Like Christmas

Seriously. I was so excited to get these at the beginning of September. COMPOST BINS! Now I don't have to feel excessively guilty about the food waste - if only I could put other things in like cotton and bioplastics. I'm sure it will come in time, but for now its certainly a thrill to have industrial compost pickup!

My Messy Bedroom

So I know I've blogged about this before... but my room is a mess, and I have a cold today. Although its a gorgeous summer day out there, I'm inclined to stay inside in my horrible "inside only" clothes and clean. I'll let you know if it actually gets cleaner! Though I'm inclined to paint instead - but I have to move some stuff out of the way before I can do that. I'm not even going to put a picture here about it. I'll try to get a picture of it when its clean... And in the process declutter my life - I will be certain to recycle as much as I can!

The downfall

Well, my garbage-free life was a disaster. I am no good at it at all - I like chocolate WAY too much and I can't plan ahead enough to get chocolate only from Unpackaged... I surely did try to keep it up... the one thing I did do was create lots of really wonderful things from my Dumpster Diving forays. I am really good at getting cardboard now, and relatively fearless in obtaining scrap paper. On that note... I put up a couple of the sets of instructions up on Instructables - and within 8 hrs my little sewn bound notebook was a favourite! How exciting. Oh yeah, back to what I was talking about... Garbage-freeness. It didn't work. I tried. I have cut back my garbage exponentially and most importantly it has made me really think about what I buy and the packaging it comes in. People are starting to care more and more, hopefully we keep it up and it doesn't stay in the realm of the upper-middle class and disseminates to everyone.

Dumpster Diving Grossness

I've been pretty lucky with my dumpster diving in general... I've stayed away from most gross things... but today I didn't have the same luck. I brought home a really nice pristine box from a baby's toy. I was pumped - it was nice thin cardboard... just what I needed. Then I opened the box. At first I just saw all of the other packaging that usually comes with such a toy... but it smelled a bit funny, like a litter box... I was looking for the source of the smell and there it was in the corner... A diaper. It wasn't a totally gross diaper, just a wrapped up diaper. Makes you really think about recycling and all the sorting and all the regular garbage that goes in - and it makes me wonder how they sort it. I'll have to look into that some more...

My Room...

My room has become a garbage tip.  Now this isn't big news for anyone who really knows me - I am a messy child - but with all this reusing things have gotten out of control!  There is cardboard EVERYWHERE!  Wish me luck in using it all!

Yucky!

This loaf of bread is disgusting!!! I'm not even going to post the recipe because it is that bad, here's the link just so you know NOT to make this one. I will have to find some other way to use it, because I've been trying to eat it and I just can't its gross even slathered with butter an jam.

Garbage in another country

I was off seeing a bit of the world recently - and it was interesting to see the trash of another place. I spent a week in Romania with AL (who grew up there) and we wandered around the country looking at all the wonderful things. AL was concerned about the quality of the tap water - so we drank bottled water, and recycling is basically non-existent, oh did I feel bad. The city of Bucharest was quite clean, but I was told that they were cleaning up to put on a pretty show for the NATO summit which began the day we left. I'll post some more pics later, but I thought I would share these to begin with.

Weekend of the Bad.

I had a bad weekend. I ate out, and ate lots of things that come in packages, and unfortunately, I don't see that slowing down for at least 2 weeks. I'm in the midst of a semester 'break' (as we aren't supposed to stop working, we just don't have classes, and I have WAY more things planned, as I thought it was a real break). In this semester break, I have many visitors coming here to see me (how nice), and I'll be traveling to see a bit of the UK with my parents, and I'm off to Romania in 5 days for a week or so. So I pledge to be better than normal... bring my own waterbottle with me, and most of all think about what I buy before I buy it.

Daily Dumpster Dive!

I've been bad I know. I have been picking things up off the ground I promise. I found some really great stuff lately, I'm just not so good at uploading my camera daily. I'll work on it. So here are some of my kick-ass finds. Note the awesome scarf - I'm sad for the person who lost it, but happy that I was able to rescue it. Also the hinges - I needed hinges. How exciting! Most of what I pick up is cardboard - so I'll spare you the thousands of pictures of boxes - for now that is.

Grocery Shopping

Goodies from Unpackaged

Basics at Waitrose

Groceries at Sainsbury's

So I've done a bit of grocery shopping this weekend. I went to Waitrose, Sainsbury's and the absolutely lovely Unpackaged... So the garbage free (which isn't going perfectly - but I'm sure trying) lifestyle is difficult at the grocery store. But I've managed around it somewhat (except for the toothpaste tube, the cream container and the bag that the brown sugar came in -I am trying I promise). I tried to buy a snack at M&S - I couldn't buy a thing! Everything was in plastic. I think they might actually be a plastic retailer not food... I wonder if they have shares in a plastic wrap company, it would make sense.

I made it

These books are the first useful things I've made from my dumpster diving... I got all of the paper and cover stock from the recycling bins in the library.  They make really great notebooks.  I'll post some instructions for them soon, so you can start making some pretty recycled books too!

Bread Recipe #2

The Garbanzo Bread was pretty good... but this one was amazing! I think it might be the best gluten-free bread I've ever had (except for maybe the french bread from The Big Carrot in Toronto). I found the original recipe from RecipeLand here... I of course changed the recipe to fit with what I had in my cupboard, so here is my version...

Stephanie's Rad Rice Bread
1 tsp Sugar
1 tbsp Yeast
1/4 cup Warm water
3 cups Rice flour
1 tsp Salt
1 tbsp Xanthan gum
1/2 cup Almond meal
1 1/4 cups Warm water
1/4 cup Butter
2 Eggs
1 Egg replacer
Sprinkle Flax meal

Directions:
Dissolve sugar in warm water. Sprinkle yeast over water. Stir
briefly. Let sit for 10 minutes until foamy on top.

Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

Melt butter in 1 1/4 cup warm water. Add this mixture to the softened yeast and in turn add this to the dry ingredients. Beat well. Add 3 eggs and beat well for 2 minutes.

Cover. Let rise until double (1 1/2 hours). Beat again for 3 minutes. Pour into greased loaf pan. Let rise until dough reaches the top of the pan.

Bake at 400 F (Gas Mark 6) for 15 minutes, cover with foil if top is getting too
brown. Continue baking for about 45 minutes longer. Remove from pan and leave unwrapped just until cool.

Daily Dumpster Dive!

This is a special edition of the Daily Dumpster Dive! 4 days in one... Enjoy the pics. I'm going to have a good play with some of the stuff today, so hopefully I'll have some pics of my creations very soon!!!

At the Grocery Store

I went to the much despised (though not by me) ASDA today to get some groceries.  It's really hard to find things that aren't in a bag - especially fruits and vegetables, I did find some thank goodness.  I broke down a little, I went on my way home from somewhere else, so I didn't have an extra bag, so I did take one regular plastic bag.  I refrained from putting my fruits and veggies in bags (I couldn't buy organic though - it was all pre-packaged).  I bought ice cream for the first time since I moved to England.  I can recycle the carton, but not the lid.  Darn it, but it tastes oh so yummy.  Tune in tomorrow for 3 days worth of Dumpster Diving.  I'm just fighting with my camera today.

Confessional

I have 2 pieces of garbage... :(.  I'm too embarrassed to take a picture, so I'm just going to tell you.  I have two chocolate bar wrappers, one from yesterday and one from today.  I'm sorry, but I still haven't found unpackaged chocolate.  I was linked to a cool looking store called Unpackaged from the blog Style Will Save Us.  Hopefully they'll be able to hook me up with some nice, unpackaged chocolate, and maybe a few other essentials... I'll let you know how the store is!

Daily Dumpster Dive - #3

"I gotta nickel, I gotta nickel, I gotta nickel. hey hey hey hey."  (sung like in the movie The Little Rascals).  Its not nickel, its 5 pence, but "I've got five pence, I've got five pence, I've got five pence, hey, hey, hey, hey" doesn't sound nearly as good. Found myself a nice little shiny coin on the sidewalk today... Pretty good, I don't even have to do anything to it to create intrinsic value.  I'll start saving my sidewalk findings to buy glue to stick everything else together, woo hoo!

Daily Dumpster Dive

Today I picked up this funny metal bit and a coke bottle from the Tube station.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with them... but they're certainly fun.

Bread Recipe #1

So, as you can imagine, being Gluten intolerant has some pretty annoying drawbacks, and in this case its the packaging that the funny bread comes in. The bread is first vacuum packed, and then put in another plastic bag... Do we need all that packaging? One layer of plastic would suffice, I'm certain of it. As I'm going no Garbage!, I have cut out bread from the store, and as there are no bakeries that cater to me, I am baking my own bread! Now, gluten free baking can be really annoying, so I'll let you know how each one turns out. Here is Recipe #1, derived from "The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread" by Bette Hagman. This recipe is significantly altered from the original (due to availability of ingredients), so if you want the real one you will have to check out the actual book.

Garbanzo Bread

Dry Ingredients
1/3 cup Garbanzo bean flour (aka chickpea or gram flour)
1/3 cup Rice flour (I used white rice)
2/3 cup Tapioca flour
2/3 cup Cornstarch
1 1/2 tsp Xanthan Gum
1/2 tsp Salt
1 tsp Unflavoured gelatin
2 tbsp Caster sugar
1 tsp Egg replacer
2 tbsp Almond meal
Sprinkle Flax Seed (crushed)
2 1/2 tsp Dry yeast

Wet Ingredients
1 Egg
1 Egg White
3 tbsp Butter
1/2 tsp Vinegar
2 tsp Honey
1 cup Warm water (about)

Combine all the dry ingredients, and set aside. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, butter, vinegar, and honey. Add most of the water. Add the dry ingredients a little at a time. The final texture should be like a cake batter, if needed add the rest of the water. Beat for 3.5 minutes. Put the dough in a loaf pan that has been greased and dusted with rice flour. Let it rise for 35-45 minutes (rapid rising yeast), or 1hr (regular yeast). The dough should reach the top of the pan. Bake at 400 degrees, or gas mark 6 for 50-60 minutes. Cover it with aluminum foil after 10 minutes. Enjoy

My review: Alright bread. A bit on the heavy side. Its alright, it stayed together, which was really good, and made quite a nice cheese sandwich, and was quite nice toasted with jam. It wasn't my favourite, but it was a good consistency, and stayed moist all week.

Daily Dumpster Dive

Here's what I got out of the garbage today. Some pretty good stuff. I'm not sure how I'm going to use it all, but I can't wait to use the burlap rice bag. Don't worry I washed it already!