Food for thought

Over the Christmas holiday I came across this journal given to me many years ago by my pen pal in America and which I had used to jot down my thoughts etc in diary form. I hadn't used it for many years - it sat forgotten on the bookshelf - and I started to read through some of my entries.

Anyway it got me thinking of how my life has changed since the time I used to write in the journal and what with New Year being a time for reflection on times past and of the future I got to thinking how I would like to change my lifestyle back to how it used to be back then. I was always busy and often stressed but I seemed to do so much more. I worked on the allotment as we grew a lot of our own veggies, I baked bread, went for walks and came back laden with blackberries or crab apples which I turned into preserves, I bought organic whenever possible and I was a vegetarian. We kept chickens and as far as we could we tried to live a self sufficient green lifestyle.

I think it all changed when we went to France where it was difficult at that time to find much organic produce, being a vegetarian was very hard, I was cooking for just the two of us and my husband is definitely a meat and two veg lad so whereas cooking a vegetarian option for my daughter and myself as well as meat for him didn't seem too much of a hassle now it seemed that I drifted into eating what he liked as it was easier.

I love the quote on the bookmark - so true!

Then I came across this book in the library - I was shocked by what I read. I know that a lot of food is wasted but hadn't realised just how much perfectly good stuff is sent to landfill or used to make biofuel. Apparently if we wasted less there would be sufficient food in the world to feed everyone but we in the developed world demand cheap food which must look good (no knobbly potatoes nor twisted carrots allowed) and be available as and when we want it regardless of season. Then when we get it home we often don't use it all and it goes to waste again.

Next time I was in the library this book called to me and I took it out. It tells in diary form of a year the author (who must be a social historian I think) spent living as she might have done in the 1790s - a project she undertook as she too was shocked having read "Not on the Label" by Felicity Lawrence. The Garden Cottage Diaries was an interesting easy to read book which I really enjoyed. Again it got me thinking.

Then yesterday I read about Carol Klein - someone who I aspire to be more like both in attitude and looks - I once took a photo of her to the hairdressers asking for a similar style! - and I discovered that she is just one year younger than I am. If you saw her programme on Friday and saw her at the top of that ladder hacking at an overgrown clematis you will be as surprised as I was to see her age and especially to discover that she has apparently had both hips replaced.a

So there is no excuse - I must get up off my bum and get going - I have been under the impression that I am now an old lady (I have had a bus pass for some time now!) and therefore can't be expected to do this or that but now I see age is not a number it is an attitude. So my resolution for 2011 is to get out in the garden more and to grow more food, to return to my preferred vegetarian diet, to purchase less and to use everything I buy (I have started washing out my plastic bags and reusing them as my mother taught me!) to waste less and to consume less and to make more of my own food from scratch. Maybe then I will sleep better at night having spent my days working in the fresh air and being physically active. I have no desire to return to the 1700s as indeed the author of the book said herself - she relished electricity and a soft comfortable bed, to have water on tap etc. but I want to be more in control of what I eat and how I live my life.a

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I do seem to have ranted on a bit but you will also be glad to know that another of my resolutions is to be more active and to spend less time sitting at the computer - to this end I will be blogging less and it may be that I don't get to comment as often as before on all your posts for which I apologise.