The week of the nectarines

One of the best things about shopping at the farmers' market is the availability of seasonal fruit in bulk. Last Saturday whole boxes of slightly imperfect nectarines were selling for $10. Our box had about 8.5kg of fruit.

What to do with 8.5kg of nectarines? 

First project: jam

 

Tyson based the jam roughly on this recipe. About 2.5kg of nectarine flesh (after stones were removed - no need to peel) produced the quantity of jam shown above.

So many people have reacted with surprise when I mentioned making nectarine jam that it has caused me to think about how strongly our perception of what is or is not 'legitimate' food is shaped by what is available in supermarkets. There is no Cottees or IXL nectarine jam and therefore it doesn't register on the radar when a big box of nectarines is available. Unlike strawberry jam, which a box of ripe strawberries fairly cried out to me in large letters, despite the fact that I don't buy strawberry jam as it is not my favourite.

Nectarine jam is so, so good. WAY better than strawberry jam, and easier to make, as the pectin content is higher in nectarines than strawberries (the thing that helps it set - I didn't know that six months ago either).

If not jam, then smoothies: 

Two peeled nectarines, hearty dollop of vanilla yoghurt, about a cup of milk. Blend.

Or baked nectarines:

 

 

 

 

Tyson did one tray simply adding cinnamon or vanilla sugar to each half fruit and baking uncovered for around 20 minutes (pictured). He did a second tray as follows: 

Line well-greased baking tray with baking paper. Halve the nectarines, drizzle a little brandy on each half, then sprinkle sugar on each. Put a small lump of butter on each. Pour about 100ml water into the bottom of the pan. Cover with alfoil or a baking tray and bake for 20min in a 200°C oven. Take the cover off and sprinkle a little more sugar on each, then back into the oven for 10min to finish.

The brandied ones came out softer than the cinnamon ones - more of a stewed than baked finish.

Or just eat them. Many of the 'slightly damaged' nectarines in our box were much more delicious than the 'perfect' ones usually available.

 

They ran out by Thursday, so I can assure you we had no trouble putting away the whole box.

Market day today: Nectarines $5 a tray. Our tray weighed in at just short of 7kg. So the week of the nectarines is extending into a fortnight... at least...

Initial Time: Clare: five minutes to make a smoothie. Tyson: three hours for jam; about 20 minutes for baked nectarines. I love being married to a man who likes to cook...

Initial Cost: $10 (and now another $5 for week two)

Ongoing time or cost commitment: zero - in fact, a cost saving as we won't be buying jam any time soon. Or possibly ever again, if we keep up the bulk fruit jamming a couple of times a year.

Impact: As when I wrote about using bulk strawberries (jam and pulp) and freezing plums, this is more about shifting my thinking than having a large impact as a single action. Still, we have managed again to use local fruit in season and make a small reduction in the food miles and packaging required to source our food.

Pelmets and Pantry doors

I'm writing about passive cooling again. Its still summer here and so we continue working on ways to keep the house cool without using electricity. The latest commitments: a make-shift pelmet, and a commitment to close the doors of built-in cupboards.

Pelmets are those ugly wooden box-covers that go around the top of a curtained window, gathering dust and trinkets. I always considered them a bit of interior decorating vanity, but thanks to Tyson's training in home sustainability I was made aware of their insulating value. Pelmets prevent convection currents pouring hot air into the room. The air in the gap between curtains and glass heats up and rises. If there is a gap at the top of the curtains, this hot air escapes into the room even though the curtains are shut.

Real pelmets are not a feasible addition for renters, but a rolled up blanket works nearly as well. I was inspired by my Mum, who has bath towels along the top of her curtains, and she in turn was inspired by her sister, who uses pool noodles.

And the cupboard doors... two wardrobes have back walls that are external, baked with morning sun. Closing the doors helps keep that heat in the cupboard and out of the bedrooms. The other built-in cupboards heat up less dramatically, but they don't need to be cooled (or heated, in winter) so keeping doors closed reduces the quantity of air we are trying to temperature-manage. The pantry is directly opposite the airconditioner. When we do run the aircon, it is a complete waste of energy to leave the pantry door open and cool all our tins and packets!

Apparently some homes do not have roof insulation above their built in cupboards. If you have insulating bats it might be worth checking your roof space. We have blow-in insulation and that is less discriminate about what it covers.

Initial Time: Blanket pelment: about three minutes. Cupboard doors: a few seconds each morning as part of the roughly five-minute circle round the house to close up for a hot day.

Initial Cost: Zero.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Zero cost. The blanket doesn't need to be removed to open or close curtains but it does start to sag and needs a minute or two every few days to pull it back up into position.

Impact: The one room that has curtains (everywhere else has blinds) is keeping cooler - and darker! - since we installed the blanket 'pelmet'. Its the master bedroom, and I have had cool afternoon sleeps in there recently on some very hot days.

I don't have a way to measure the impact of closing cupboard doors, but I know at the end of a heat wave, I leave the cupboards open through the night to cool down. Otherwise when I next open them a wave of hot air comes out, saved carefully behind the closed doors, which suggests closing the doors does have some impact on overall air temperature.

What to do when the hottest week on record is forecast for your city

When the forecast showed Christmas day as the first in a run of seven days close to 40°C, Perth's hottest week on record, we knew it would test our commitment to sustainable living to its edges. The temptation was to pour water on the garden, crank the airconditioner and stay inside (possibly in front of some energy-consuming electronic entertainment). Here are a few things we did to ride out the week of heat without maximising our environmental footprint.

- Wore wet flannels to feel cooler. When I lived in an uninsulated unairconditioned fibro house I used to freeze wet tea towels in a U-shape and wear them around my neck. Now if I am reaching that point I consider we are past the 'bearable' test and its time to turn on the aircon.

- Sent Eva to bed with a squashy ice pack.

- Breastfed baby twice as often... as if the heat wasn't making me tired enough already!

- Kept the fridge as full as possible, filling empty spaces with blocks of ice or cold water, to improve thermal mass by reducing the amount of air to be kept cool. Air is hard to keep cool because it escapes whenever the fridge or freezer door is opened. 

- Shaded everything! In addition to the summer-long emplacements we added some temporary foam rubber mats along the kitchen & rear toilet windows and a tarpaulin over the clothesline. The foam rubber mats make a huge difference. The glass inside was noticeably cooler behind the mats, even before the sun was on the window, and even the cranky thermometer registered about 4 degrees difference between the covered and uncovered glass.

- Washed every day to ensure there was enough grey water for the garden. We always run the washing machine with a full load, so I worked my way through 'sometimes' items (towels, sheets, bathmats etc) to ensure the garden got water every day without having to give it pure drinking water from the tap. On a couple of the hottest days I did two loads and gave the lawn a good soak.

- Played outside in the mornings for as long as possible (for exercise, fresh air and to prevent against cabin fever). Did quiet indoor activities through the worst of the heat (lego, trains, playdough, craft, hide & seek, tea-sets, dolls & teddies, etc). Read a lot of books.

- Had cold or nearly cold showers, cool baths, and used the paddle pool sparingly (and put the water onto the garden when shower/ bath/ play was over).

- Were disciplined about the water-catching bowl in the kitchen sink, and got it out onto the courtyard pots any time it was full to help the plants through the worst of the heat.

- Ran fans rather than the airconditioner for as long as this was bearable. We turned on the aircon on four of the seven hot days - on three of those days for only about three hours. On day three, when we used it first, we set it at 28°C. On day five, when it came on again, the walls of our house had soaked up more heat and we dropped the aircon to 26°C. This is easily enough to cool our living spaces. (Due to the location of the air conditioner unit, even running it like a fridge would not really cool our bedrooms).

- At night, opened the house up to cool as much as possible before morning. We ran the extractor fans to help remove the day's heat and placed pedestal fans in the eastern windows (the overnight direction of cool air if any is coming) to help draw in the breeze.

- Didn't cook (or barely cooked). Christmas leftovers helped with this. We also reheated some frozen meals in the microwave. When we used the toastie maker we then put it outside to cool, so that its heat was not added to the inside temperature. We definitely did not turn on the oven, and only used the stove for about an hour in total all week.

- Went out to places that were cooler (eg the beach, the shady playground beside the lake) or where airconditioning would already be running for other people (Tyson's work, grandparents' house, public facilities). This is not about letting others carry our footprint, but about maximising the number of people each aircon serves, thereby minimising the total number of airconditioners running. On New Year's Eve it was our turn to run the airconditioner on behalf of a group of families. We ran it for 13 hours, but for much of that time had members of up to seven other households sharing it with us.

- Did not increase screen time. We don't have a TV at all. Tyson & I watch a little I-view but Eva is allowed only a very occasional episode of Playschool under extreme circumstances (like the week she was stuck home with hand foot & mouth disease recently). Although I had Playschool in mind as an 'if all else fails' emergency activity for the heat we didn't need to go there - perhaps because the room with the computer is not the coolest room in the house.

Despite being over 42°C on New Year's Eve, with the road still hot under our bare feet at midnight as we watched fireworks in 30°C heat with no breeze, not all the predicted maximums were reached. The average maximum temperature of 39.4°C made it only the hottest week in 34 years, the third hottest week in 116 years of records, and the hottest December week on record, NOT the hottest week ever. Lucky us, eh?! Even though it was only below 25°C for a handful of hours all week, in some early mornings, and didn't get below 20°C at all...

None of these actions had any initial cost, and time commitments were very small (a matter of a few minutes here and there).  

The impact is difficult to measure in any precise manner. Certainly if we had not used passive cooling measures we would have run the airconditioner a lot more in the past week. Its hard to say exactly how much energy this would have meant, as it depends on things like the temperature outside, the temperature the aircon is set to, and how much we would actually have turned it on, but the aircon uses (roughly) between 1.5 and 2kWh (units of energy) per hour. Perhaps as much as 100kWh was saved by limiting our aircon use. If we had run it 24-7 for the week it could have used between 252 and 336 kWh in total.

More importantly, we did not significantly increase our demand for power through a peak period of demand. Demand in peak periods wastes energy all year, as the whole system needs to be built for extremes rather than averages. Minimising peak usage has more impact than minimising average usage. 

I'm quite pleased with how well we did. One more day and I think I would have collapsed. But then, if one more day had been forecast I would have paced myself for eight days as I paced myself for seven this time. Tyson thinks any of our more usual three or four day heat waves for the rest of summer will seem so easy to manage by comparison that we may not turn the aircon on again all season. I have my doubts. I've booked a holiday to southern Victoria in a few weeks to visit my parents rather than ride out the whole summer here - thereby, in two cross-country flights, practically wiping out any footprint gains we make by reducing our domestic power usage here. Ah well. Its about small steps.

Christmas: small practical steps

We have taken quite a few small steps towards a more sustainable Christmas.

Many many online sites tell me that Australians use 4000 tonnes ('25,000 trees') of wrapping paper each Christmas, although I have not been able to find the actual source of this figure, so the historian in me is tentative about it. This year I have wrapped presents either in fabric pieces and ribbons from my sewing box or decorated brown paper wrap that Eva, along with other children from our church, was involved in preparing. The kids sold it to raise money for TEAR.

I am inspired by the Buy Nothing Christmas movement, but don't want to be quite that disciplined. Our gift giving is small scale: one present each in our household and one for each of Eva's cousins we will actually see (three, this year), and then only if we think of something the recipient will really want. Better to buy something next May that they really want than give them something now just to fill a place under the tree. And no present for the baby: he doesn't need anything, and he doesn't care. Our gifts have little or no packaging (most are books). I didn't blog about gifts back at Eva's birthday, but for that round we purchased Duplo second-hand from Ebay and, among many thoughtful gifts, were particularly thrilled with the play stove made entirely of recycled materials Eva received from her aunt and uncle.

I also liked the sustainable gift ideas posted recently by Tricia at Little Eco Footprints and was inspired to make playdough for a recent three-year-old birthday party Eva attended.

Card by Eva; ribbons cut from some garments that don't need shoulder loops

Because it us super easy and quick, here is my mum's playdough recipe:

1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup water
1 tablespoon oil
2 tablespoons cream of tartar (the magic that stops it going sticky)
food colouring
disinfectant (we use tea tree oil, a hearty dollop)

Mix all ingredients together in a saucepan. Stir over heat for about 3 minutes, until it starts to stick. Knead out, with more flour or oil if necessary. Store when cool in an airtight container. Lasts for months and months. Extra oil can restore it if it dries out.

Our Christmas tree is a live potted Australian native - Adenanthos sericeus (Albany Woolly Bush) - a gift from Grandma and Grandad (thank you!). We hope to keep it alive for years to come, although we are not extremely successful gardeners. We also have several large woolly bushes in our garden and have in past years made a tree out of prunings from these.

Live trees are not without sustainability issues, but they score better on production, transport and waste concerns.

Our decorations are the same each year. This is how I grew up and it was only in recent years that I discovered people actually buy new decorations each year. I remain baffled at this trend.

Eva and her grandparents also shared making some of our decorations together. Hopefully this is one more activity that will help her understand her own resourcefulness and that she doesn't need to go to a shop and buy something for every occasion.

We are not buying or sending Christmas cards. In fact we rarely buy cards all year, and certainly not if we will be saying nothing personal inside them. I struggle to understand the practice of buying cards with a standardised preprinted greeting and then only inscribing a name above and below the preprint. When a card is warranted Eva makes it for me and I try to make sure the words inside say something about why the recipient is of value to me.

We also don't tend to receive many Christmas cards, so it seems we have something of a 'don't send me a card' vibe about us. Either that or our friends don't really like us ;-)

It probably goes without saying that we are not running Christmas lights all over the outside of our house!

Estimates say we will throw away around 35% of the roughly $10 billion of Christmas food purchased this year. We are bringing the meat for Tyson's family Christmas lunch and have ordered it from  our local corner butcher, which stocks free range and local meats, and fits with my ethos of supporting small local businesses where possible. We have attempted to order an amount we will actually eat, to minimise waste, and will be keeping and re-using any leftovers. The local butcher is more expensive than a supermarket and I am OK with that. 

Its forecast to be 40 degrees (C - thats 104F) here on Christmas day. We won't be at home much on the day and intend  to close the house up early with nothing running. From the hum in the air on hot days it seems many around us choose to leave an aircon going while they are out. If you are celebrating somewhere hot by all means run air cooling where you are gathered (we will be!) but let one aircon serve several gathered families - don't cool homes unless you are actually in them.

And as I wrote yesterday, I'm also trying to change the way we talk about our seasonal celebrations.

Just in case you are left thinking that we are miserable scrooges about Christmas, here are a few pics from our annual Christmas Baking Day, held last weekend, when we revelled in luscious, delicious, gourmet goodies and an abundance of good time shared together, before giving most of the produce away.

two thirds of this year's produce - four more bowls to come

May your celebrations be joyful, your footprint light, and your vision into 2013 hopeful.


Links:

Instructions for gift wrapping with fabric

Sustainable Christmas ideas with a few more statistics on what we use and waste in Australia at Christmas: http://www.veolia.com.au/news-media/blog/another-christmas-gone-to-waste  

Planet Ark '12 dos of Christmas' and Festive Season Green Guide - the latter is probably the best and most comprehensive link if you only have time for one.

Someone else's blog post of green Christmas ideas

Christmas: changing the questions

I struggle with Christmas. For me there are two completely separate festivals, both called 'Christmas' and celebrated on 25 December. 

One is a religious celebration of God sharing God's love by coming into humanity as one of us. This phenomenal miracle is profoundly significant to me and is, in my opinion, appropriately celebrated with prayer, reflection, community gatherings of praise and wonder, story, song and attention to the poor - those for whom God consistently shows the highest regard.

The other festival is a secular celebration of family, friendship and community (although many without family to share with feel the friendship and community aspects are not really celebrated by the majority, and as a result if is often a time of isolation and exclusion). It is celebrated with gift giving, eating and sharing time with loved ones. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a festival I don't feel very connected with. However, as it is a major festival of my culture and my families, I participate. I attempt to do so with good grace. I have a three-year old: I do not want to teach her to say bah humbug just yet.

The place of conspicuous consumption in the celebration of Christmas is disturbing to me for many reasons, not least because it appears contrary to the essence of the religious festival that it runs alongside, and is in my mind evidence of a deep spiritual malaise inherent in western culture. However, in the context of this blog my concerns are around its impact on our earth.

There are lots of practical ways to reduce your Christmas footprint, and I intend to write a separate post about some of the things we are doing here. The thing I am particularly committing to this year, though, is changing the questions I ask children (and others) about their Christmas celebrations.

The questions we ask teach others what we value. The most common Christmas question is What did you get for Christmas? I think this teaches children that we value hoarding stuff, even if in other ways we try to teach them other attitudes. This year I will be trying to not ask this question at all. Instead I will be asking:

Who did you spend time with this Christmas? What did you do together?

What was your favourite present you gave to someone this year?

What stories did you hear told at Christmas?

What did you notice that was beautiful?

And when the inevitable discussion of loot gathered arises: Who gave you [item under discussion]? What is your favourite thing about that person?

This takes no time and costs nothing. I am hopeful its impact is as one of the many feather strokes that form the character of my and others' children.

Recommiting ready for summer

This is the time of year when a number of our water and energy saving measures need to be reinstated for summer. Doing so involves a recommitment to these actions and, for some, a small degree of maintenance.

So our 'action' for November was not a new action but a recommitment to many previous actions, and in some ways it was the hardest 'action' I have committed to in the three and a half years we have been doing this. Here we go again. Does it never end?? I think life at home with two small children may be shaping that reaction! It is more difficult also, in my experience, to do something again, when it is no longer new and interesting. This is particularly so when it is restarting something that I have failed to continue on with as I originally intended.

After a week of that summer heat smell in the air it was time for Tyson to unroll shadecloths around the house. 

So far we have no new ones this year, but are reinstating all of those from previous years.

One of those along the driveway remains furled as it broke its moorings in winter storms and needs a more permanent hook attached to the bricks to keep it secure. The shock cord for another had also worn through and the rear courtyard shade is definitely not still using the original ocky straps from six summers ago! Overall, though, the shades and their fastenings are holding up well.

The grey water wheelie bin has been brought back into service. I discovered that I cannot get it over the laundry threshold (or if I do I spill quite a lot in the effort) so Tyson sourced some grey water hose to create an extension out the door ($20 for ten metres).

The door obviously doesn't lock like this, but a chock to stop it sliding open any further makes us reasonably confident to leave the washing machine running with its outlet pipe through the back door when we go out.

The original tap connection on the bin had also given us grief last summer, periodically leaking or unwinding itself and falling off, so Tyson purchased a new tank outlet connector (about $8). 

This required sanding the hole for the pipe slightly larger to make it fit, but so far has been a very successful adaptation. The hose we attach to the tap got little holes drilled along it some time last summer to create a drip system for better coverage.

We also put the tubs back into our shower and have grey water on hand again for toilet flushing. This stopped not on account of winter bringing rain, but because somewhere midyear, in late pregnancy, a string of minor ailments over three months had me desperate to change anything that might be contributing and grey water standing uncovered in our bathroom seemed a potential source of winter sniffles. And then we had a baby and I couldn't be bothered with even the small additional effort of gathering and flushing grey water.

The basin in our kitchen sink comes and goes. We are making another attempt at it this summer. Periodically we get fed up with it not getting emptied outside, or getting too dirty, and it is abandoned. Hence it was definitely one of the actions for me that was a recommit, not a routine, as we approach summer.

Costs and times for these actions are detailed in the links above to where I wrote about them originally. Aside from fifteen minutes here or there for maintenance, recommitting doesn't add more time than the original commitment. 

It is much easier, though, to continue with actions that are simply ongoing than to pick up these summer-oriented actions at the end of spring each year. Part of me is tired and thinks oh lets just water with a hose/ flush the toilet/ blast the aircon like everyone else. It was 37 degrees here yesterday (Celsius - that's 100 degrees Fahrenheit, for you in other lands - what some here refer to as 'the old hundred') and the heat made me grumpy. I am home full time with a three year old and a four month old. I get grumpy plenty quick enough all on my own - I don't need any extra grumpifiers! But then... the house kept quite cool most of the day, and when we eventually turned the aircon on (we are not ascetics, after all) I was still grumpy about the heat, so I might as well be sustainable and grumpy. When I look at my reaction, it is being trapped inside that bothers me, and aircon or passive cooling both have that same result. Its grey and raining today... some respite for me to think creatively about ways to get outside as much as possible through summer so I don't get that terrible trapped feeling. Any ideas?

What are you needing to recommit to at present?