.  I enjoyed that tour so much that I immediately booked myself in for one of her Hidden Gardens of the Royal Mile tours the next week.

Jean Bareham’s tours specialise in introducing people to some of the lesser known social and environmental histories of Edinburgh, as well as some of the lesser known places of one of the most visited areas of the United Kingdom.  As a consequence, many of the people who take her tours are locals looking to learn more about where they live.  (I believe only one of the people on the tour today lived outside of Edinburgh).

Her tours have been great community builders as well.  Residents of some of the closes that she brings people to have joined in on occasion, contributing their own place-based knowledge while learning more about their immediate neighbourhood.  Personally, I have found the tours a great way of meeting like-minded people.

Green Yonder Tours exemplify what green tourism initiatives should be:

  • led by a well-informed local resident who is passionate about the place where she dwells
  • low impact transportation–we walked
  • exposure to wildlife in the Scottish Wildlife Trust Nature Reserve, Johnston Terrace
  • sensitive to the social history of the area as well as introducing people to contemporary tensions between development, residents and green-space
  • supportive of local businesses, in this case the cafe at the Scottish Storytelling Centre
  • inspiring–a secluded nature reserve in one of the densest and most touristy parts of town, stories of Patrick Geddes efforts to improve the lives of those who lived in what was then an unhygienic slum, Jean herself making a go at making a living at something she loves doing

I can’t wait to find out what new tours will be introduced in 2009.

BTW, the photo above shows some of the people on the tour exploring the Johnston Terrace Nature Reserve.

Green Yonder Tours, 3/6 Whitson Way, Edinburgh, EH11 3BL, jean@greenyondertours.com

 

December 30, 2008

The 30 ºC Debate on Laundry

Posted by greenlivingedinburgh under Climate Change Actions, Edinburgh, Energy Saving, Ottawa
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laundry

The October issue of the British enviro-mag The Ecologist ran an article entitled “Is turning to 30 ºC enough?…or should you be using an eco detergent?”  I fully agree with their conclusion, which is that people should be using eco-detergents.  What I want to challenge here is the assumption that 30 ºC is a low enough temperature to be washing at.  The problem over here is that the choice has been taken out of the wash.

You see, laundry machines over here are far more sophisticated than their North American cousins.  Because of this, people have become overly-dependent upon the judgements of their machines and less capable of choosing for themselves. Here, laundry machines heat the water to precise temperatures and 30 ºC is as low as they go.  Which is to say in the U.K. it is impossible to do a cold wash, the best you can do is tepid.

Back in Canada we had a reasonably-expensive, relatively-new, front-loading laundry machine.  It had two dials, one to select between combinations of wash and rinse temperatures (hot, warm and cold) and one to select between three types of wash (normal, permanent-press, and delicates).  Hot, warm and cold were simply different combinations from the hot and cold water taps.  In our house, temperature dial was almost always turned to the cold-cold setting.  Since our machine was in the basement, the water filling the machine was generally at about 10 ºC.  At these temperatures powder detergents don’t dissolve very well, but fortunately there were a number of cold-temperature eco-friendly liquid laundry detergents available.  Our laundry always came out clean, and we minimised our energy usage.

Here in Edinburgh, we’re renting a fully-furnished flat.  The laundry machine that came with the place is a typical sophisticated European model.  The user can choose between 13 different pre-programmed wash options with names such as “whites,” “fast coloureds,” “mixed fabrics,” and “worn once.”  While 13 options may seem like a lot, in fact there is very little real choice.  All of the wash options are at hot or warm temperatures: 95, 60, 50, 40 or 30 ºC.  In fact the user isn’t meant to choose at all.  She is meant to identify the type and colour of fabric to be washed and then use that information to select the appropriate wash.

If I hadn’t been used to doing laundry in the land of the low-tech I might have been under the impression that whites will not come clean at any temperature below 95 ºC, or that t-shirts must be laundered at 60 ºC.  Fortunately I can still think for myself. Unfortunately, the machine gives me no cold water wash choices and there is only one option at the 30 ºC mark: “worn once.”

I’m doing my best, washing everything at the “worn once” setting.  But it’s frustrating because I know that given the right technology I could be saving even more energy.  I miss my simple two-dial laundry machine.

 

December 28, 2008

Musings on Real Ale, Organics and the Environment

Posted by greenlivingedinburgh under Appropriate Technology, Community, Edinburgh, Food, Organic, Relocalise
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By guest blogger, Mike Just

real-ale

In an effort to become more aware of our impact upon ourselves and our environment, one should be prepared to examine every part of their life. This is not always easy, nor is it always obvious. Hence, people take time to change. Some areas might seem “untouchable” due to their (perceived) strong tradition and history. And let us not forget the “macho factor.” Beer might occupy this category.  Can we produce and consume beer whilst staying true to our beloved environment?

In thinking about this question, I originally thought that organic beer would be the simple answer. Surely, using organic ingredients is sufficient to meet our environmental responsibility. As for taste, while I’m certainly not a beer tasting expert, I’ve tasted some very good organic beer. As I pen this article, I’m drinking a bottle of Caledonian Golden Promise (for motivation, I tell myself).

As with food, while eating organic food is generally a good thing, it’s not the whole story of the food production chain. In this vein, I thought that real ale was a good complement, and I’m already a convert. According to the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), real ale “is a natural product brewed using traditional ingredients and left to mature in the cask (container) from which it is served in the pub through a process called secondary fermentation.” According to Wikipedia, real ale additionally serves “to prevent artificial preservatives or cheap adjuncts or chemicals from being used in the making or storing of the beer,” and is unpasteurized.  As a movement, real ale is supportive of local breweries (that produce real ale at least) and thus can contribute to the resilience of a community, especially in hard economic times.  In fact, CAMRA has recently introduced the LocAle Scheme to “promote pubs that sell locally-brewed real ale, reducing the number of ‘beer miles’ and supporting your local breweries.” (Some might be familiar with the obvious similarity to the 100 mile diet for food. See examples at Green Living Ottawa.)

So, what about organic real ale? I’ve seen some evidence, but not too much as of yet. Returning to the “macho factor,”perhaps this is my personal perception but I suspect that “organic beer” may have a more difficult time appealing to a certain portion of the male demographic. Whereas “real ale” already seems to come with some machismo. Is it all in a name? Yes, of course it is. Sadly, we’re all susceptible to marketing to varying degrees.  For now, writing this article has motivated me to join CAMRA. I think it’s a reasonable sacrafice for me to make: Save the environment while drinking good beer.

Looking at the Scottish Real Ale Trail, here is a list of breweries that are local to Edinburgh (within 50 miles):

 

December 27, 2008

Sorting Out Recycling

Posted by greenlivingedinburgh under Edinburgh, Recycled, Waste
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recycle-lorry

We’ve been letting our paper waste build-up, because every time we try to sort it out, we get confused.  In the West End of Edinburgh there is kerbside (that’s curbside if you’re Canadian) recycling.  We are the proud renters of two recycling bins: a blue one and a red one.  Paper-products get divided between the two.  Computer-paper, newspapers, magazine and phone books go in a blue bag that goes with the blue bin.  Card and cardboard go in the red bin.

Where we keep getting lost is in the little things that don’t exactly fit the categories, like receipts from cash registers and envelopes.  Where do those go?  It explicitly says no envelopes on the blue bag, but the red bin doesn’t explicitly say it takes them.  Are envelopes beyond recycling here?  And what about paper bags?  You see the confusion.

The stack of paper was starting to look a little unruly so Mike sat down this evening and did what he could with it.  We decided to include paper bags in the blue bin and put envelopes aside for now.   We’ll see what sort of feedback we get.  I’ve seen the truck go by and they actually do the sorting as they go (see photo above), so I’m hoping they can clear up the confusion for us.

I just did a little more poking about in cyberspace and found a list of factsheets Edinburgh City Council has put out on waste.  According to the factsheet on paper cardboard and envelope recycling, envelopes aren’t picked-up at kerbside but can be put in the Package Recycling Points.  No wonder we’re confused.

 

December 24, 2008

Building Resilience at Home: growing mushrooms

Posted by greenlivingedinburgh under Edinburgh, Food, Organic, Recipes, Relocalise, Reskilling
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Mushrooms can be grown indoors.  In an effort to diversify to grow at least a teeny portion of what our household eats, I picked up an organic shiitake mushroom growing kit at the Edinburgh Ethical Christmas Fayre a couple of weeks ago.  The kits themselves are produced in the Scottish Highlands at the Ardnamushrooms farm.

Our mushrooms have come out smaller (bottom photo) than the ones on display at the Ardnamushrooms stall (top photo).  I’m not sure if this is because of the dryness of our flat, the low temperature we keep our flat at, or the lack of light (I’ve got them in the living room, which is North-facing).  I’ll keep experimenting.

ardnamushrooms1

mymushrooms

So far we’ve had two meals in which our homegrown shiitakes have played a prominent role.  Here’s a recipe for a side dish that I cooked last night.  It was delicious:

  • 2 leeks, washed and sliced
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 2 large handfuls of fresh shiitake mushrooms, whole
  • 1 bag of spinach, washed and ends of stems removed
  • 1 tbsp Japanese mirin, rice wine for cooking

Fry the leeks in the butter until they are soft.  Add mushrooms and fry until they have shrunk and there’s lots of juice in the pan.  Add spinach and mirin and cover frying pan.  Steam until spinach has wilted.  Serve warm.

Clearly mushroom growing isn’t going to make a big contribution to our daily caloric intake.  However, shiitakes contain a lot of useful nutrients that make them immune-system boosters, anti-oxidant sources, and general all-around health-promoting super-foods.

Ardnamushrooms, Longrigg Manse, Strontian, Acharacle, Ardnamurchan, PH36 4HY

Ardnamushrooms can also occasionally be found at the Edinburgh Farmer’s Market.

 

December 23, 2008

From House to Flat

Posted by greenlivingedinburgh under Climate Change Actions, Compost, Edinburgh, Food, Ottawa, Relocalise
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flat-life

One of the biggest changes we made moving from Ottawa to Edinburgh was leaving behind a single-family detached house and yard that we owned, and moving into a rented flat.  There are ups and downs to rented flats when it comes to green-living, as I’m sure will be brought up many times on this blog, but here’s a brief intro to what I’ve been thinking about and experiencing so far.

The prevalence of flat-living is one of the things that contributes to the quality of life in Edinburgh.  Flats make f0r a dense vibrant city core, easy access to shops, efficient public transit and a lowered carbon footprint as compared to your typical North American sprawl.  Edinburgh is easy to get around and our transportation-related expenses have noticeably decreased since we moved here.

We’re renting a first-floor (that’s second-floor for Canadian readers) flat in a three-storey building, which means we’re insulated from the ground by the flat below, and from the sky by the flat above.  Since our flat is in a row of Georgian (or possibly Victorian) townhouses, we’re also insulated by the houses on either side.  This is great for preventing heat loss.  Each room only has one outside wall, and it’s always one of the smaller walls.

The insulating value of living in a flat is somewhat compromised by some of the attributes of a heritage building.  The windows are original, so single-glazed and huge.  Lots of heat loss and drafts there.  Then there’s the old fireplaces, which can no longer be used but still have chimney’s to channel warm air up and out.  If we owned the place we’d probably do something about these heat-losing areas, but as tenants it is almost impossible to do anything.

So in terms of climate change, flat living has a lot of pluses and a few minuses.  However, in terms of building resilience, growing some of our own food and dealing with some of our own waste, flat living is not so great.  We don’t even have a balcony or fire-escape for composters and green and growing things.  Like I said, some ups, some downs.

I’ve just calculated the carbon footprint for our household of two in Edinburgh using the DirectGov site (very spiffy).  According to the rather rough calculations, our household of 2 has a carbon footprint of 5.08 tonnes, which is roughly half of the UK national average (9.96 tonnes per household).  I’m not sure how this would compare to our footprint in Canada with the much harsher climate.  The average carbon emissions per capita for each country back in 2005 were 20.0 tonnes per Canadian and 9.79 per Brit.

Of the suggested actions, most would have to be done by the landlord: insulation, double-glazing, energy-efficient appliances.  We can change some lightbulbs, draft-proof, and use the appliances more efficiently.

 

December 21, 2008

Drinking Locally: Cairn O’Mohr Seasonal Wines

Posted by greenlivingedinburgh under Edinburgh, Food, Relocalise, Reskilling
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img_1745

Ever since I read Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury (a beautiful book, BTW), I’ve been obsessed with fruit wines.  Happily for me, Cairn O’Mohr winery sells locally sourced fruit wines every week at the Edinburgh Farmer’s Market.

This past Saturday, I was lucky enough to snag one of their last two bottles of Mulled Elderberry wine. Mike and I already polished off a bottle a couple of weeks ago while watching Highlander on DVD.  The wine was lovely dark and spicy.  To quote from the back of the bottle it’s a “luxurious spicy pudding of a winter’s drink.”  I was tempted to buy both remaining bottles, but decided to diversify by picking up a bottle of Berry Christmas instead.  As for Highlander, it was bad in the 1980s and neither age nor elderberry wine improved it.

Here’s raising a glass of seasonal cheer for drinking locally!

Cairn O’Mohr Fruit Winery, East Inchmichael, Errol, Perth, PH2 7SP

 

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