I haven't seen it all yet, and we screwed up recording the second part, but I was glad whilst watching the last twenty minutes of last nights episode of Earth Climate Wars that the doubt over human influenced climate change has now stopped. I was horrified whilst watching the great global warming swindle last year and reading in the Independent how they had misled people with old data just to put across their sunspot aligned - carry on consuming - agenda. So to see this squashed on a major BBC documentary is quite heart warming. In next weeks episode they are going to address the controversy about how bad global warming will make things and how soon. This seems to be the new crux on which any change seems to rest. Any predictions that are too long away, or too near seem to give politicians excuses not to change anything now.

On another subject, we will be looking at changes to the Greenways website over the next couple of months, to ensure that it is kept far more up to date and to incorporate a far more interactive blog based news and discussion element. We would like to have more of a forum of ideas discussed throughout the site, as well as keeping the site up to date with what is happening in the shop as well as the world.

Will post this now, as otherwise we will probably have another month without a post!

Thanks, Ian

For Andrea’s birthday this year I was determined that we would pull through and get her a bike, after wimping out last year with all of the costs and work involved with getting the shop started. Knowing nothing about bikes the research had to begin a little earlier and then we had to get Andrea on the bike to test it (and her!). My first port of call was the ethiscore website, which told me what the most ethical bike manufacturers are and who to avoid. Top of the list was Pashley / Moulton bikes made in Stratford- upon-Avon in the UK. I found that Evans Cycles in Milton Keynes stocked these bikes and as Andrea’s parents were visiting we decided to give them a try.

For anyone who doesn’t know them, the Pashley’s are a classic style of bike focusing on excellent build quality, an upright comfortable seating position and great features like paniers, dynamo lights, mudguards and chain/splash shields and a delightful bell! I had done a little research on some other models if the Pashley wasn’t right once they had ordered in the right size for Andrea, but we both fell in love with it. We went for a classic black Princess Sovereign.


After squeezing it into the Renault Clio that we share with Annie Taylor and getting it home we went for a test ride, provisionally to go down the canal paths, but the rainfall had been so prolonged and hard that even the canal had flooded. I was running alongside Andrea on the bike, so in the short distance along the canal my trainers got flooded, but with all of the splash protection on the bike Andrea didn’t get wet at all!

After initially being a little nervous on a bike after 19 years or so since Andrea last used one (which in itself had been a bad experience) it was great to see how comfortable she was on it and what a smooth ride it was. I fell in love with the bike and Andrea looked like a proper princess on it (sorry no pics as yet). It is the kind of bike that I can see lasting 15-20 years, instead of the cheaper ones that generally start falling apart after a year and aren’t much fun to ride (which I have experienced). One thing that I am learning is that if you do have/want to get buy a product then it is best to ensure that it is built to last and that it will be of use and not reside in the loft and then the landfill.

Hopefully we will get much more use of it soon and have more positive tales to tell.

Ian

Sorry for the lack of blogging for the past couple of days. There has been a mixture of work and play with a smattering of blog/fairtrade food fatigue. Today I finished the challenge and can resume eating "normally" but find myself rather confused. I keep on thinking of eating but only including fairtrade foods in my thoughts... maybe there are elements to the diet I have come to enjoy. This morning for my first free meal I ate muesli with rice milk as I have for the past two weeks. The only difference to my breakfast was that I had standard (fairtrade) black tea, but with (cows) milk. Then later on I was asked if I would like anything when working at one of my other jobs and I was able to say yes to some toast (freedom!!!). Then back home for lunch I was able to have the dog ends of a loaf of bread (the Curd family didn't leave me much of the weekends Redbournbury Watermill bread - which I have been most looking forward to) with some vegemite.But now I am thinking of snacks and naturally think of a Fairtrade flapjack.

But tonight it should all be worthwhile. On Saturday night I had to sit through a birthday celebration meal at the new Ask restaurant in town without eating anything, which was frankly torture. Well the plan is to go back there tonight, with some pizza being very much in my sights.

The weekend itself was good, with Andrea's who (immediate) family descending on LB to surprise her. We were absolutely shattered by the end of the week after the fashion show, other FT fortnight activities and a very busy day in the shop, so I don't think we were very good company. I slipped out halfway through their meal at ask to go home and cook my last fairtrade meal as I made enough to heat up on the sunday as well. At this point I had got rather tired of it all!!! The last meal was the same local organic vegetable stew (using homemade veg stock) with fairtrade spices and red quinoa. It was very pleasant again.

So now life must move on and we must find a new theme for our window display. I hope to blog regularly still about going on's in the shop and we hope to hold future promotions and events that will be documented (and publicised) here, so keep watching!

Thanks for everyone's support and don't forget to keep buying Fairtrade whenever you can!

Ian

Not much to report on the food front as we didn't get the chance to eat much due to the evenings Fairtrade Fashion Show at Vandyke School. This deserves a superb write up but we are utterly exhausted today (its now saturday afternoon and we are still going through unpacking all of the clothes from the shop, ironing things that have been crumpled/worn etc) so creativity will have to wait. As it is I have managed to cram down some rice cakes with peanut butter (which I really enjoy, one of the revelations of the fortnight has been how much I like the FT rice cakes) and don't know what I will do tonight whilst everyone else eats at the restaurant... i'll have to cook afterwards. Will let you know!!!

Great news this evening, as our little campaign got some fantastic coverage on the front page of the LB Citizen, with the headline "Ian gets his teeth into big challenge". I was quite shocked to see myself staring back as I picked up the paper from the porch (actually, we haven't got a porch, but I liked the phrase). I was just heading out to get some Fairtrade pineapple for this evenings meal, feeling an eensy bit lethargic about cooking this evening (oh for an easy meal) and the article gave me a veritable pick up. As I just mentioned on Fairtrade Woman's (hereafter to be referred to as FTW) blog , it makes it almost worthwile, the final part of the puzzle being that people do actually BUY MORE FAIRTRADE PRODUCTS (some of which are pictured in my slightly crazed pic)!!!

I have now slaughtered the pineapple, punishing it (along with its smooth and creamy chum mango) amongst a cacophony of brazil and cashew nuts lightly fried in brazil nut oil. The combination with a teaspoon of Wayfairer FT mild curry powder (I will never use other curry powders again - their selection is just fantastic) with Steenbergs FT ginger and cinnamon powder proved a winner. I added some lime juice and water to make it mix and then served on some FT brown basmati rice.

On first bite I was worried. It was dry and I didn't know how i'd get it finished. But with persistence there were some real pleasures to be found, and something quite rewarding in its winter nut and spiced nature on a cold night. I was grateful for the mango alongside the sharper overbearing pineapple, tempering it somewhat, but the latter provided much needed juice.

It's been good to be in touch with FTW at last (I can be stupidly coy about these things) and feel duly co-inspired by those undertaking similar tasks in the rest of the country.

Happily I remembered to go down the frozen aisle this evening so I am brimming with joy at the idea of eating some Fairtrade vanilla and chocolate ice cream. We are now tucking into plenty of it with leftover mango and pineapple and with that I shall leave you for now.

Thanks to everyone who has supported us and who cares. Ian x

Firstly - thanks for all the kind messages we received yesterday, after our last blog revealed us hitting the fairtrade challenge wall.

Today I managed to find a meal that both Andrea and I could both eat happily enough, and had Andrea proclaiming it to be the best yet - and most like one of our normal meals would be like. This was a stirfry with Fairtrade white rice, where the substance came from onions, leeks, parsnip, brussell sprouts and cabbage fried in brazil nut oil with a few spoonfulls of Fairtrade crunchy/smooth peanut butter (half and half), added Fairtrade cashew nuts, the juice of one Fairtrade lemon, a couple of teaspoons of Fairtrade medium curry powder, some added water and lots of Fairtrade black pepper. I didn't want it to be too nutty (had rather a lot of these of late) or too spicy, to leave the flavour of the fresh and health giving vegetables to come through. We ate everything on our plates and I have some left to eat for lunch tomorrow, as is custom.

Our campaign got a little extra coverage today with a live interview on Lorna Milton's show on BBC 3 Counties Radio (you can download the interview here). The interview went okay, but Lorna was a little flustered at the start of the show because of technical issues so it wasn't as well prepared as it might have been. I also got the impression she likes buying cheap, so wasn't so concerned about the fairtrade ethos. But it gave coverage to the fashion show, the fairtrade food challenge and trying to make clear what food can now be found.

Then I was delighted to hear from Gareth Ellis (hi Gareth!) from the LB Citizen who has evidently been reading these blogs (he knew everything I was going to say before I said it - it's on the blog!) and asked a few questions over the phone with a view to doing a piece in this Thursdays paper. Fingers crossed my "bad food day" yesterday won't make the piece too negative about the joys of our adventure.

I scooted around the Fairtrade Woman's myspace and facebook pages to see what she and others were up to. I was envious at the products that they have been able to get hold of, obviously through the higher profile nature of their exercise and more Fairtrade stocked supermarkets in town. They had lemon curd, Wensleydale cheese (!!!!), yoghurt, walnuts, almonds (and all sorts of other nuts), cardommon, pears. The thing is, every extra flavour, texture and nutrient is so valuable, so even writing about these items makes me salivate!

More later, work to do now. Thanks, Ian

Today is the day that this stopped being fun. We are both so tired; preparing for the fashion show has taken over our working life so much that running the shop has become a joke and I can't spend any time on doing "paid" work; and Andrea can't carry on eating too many of the fairtrade meals as grains do her stomach in. So we are having to prepare two meals at a time at the moment, on top of having to think of bizarre concoctions that only use fairtrade or local veg ingredients. Frankly, tonight it just got plain annoying and time consuming. I seem to spend at least to hours a day at the moment in the kitchen, cooking and washing up the extensive amounts of pots, plates and pans from two meals.

Sorry if it sounds that I am complaining. But tonight we could do without it. We had intended on going out for a very rare trip to the cinema, but I was so shattered after fighting with making dinner (the damn steamer! never operate when too exhausted) that the idea of rushing up to MK was frankly too tiring. Which was a bit depressing... another night in, at least one where we agreed to not work (but of course spent a lot of it trying to sort out the fashion show), but after washing up we had time for a solitary West Wing and then it was time for kip.

What did I actually eat? Totally against the grain I decided to NOT use any fruit and nuts as my stomach was suffering from too much of them in the past 24 hours, so I made a dry potato and vegetable curry, with no rice (I was getting fed up of quinoa/rice every day for lunch and dinner). To make this I steamed potato and parsnip diced into 1cm chunks, fried lots of onion and brussell sprouts, added the potato and parsnip to the frying pan when soft enough along with some chopped cabbage, then added as much Fairtrade hot curry powder as I could cope with and lots of black pepper with a bit of water. It was surprisingly nice and a pleasure not to have any rice with it. With no sauce this would have been just too dry.

Suffice to say that tonight we are looking forward to the end of fairtrade fortnight... when Andrea can hopefully sleep again, we can get some work done and I can eat without too much thinking (although shopping is always fun - where did this veg/fruit come from, is it organic/fairtrade etc).

Contrary to all of this downbeat frazzled exhaustion, the Leighton Buzzard Observer printed a great article about all of the Fairtrade events happening in town over the fortnight, with a photo of the quiz winners (Esther and Nick - not sure what happened to the rest of the team), info about this Fairtrade food challenge and the fashion show. So even if the fortnight has had no effect on our sales of Fairtrade products, it has got a bit of publicity for the groups efforts, will hopefully raise a smidgen of awareness and may sell a few more fashion show tickets (Friday 7th March, Vandyke School, 7:30pm, £4 adult tickets, £2 minors, available for sale at Greenways and possibly on the door, call us on 851744 to check if there are likely to be any left!).

Thanks for reading, Ian

For some reason after coming home tonight and doing loads of washing up, I felt uninspired by any of the meals that I thought of. I kept on looking at the selection that I had and feeling frustrated by what veg I didn't have (suddenly no leeks left - so stock wouldn't have been as much fun). So I thought i'd look back on some of the meals "Mr. Fairtrade Man" made last year, because something I definitely did have was plenty of Fairtrade products. Looking at the list of meals/combinations that I had jotted down I had a choice from:

- rice, pineapple, mango, ground ginger, brazil nuts, cinammon
- brazil nuts in nut oil, dried fruit, pepper, ginger fresh mango, quinoa
- quionoa, pineaple, avocado, nuts, spices ginger tumeric, fried.
- cashew nuts in turmeric and ginger, fried with banana, with rice

My choice was further whittled down by NOT having any pineapple, and I had rice yesterday, so the second option won. I love having my choices made for me in these ways.

If you are wondering how to make number two on the list, then there is not too much to it. Whilst cooking up some quinoa I fried some chopped brazil and cashew nuts in a frying pan, after five minutes or so add the chopped mango and dates, let the juice from the mango work its magic, add a teaspoon of ginger, lots of wonderful black pepper, some water then fry it off. Once the quinoa is cooked add it to the mix and stir it all together. Then eat.

It was quite enjoyable, but hard work (dry). I couldn't stop chewing the last mouthful and couldn't get the grains and nuts down without washing it down with some water.

My fairtrade challenge chums are around now to go through some details for the fairtrade fashion show that is being planned for friday (this is Andrea's thing - I knew it would be far too stressful and I didn't need any more work!). They did a risotto this evening, similar to mine but with added wine. Good to have someone to talk to about it who doesn't look at you with a worried frown.

Ian x

Quite a luxury during this fortnight of creative recipe's, I had the pleasure of being cooked for two days in a row... Andrea put together a meal that can best be described as fried rice balls on a bed of cabbage. As far as I know it had Fairtrade basmati white rice, light tahini, peanut butter (as a sauce on the side - heated with added water and lemon), lemons and black pepper as well as a variety of fresh veg, but i'll need to get Andrea to fill me in about how she did it. I whoolfed it down so quickly I couldn't deduce...

We enjoyed a splendid meal this evening at Nicola & Tessa's, who are also partaking of the Fairtrade challenge. We contributed plentiful left overs of the risotto from the previous evening (reheated by cooking in additional water - to finish off the rice a bit better - but to be honest it lost a lot of its zing and ended up a little mushy and uninteresting) and Tessa made a splendid combination of onions (her fave!), carrots, cashew nuts and dates with lemon (I think - do clarify Tess) and cinnamon, all served with quinoa. On the night Tessa's meal was by far my favourite, mine having said goodbye to flavour...

Pudding was an outrageous affair. In my searching for Fairtrade products to use for the challenge I had not even ventured into the frozen aisle, and our eyes popped out of our heads at the mere idea of knickerbocker glory with vanilla and chocolate ice cream, brownie, mango, banana and chocolate sauce... ALL FAIRTRADE! So this was a treat, and not cheating in the slightest... apart from requiring some negotiating of some lent contracts on Nicky and Tessa's parts.

The day was a reasonably good one in the shop, lots of people coming through and still more coming for the first time. Absolutely shattered at the end of our working week, but with the prospect of going in for a couple of hours on Sunday as the pile of work has been approaching toppling point. Andrea still has the stress of clothes arriving from People Tree and Bishopston before the Fairtrade Fashion Show on Fri Mar 7th at Vandyke School. It was always going to be last minute that they arrived, and they haven't let us down...