So Easter gets ever closer – just 10 days left in the Ethical Superstore diet (regular readers will recall I have been challenged to only eat food and drink that can be purchased from ESS for the whole of lent).
I guess the biggest change for me is that I have ended up cooking virtually all of my meals for the last few weeks. Helen (my long suffering wife and fellow blogger) has put up with cooking me a vegetarian option for years, but the idea of then having to cook my option separately using Ethical Superstore ingredients was a step too far! So most evenings I’ve come home and cooked a meal for myself. Previously, this would have been getting a veggie ready meal out of the freezer, popping in the microwave and 4 minutes later sitting down to a portion of vegetable (plus salt, sugar and fat) goodness. For the last five weeks I’ve been looking at a pile of ingredients and waiting for inspiration.
I suspect this will be the biggest change when this little project comes to an end. Ready meals just don’t do it for me having now cooked for myself for the last 5 weeks. Even with my cooking and slap-dash approach to quantities, the taste and the freshness is way better than the average pack of freezer fodder.
I was thinking of enrolling my two youngest children on a Drama course in the Easter holidays until I checked the dates on the calendar - the course took place on Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday. There must be some mistake. I checked again. No, definitely those days. Would people really send their kids on a course on those days? Don’t they have better things to do as a family on Easter Sunday? Has it really become just like any other day?
It reminded me of last football season when I wrongly assumed there would be no game for my son’s team on Easter Sunday morning. I was made to feel a fool, but was I really the fool? Do we really believe that just buying all that is on offer will make for a proper celebration?
Easter, like all our annual festivals, has become a great marketing opportunity - Easter bonnets, bunnies, gifts and of course, chocolate eggs. Not that any of this is in itself wrong, but it focuses our attention on what we buy and away from the actual significance of the event.
Whether as individuals we share in the Christian celebration of the Easter weekend or not, we can all participate in celebrating new life -
So just 2 weeks to go until Easter and the “eat only stuff I can buy at EthicalSuperestore.com” has been going pretty well. I am now a total convert to having a vegetable box delivered every week. I love the serendipity of opening the box to see what we are going to be eating this week – healthy soups, stir frys and casseroles are now the order of the day.
However, my unblemished record has been a bit tarnished in the last 10 days. Ethical Superstore was nominated in the Emerging Retailer category at the Retail Week Awards. I had to go down for the plush event with 2000 guests in my bow tie and dress suit. Having paid £400 (how can that be justified???) I decided I’d better eat the food and as far as I know the Grosvenor House hotel doesn’t buy its food from us. The event was pretty good fun – Jimmy Carr was very entertaining . . .
Mothers are great. They do so much for us every day, but sometimes we forget to say thank you quite as much as we ought to.
This is where Mother’s Day steps in - it’s a chance for us all to think about our Mums, and most importantly, it’s a chance to say a great big Thank You.
Here at EthicalSuperstore we’ve got loads to thank our Mum’s for…
But what is the best way to say thank you?
Our number one tip is to make sure you put thought into it - after all, whether you can be with your Mother on Mother’s Day or not, they definitely deserve recognition and some top notch looking after - they’ve certainly earned it.
So we’ve racked our brains and come up with a masterplan…
…just click the promise voucher above, print it out, then fill it in as appropriate and deliver. Don’t limit yourself to Mother’s Day with this one - You could give a voucher any day of the year as it doesn’t actually need to cost you a penny - it’s definitely a case of ‘the thought that counts’, making it a perfect Credit Crunch busting Mother’s Day gift idea.
It’s the perfect way to treat your Mother, because you can tailor it perfectly - and even better for your Mum, she can cash in your gift whenever she fancies.
This is a gift that keeps on giving - it’s a surefire Mother’s Day winner!
So we are now in week 3 of Lent and still the Ethical Superstore diet is going pretty well (in summary, for six weeks I’m only going to eat what we sell in the Ethical Superstore range).
At first my biggest problem was giving up milk in tea and coffee. I really didn’t like the taste without milk and the various substitutes work well for most things apart from in tea and coffee. However, I think I’ve become acclimatised to no milk in my hot drinks now – in fact I accidentally put it in my tea on Tuesday morning and couldn’t understand why my tea tasted so horrible. Maybe black tea and coffee will be a change for life….
Bread making continues to be the high point using the Doves Farm bread kit. Experimented with adding a little sugar and vegetable fat (around a teaspoon of each) and ended up with a bigger loaf and a more even “rise”. There is a chocolate cake in the range too – so I think I’ll make that my treat this weekend.
I guess that the biggest challenge of eating only from the Ethical Superstore range for anyone with a busy life, is the lack of ready meals. The Just Wholefoods range comes close and has allowed me to make meals with cous cous and biriyani without too much effort. The veggie bangers are lovely too. Also at £1.35 for a pack that serves two people – they are good value too.
However, the only reason why the challenge can work at all is the fantastic
I'm so optimistic that when I tilt my head I can see the shape of a jelly bear in this kiwi
So week one of my ESS challenge is successfully completed. For those of you who missed my first blog, I am trying to only eat and drink things that you can buy from the Ethical Superstore for the whole of Lent. My only relaxation is drinking water from the tap.
After 7 days things are going pretty well. I’ve lost a couple of pounds in weight and I’m eating much more healthily (well apart from the Divine Strawberry truffles which have gone past their best before date – lovely!).
Breakfast has been either homemade bread using the Dove’s Farm bread kit (cooked in my breadmaker – just add a cup of water and turn on) or Rude Health’s Morning Glory porridge. The latter was a little bit of a shock – I thought it was just porridge. Turned out to be a mixture of seeds and grain plus porridge oats. A little bit of an acquired taste but I’m happy to say I have now acquired it; even when made with just water rather than milk.
Lunch has been soup, soup and more soup. Tried most of the Seeds of Change range and today began working through the Suma Soups starting with the Thick Vegetable. All very tasty.
The main meal has been tricky although the organic vegetable box has generally come up trumps. Vegetables used in casserole, stir fry and pasta have all worked well with the awesome Harrissa sauce working a treat to give even the most mundane looking plateful a zing of flavour.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you will probably be currently thinking that the whole organisation has gone “Fairtrade Fortnight” and “giving things up for lent” mad. You shouldn’t be surprised though - Ethical Superstore is largely staffed by optimists. We don’t look at global poverty and climate change and shrug our shoulders. We believe that we can make a difference to these things even through something as mundane as the type of coffee you drink. So when Lent comes around many people in the team have decided to do things to make their lifestyle or the world a better place.
So in that context my decision for lent doesn’t feel quite so stupid – I’ve decided to only eat things I can buy from the Ethical Superstore range for lent. When someone first said it couldn’t be done, it seemed easy – I reeled off a long list of all the things we sell. However, as I begin my Lenten pledge it’s the things we don’t sell that seem more problematic – no milk, no margarine, no butter, no bread, no eggs. This is going to be an interesting six weeks.
So the rules I have set are quite simple, apart from water (and by the way we do sell water too!) everything I consume over the coming weeks will have all of the ingredients derived from the Ethical Superstore range of food products. Yesterday was day 1.
With pancake day approaching fast I wanted to try my hand at making the most ethical pancake I could.
I’d read that it was possible to make perfectly good pancakes without eggs or even milk! So I thought I’d give it a try. What follows is a vegan pancake recipe which, it’s fair to say raised a few eyebrows around the office.
To celebrate the art of coffee growing, Cafédirect, one of the biggest names in Fairtrade, is staging the first ever TasteFair - nine days of eco-lifestyle events to stimulate the senses during Fairtrade Fortnight at Whole Foods Market, Kensington High Street, London.
TasteFair will run from 21st February - 1st March and will feature an impressive line-up of some of the UK’s best-known ‘eco’ celebrities and experts including Wayne Hemingway and Oliver Heath. There will also be food tastings, music evenings, story time readings, coffee classes and a specially created photographic exhibition tracing the incredible journey of coffee.
The founder, designer and director of Fifi Bijoux, Vivien Johnston, is a leading light in the world of ethical jewellery production – she believes in setting a gold standard through her choice of Fairly Trading suppliers and the eco-friendly and sustainable manner of production. What’s all the more significant is that she’s been creating such a stir that in recent months she’s been invited to speak with and spread her wisdom to some of the biggest names in the gold and diamond mining industry. Fifi Bijoux is working on getting the word out on ethical jewellery production; how it should be done and the undeniably beneficial consequences. In this post Vivien writes about her experiences during 2008 and what’s been happening in the world of ethical jewellery.
“This New Year, my resolution is to find those little spaces in the hectic pace of life. Those moments when you feel nothing but sheer delight and catch precious times with friends from afar or family you wish you could see more of.”
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