MFM: Saffron Risotto

So for Christmas my aunt had all our family recipes collected and bound- great idea, great present and great material! This recipe is only one of many variations on a white risotto recipe from my mum. Go ahead and add your own ingredients!  This risotto is often served alongside other food, I love it for it’s earthy flavours. It’s very as-you-go, so the measurements are rough- play to your heart’s content. All in all this recipe should take about 30 minutes, with 20-25 minutes being cooking time.

Need:

Saffron Strands

3 or 4 oz of risotto rice per person. Arborio or Carnaroli: NOT basmati, any perfumed rice or long grained rice.

EVOO (no, that’s not what we call it in Italy, but it’s an easy way to type the otherwise-extremely-long Extra Virgin Olive Oil)

Butter

Finely chopped onion (about half per person)

Veggie broth cube

Freshly grated parmesan (not the dry stuff out of a packet mind you)

Dry white wine (if you’re me- not too much, if you’re the rest of my family ‘gollops’)

Boiling water

 

Do:

A) Put saffro strands in half an eggcupful of hot water, set aside

B) Put a knob (lump) of butter into a medium sized saucepan and a matching amount of olive oil. When butter is making that ‘frizzling’ sound (that’s my mother for you) you add the onion.

C) Once it’s golden brown you add the rice and stir until it’s coated with the butter/EVOO mixture.

D) After a minute, add the wine, and once it’s basically evaporated, add saffron water and boiling water to the top of the rice + half an inch, and then add the broth cube.

E) Allow to simmer and stir often enough for it not to stick to the bottom, adding water as you see fit.

F) The rice will be done when it has absorbed all the water, the mixture has thickened and the rice is transparent- no hard white specks in the middle of the grains.

G) Switch off stove and add 2 knobs of butter and parmesan. Stir and let sit for 5 minutes- have more parmesan on hand for those who want it. SERVE.

Insert mental image since I don’t have one for you .

all things Great and small

Holiday season for some, but we buy presents all year round, so these tips are for all!

Run out of cards this year? Don’t feel like buying yet another box of generic cards?  Make your own with some creativity and a few spare hours. Bring your friends, enjoy a fun afternoon slicing and dicing some wrapping paper into simple folding cards.

 

Cards for all occasions

Why not use some of that recycled (or reused…or both) wrapping paper you have lying around to make cards all year round. Just slice against a ruler with a stanley knife, fold, seal (I used circular price tag stickers with a stamp on), stamp and send. No envelope necessary.

Need tags for your gifts? Use some of the beautiful cards you were sent in years past and pay it forward. Either you end up recycling them, or you leave them in a drawer to be forgotten. Instead keep the written wish, and slice off the front, leaving you with a memory from a friend and a new memory to give away. Hole punch a corner (or a whole side, and thread a ribbon through) or poke a hole with a needle and tie it to your gift with raffia, ribbon, twine or wool.

Step 1!

 

Step 2

 

 

And if you’re sending packages, don’t forget that it doesn’t take much more than some love to make a used package envelope look

festive and ready to be sent. This year a set of rubber stamps were perfect for personalizing parcels and perfecting my cards. I used a branch stamp inside cards to make a holly branch and added a few adhesive red jewels to make fun berries. Add in a few well placed wishes, and you’ve got a personal but almost-professional looking card. Don’t worry if the ink on the stamps doesn’t quite come out perfectly- it’s part of the charm!

Also- when sending packages in the post, your parcel acts like wrapping itself, so feel free to go minimalist with the wrapping inside. Pick something suited to the gift and the person on the other end…

They’ve got your back

Most of my waking thoughts are consumed with how much I want a dog. Unfortunately life dictates that I cannot have one at the moment.  While I can’t have a furry friend watching over me, I can take comfort in the fact that I do have eco-watchdog Environmental Working Group looking out for me in the meantime.

EWG offers up-to-the-minute news on environmental technologies and updates, as well as how-tos and everything else you might need. Personally I’ve become an avid fan of their cosmetics database- a comprehensive database for men and women detailing the toxicity of the ingredients in products and the reliability of certain brands.

I for example, just bought an all-organic spf moisturizer from an organic store thinking that I was safe, that the store had done the work for me. Then I checked EWG a few days later and lo and behold- the ingredient most often used to create SPF is actually toxic. So… there go the benefits of my ‘natural’ moisturizer. Next time I’ll check EWG *before* I go shopping.

One House, Two House, White House, Green House?

After President Carter first installed solar panels on the White House in 1979 ( to more than a little ridicule) which were quickly removed by Reagan, the White House administration is poised to reinstall solar panels on the roof. Although not quite equivalent to the climate change legislation which failed to pass earlier in the year, one might see this is as a ray of light (pardon the pun, I couldn’t stop myself.)

Personally, I think the White House is a great place to make a statement about social priorities, and although it’s technically a ‘rented’ space, the ‘tenant’ should be able to do whatever they please (as long as it’s reversible, which it obviously is cf. 1979) particularly if it adds value to the home.  Hopefully I will have a first hand account after my White House tour appointment on thursday, I’ll keep you posted.

Recycling 101

In honour of Waste Free Wednesday (not really, but the coincidence was fortuitous) the intern team and I visited the Brookville recycling centre in Prince George’s County to see how it all happens and to dispel all those myths that float around.  The trip was successful and interesting- I must admit, I’ve heard so many conflicting rumours about recycling that I was looking forward to finding out the ‘truth’ for once and for all.

Also, while I use the term ‘recycling’ freely, I really should be using ‘downcycling’ for products such as plastic and paper that eventually lose their ability to be remade. If you’re going to use- use metal or glass!

Disclaimer: each recycling facility is very individual, so the crucial thing is to know what YOUR facility does/can process. It’s also important to understand the many hands through which recycling passes. Recycling is picked up from your home by a waste disposal company, it is then generally taken to an independent recycling facility- these are two separate companies. The facility then sorts the recycling into bales and sells it on to vendors who can use the different products to make recycled goods. So when your recycling company says it “can’t” or “doesn’t” recycle a certain product, the reality is that it just doesn’t have a buyer for the product, and therefore what would be the point in allowing its customers to burden them with something of no market value.

Thus here was my first revelation- it would appear, almost everything is recyclable. The facility we visited accepted (and thus had willing vendors for) all plastics, glass, metals, paper, most things you can think of. Wire hangers, plastic hangers, laundry baskets, plastic ziploc bags- all accepted!  Even that rumour about not accepting wet paper or dirty pizza boxes?  Not true!

Then again, we must recognise that this has to do with the flexibility of the vendor, and we’d still have to check with the vendor to see how much the product is recyclable if it is wet or dirty, but they wouldn’t be accepting it if they couldn’t use it- right?  Also, who knows how much of the actual product is then used- one ton of paper may be sent to be recycled, but only 80% of it may be of recyclable quality (or 100%, who knows), same with plastic (which is infamously unrecyclable, so stop using it.)

That urban legend that if something isn’t clean, they can’t recycle it?  Not true- that is purely for the hygiene of your home (and to improve the quality of life for the recycling sorters, they have 10-12 hour shifts in it- please be thoughtful.)

Or the belief that you can’t leave plastic tops on bottles or they won’t be recyclable? Also a lie, although those plastic tops aren’t recyclable (don’t know why) so feel free to throw those away. BUT this is where we should be remembering to use glass and metal instead of plastic, for two reasons. A) glass and metal are 100% recyclable, whereas plastic can be anywhere from 15-0% recyclable. B) Those plastic lids that you throw away?  They technically go into landfills, but actually, since they’re so small, they often fall through the cracks, fall through tears in rubbish bags, and then go into the drainage systems and out to sea where they’re ingested by fish and particularly birds that ingest them and/or feed them to their young. Scientists are finding more and more bird and fish carcasses packed full of plastics, animals suffocating on our waste. (Check out the ‘Bag It’ film if you get the chance, it’s really informative.)

We had a lovely tour guide, who was very willing to answer any questions and refer us for questions to which she didn’t know the answers. She said that they have less than a 5% rate of non-recyclables coming into the facility, which indicates that customers are doing a really successful job of recycling!  (Indeed, they’re probably not recycling half as much of their waste as they could, purely because of all these myths.) The introduction of ‘single stream’ or ‘commingled’ recycling has definitely helped encourage the consumer to recycle, and it looks like all facilities will be swapping to single stream in order to simplify not only their customer’s lives, but their own. Unfortunately it wasn’t my home facility- but this has definitely inspired me to either take a tour of my own, or at least call up and find out all this information. I could be recycling almost everything! And composting the rest!

But don’t forget – although “Recycle” is important, Reduce and Reuse come first.

Meat-free Monday

So, over the next few weeks I’m cutting out wheat, yeast, lactose, sugar, caffeine, and chocolate in order to give my body a break from the top allergens we ingest daily. Thus the next few MFMs will omit or have substitutes for all the ingredients to which people are found to be most intolerant.

Rice spiral pasta with homemade basil pesto

2 cups of fresh basil (from my garden!)

3 cloves of garlic (from the CSA)

1/4 cup of pine nuts

2/3 cup of olive oil

salt and pepper

(lemon juice and cannellini beans if desired)

For a non vegan pesto, add parmeggiano.

Distructions

Combine the basil, garlic, pine nuts (and lemon juice, if you want an extra kick) in a food processor and pulse until coarsely chopped.

Add 1/2 cup of the oil and process until fully incorporated and smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

Unless freezing (love cooking in bulk!) add all the remaining oil and pulse until smooth (otherwise transfer to an airtight container and drizzle the remaining oil on top.)

For more of a paste, blend in the cannellini beans and put in sandwiches with grilled veg, or on crudites for a snack.

Apologies for the delay

My only excuse is that I was overwhelmed by exams, but fear not- I can never use that excuse again since… I’m done. Cue choirs of angels. Which means that now I can return to being a full time ninja hippie.

Since the last installment a number of green advancements have been made within the abode- not least of which was a homemade composting bin courtesy of my ever-resourceful roommates. Must admit, it’s a little hard keeping the 70/30 ratio in the sway of spring, but it will be done!

How to build a composting bin, step 1

Our new bin will come in very handy for our brand spanking new vegetable garden (yes, that took me longer than it should have) which features 4 kinds of tomatoes, summer squash, zucchini, red peppers, green peppers, strawberries and blueberries.

And while D swears that our vegetable patch could feed us for the summer, V and I aren’t convinced, so we’ve signed up for a CSA, something I’ve been meaning to do for ages. We’ll be picking up veg, fruit and eggs from Bull Run Mountain Farm all summer, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out. I’ve heard various reviews, but nothing beats personal experience. V’s been to the farm already and says that both the farm and the farmer are really top notch- I’m looking forward to the chance to venture out there myself, apparently the eggs are amazing (although some of them have this greenish tinge which is… disconcerting to say the least, but does have a certain Dr Seussian quality…)  The ‘open farm’ days offer free eggs, cucumbers, asparagus and hiking trips for all visitors- what more could you want from an afternoon?  Love local, love seasonal.

CSA 101:  Community Supported Agriculture has become a very popular way for consumers to buy locally and seasonally directly from their local farmers. The rough gist is that farmers offer up ‘shares’ of their crops and consumers buy ‘membership’ in the stock system, giving them access to fresh boxes of seasonal vegetables weekly, available for pickup in nearby locations.

Pulled directly from ‘Local Harvest’ here’s a rundown of the advantages of CSAs:

Advantages for farmers:

• Get to spend time marketing the food early in the year, before their 16 hour days in the field begin
• Receive payment early in the season, which helps with the farm’s cash flow
• Have an opportunity to get to know the people who eat the food they grow

Advantages for consumers:

• Eat ultra-fresh food, with all the flavor and vitamin benefits
• Get exposed to new vegetables and new ways of cooking
• Usually get to visit the farm at least once a season
• Find that kids typically favor food from “their” farm – even veggies they’ve never been known to eat
• Develop a relationship with the farmer who grows their food and learn more about how food is grown

Slots fill up quickly nowadays, so if you’re interested, make sure you know when the shares are released so you can get in there. It’s a beneficial and easy way to truly understand what grows in your area and when- you never know what you’re going to get week to week, consider it a crash course in spontaneous cooking!

Degradable vs biodegradable

Very much enjoyed the debate in this article from the Times online – make sure to read the responses and comments, opinionated (and often well researched) minds discussing in a public form. Another example of a major newspaper having a really rocking ‘Environment’ section.

Green Economising

The Economist has jumped on the environmental bandwagon with its own signature twist. It’s recent article “Home Sweet Passive Home” discusses a) how energy monitoring naturally encourages homeowners to reduce their electricity consumption by up to 15%, and b) how homes can be specifically designed to be passively efficient. Indeed, most houses before air conditioning and heating were installed were passively powered- think of the southfacing sitting rooms in Jane Austen’s masterpieces where women would spend the majority of their days- enjoying the maximum heat and light afforded to them by nature.

If you’re considering buying a home, renting or constructing, you will definitely want to read up on passive energy homes in order to save yourself a bundle of money from the outset!

Green iPhone Gadgets