Tuesday 11 June 2013

Thinking about plastic and Big Brother, Plus a biscuit recipe.

  I was looking at some different blogs yesterday and came across a challenge that takes place in Australia each year. People sign up to not buying anything in plastic for a day, a week or  for the whole month of July. It is to bring awareness about the huge quantities of plastic waste ( estimated to be twice the size of Texas in the North Pacific alone)  that drift in the oceans, wash up on beaches and cause problems to so many areas of the world.
I don't think I have heard of this challenge via Friends of the Earth so it must just be in Australia.
Signing up for a day would be pretty pointless I reckon, a week would be easy but a month would be difficult without a way of buying milk in anything other than in plastic bottles. Is there anywhere that still uses glass? - No milkman delivers anywhere near us. This is the website if you want a look.
 http://www.plasticfreejuly.org/the-challenge.html
 I can remember when the Co-op stopped giving out plastic bags for free and now it is quite the norm to take our own reusable bags everywhere. But why are so many things, that could be sold differently, sold in punnets or on plastic trays? I shall give this more thought. It's good to be nudged to think about different things sometimes.

This morning I made a double batch of Peanut Biscuits - enough to last us for ages. I have 3 main biscuit recipes that I use and this one I've been using for years, ever since I saw it in THE PENNY PINCHER PAPER many moons ago.
 Basic Biscuit Recipe
8oz Plain flour         }
1tsp baking powder }     sieved together
Pinch salt
4oz butter
4oz caster sugar
1 egg

Plus one of the following : 2oz chopped nuts/ 2oz coconut/grated zest of a lemon/2oz chocolate chips.

Rub fat into flour, add rest of dry ingredients then add beaten egg, mix to bind.
 Roll out as thin as possible, cut into rounds, put onto greased trays and bake for 170C, Gas 5 for 10 - 12 minutes, until just changing colour. Put straight onto wire trays to cool and crisp up.

I also made my usual weekly two loaves of bread.
Him outside started the job of putting down the wooden shuttering to make edges for the new path along the back of the house. He is taking it steady but seems to be fine.
Then he had to go up to Ipswich Hospital for  the pre- angio-gram check, blood tests etc. ( apparently an angio-gram could cause stroke or heart attack! - Oh Heck).
The sun shone for a while this afternoon, which was nice as we hadn't seen it since last Friday.
Dinner tonight fruit and vegetable curry, rice and home made naan bread.. When there isn't much home grown veg around I chuck in some chopped apricots and prunes to bulk it up a bit, tastes delicious. Tonight there was more fruit than veg!
Now about to watch something about a man avoiding everything that could be leave an electric trace  or on-line footprint,on channel 4 news - due to the news about secrecy being breached by USA. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU AND READING THIS!!!

MOVED

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