Learning to love our plumpy lives

So it's been pointed out to me that most people would have found going travelling for 9 months as a good impetus for writing a blog. Somehow that didn't occur to me and now I'm excitedly writing about saving plastic bags. I'm probably just lazy. Or contrary. Or both.

The first package free week is drawing to a close and I had my second disappointing moment when I was repeatedly offered donuts out of a cardboard box. No really I don't want one thanks, I don't like them, actually I'm allergic - I'll vomit all over you, it's not worth it.

In fact we've been cooking up such a storm that we're
probably eating better than usual. Busy weeks in our household can sometimes involve a toast marathon. Meaghan came home one night literally bursting to the seams with vegetables. I was worried the PLUMPY prophesy had already come to pass. Or that we were producing a litter of plumplets.

Luckily it was a false alarm. We named the new arrival "Remember more shopping bags next time". Snappy isn't it?

Meaghan busied herself with making soup while Kala did recipe research on the couch

and I helped with chopping the vegetables

I seem to be having an unusually long period of adolescence.

The kitchen robot ingratiated itself further and with a little help from some mystery hands produced a happily guzzled down cauliflower and leek soup.


All Kala's couch research yielded great things. Firstly, a yummy nectarine loaf. And secondly some butter! Very exciting. This involved culturing the cream overnight with a small amount of yoghurt and then whisking, making sure you spray the kitchen with an even coat of buttermilk, pouring off the buttermilk, rinsing with iced water and slapping it around a bit. And out comes BUTTER. Just like that.













The weekend's excitements will include a trip around Famous Foods to investigate the bulk section. Don't you wish you had our lives?

Welcome to Project P.L.U.M.P.Y.

Finally I have beaten inertia and started a blog. Well everyone else seems to have one so shouldn't I? What should I write about? Unsurprisingly this burst of momentum coincides with a household project to live for 3 months food packaging free. Now that would be something to blog about... especially as the biggest diet coke, chocolate, chewing gum addicted member of the household I'm terrified about having to make all my food for 3 months. I might starve. Maybe I can lick the inside of the fridge door for supplemental nutrients?



...on second thoughts maybe not.

It seemed to me that the most important thing for our project was a name. I mean rules are useful too but a name just solidifies the whole concept. Meaghan was plum jamming like a mad thing (as my Irish friends have taught me to say) on Sunday...




...and this lead (somehow) to project P.L.U.M.P.Y. People like ummm meals packaging-free YES! (Thanks Kala for the words, did I remember them right? It probably doesn't matter). For some reason we stopped there, even though Meaghan had said 'but I don't want to be PLUMPY'. In fact it's probably going to have the opposite effect. But there you go it stuck. In my head at least.

So the rules. It's like fightclub. Except with less fighting. So far. There are two boxes in our kitchen - one is called Old and one New. We left off with the inspiration after the project naming.



...in case you're not sure what two cardboard boxes look like.

Any new food we buy must not come with any new packaging, we can use what we have already to go and collect new food items - there are a couple of exceptions: milk bottles are reusable, cardboard egg cartons can be taken back to the farmer's market and reused, the occasional beer bottle is ok as bottles are reused for domestic beers and we might allow ourselves to buy butter if we fail to make it very well. We can use up any food we have in the house (condiments etc.) but if we finish it we have to try and replace it in an unpackaged way. So back to Old and New, Old contains any packaging from items in the house we finish up, New contains any new packaging we use (it should be just milk bottle tops and egg cartons but we'll see!). We can only go out to eat once a week so we're not just eating out every night when we can't be bothered to cook. And those are the rules. Simple eh?

When can we make some wine?
Sigh.

Day 1 went fairly hitch free except we hadn't yet made any bread but there was some food in the house. We made a random contents of the fridge dinner: roasted turnip, omlette, soda bread courtesy of Kala and salad. It was a bit brown-centric but filled our holes. Then we headed off into town to watch a gig... excitingly discussing how we were going to have a beer when we got there (kegs are ok, reusable yay!) Extreme disappointment ensued when we realised they only had plastic glasses. No beer for us. I tentatively mentioned we could pop into the pub next door to have a quick pint to energise us for the evening ahead. I think we had all been thinking the same thing. The pub next door happened to be the Savoy hotel on Main and Hastings, not one of Vancouver's most salubrious neighbourhoods. $3 a pint for unnamed draft lager. Bargain. And it came in a glass of the old fashioned kind. We were definitely the only people in there that weren't alcoholics and we felt for the kind of pub it was they had gone a bit overboard on the lighting, I mean who wants to see what's in those dingy corners? During the course of our 40 min stay we got asked to buy someone a drink, did we want to buy a dreamcatcher and most randomly some guy came and showed us a packet of mozzarella cheese under his jacket. Sorry we don't eat packaged foods.

After witnessing a near fight (the bottle bounced) and an ejection we decided it was time to get back to the gig. If it wasn't for project plumpy I would never have been into the Savoy. Random experiences ahoy. If I only I could think of something to say about Soy. Sauce. Oh dear.

So feel free to check in and follow our exciting journey... along with our sourdour friends Duncan and Hamish:


... hi there.

and our newest and probably fondest addition to the household, the kitchen robot.


The robot made me peanut butter. For that I have declared undying love.