Fairtrade Food Diary

Fairtrade Fortnight Day Nine

2008-02-29T18:15:00.000-08:00

I managed to sleep through breakfast today, which was probably good, cause I didn't have anything to eat! For lunch I had a bit of an experiment. Quinoa, cooked with cloves, then mixed with a little lemon curd, honey, crushed brazil nuts and chopped mango. It was actually much nicer than I was expecting! I had a left over soya burger for dinner, with some rice. I was a bit better than last time as I grilled instead of fried the 'burger'. Ketchup was still thoroughly missed though! The painful thing was that after dinner, I went to a friend's birthday party and everyone there ordered pizza! Fortunately I was aware of this, and bought some Ben & Jerry's vanilla icecream, and white wine, both from the Coop. This made my evening much more enjoyable. I have to say, I've got to the stage now where meals are more of a struggle than an adventure! I need to find some more enthusiasm. If only I could get a coconut or more significantly, the wensleydale cheese that Fairtrade Woman has!!

Fairtrade Fortnight Day Eight

2008-02-29T18:05:00.000-08:00

Breakfast: rice cakes and cherry conserve.

Lunch: Tradecraft pasta and brazil nut oil, followed by cereal bar.

Dinner: Mixed bean curry. Sounds better than it was! Soya beans and aduki beans with curry powder, tumeric and a touch of ginger. It was mainly the dry almost gritty texture that wasn't so good, most investigation will follow!

Snacks: grapes, I also bought some pears and chocolate from the Coop.

Fairtrade Fortnight Day Seven

2008-02-27T14:15:00.000-08:00

Breakfast was fruit salad. I had no yoghurt for the muesli and I wasn't prepared to try my soya milk first thing in the morning! So instead I had banana, mango, orange and grade fruit salad. It was a nice breakfast, and a good start to the day, but it took a lot of time to make and eat when I was in a rush as I normally am!

I then bought a Fairtrade coffee from the cafe in my university department. Was really nice and kept me awake through my lectures!

Lunch, which I ate with a friend, was rice-cakes and avocado again. Fortunately I like avocado and wasn't jealous of her food.

Cooking dinner in the evening was tough. Today was my cooking day for my housemates, and I had to cook them normal food! I made them pasta and sausages, something easy as I was making 3 meals. Normal sausages for my male housemates, veggie ones for my veggie housemate and of course a meal for me. This was reaaaaaally hard! I had to battle with my will not to eat a sausage whilst noone was looking. Instead I had rice fried with avocado and black pepper. It was tasty enough but I bought some chocolate and opened some wine to cheer myself up!

Tomorrow I will have to use up the remaining beans I have in the fridge - some form of bean curry I'm predicting!

Fairtrade Fortnight Day Six

2008-02-26T14:30:00.000-08:00

Shopping List:

Students Union:
Ubuntu cola

Independant health food shop:
Brazil nut oil

Breakfast: Yoghurt and muesli, I've now run out of yoghurt and the Coop I bought it from still haven't restocked it!

Lunch: Ricecakes and avocado, topped with black pepper. Very nice.

Dinner: Well this was another adventure! I made soya burgers... or at least attempted to! Mushed up soya beans, avocado and quinoa, held together with crushed cashews instead of breadcrumbs! Fried them in brazil nut oil. They would have been a very good meal, if only I'd had some kind of ketchup or tomato sauce! I was seriously envious of my house-mates bolognese!

I also tried to make soya milk today! It was a huge effort! Involved boiling vast amounts of water and making my whole house smell like soya! And it tasted horribled! I added some honey - which made it taste like honey, which is good, but not really the point of milk! Still not something I want to add to my coffee. I'm going to have to buy some Divine cocoa powder and make it chocolate milk. I think I'd willingly put that in my coffee! Not tea though!

And the Wensleydale cheese search continues! Seems they're hoping to make it exclusive and as such are introducing it gradually onto the market. But it was officially launched yesterday, so to my mind, that should make it available to buy at least somewhere! If you find any, you must let me know. Immediately!

Fairtrade Fortnight Day Five

2008-02-26T03:21:00.000-08:00

Today was another mission to supermarkets!
I was in search of the listed Balance Foods Fairtrade Organic Rice Drink, and had been to my closest reasonably sized Tescos. They didn't have it, but I asked them to phone the bigger Tescos on the edge of town. They confirmed they had it in stock, and had another delivery coming in, so they'd definately have it if I went in soon. So I waited for a bus, in the cold, for an hour! Finally gave up and got a taxi with another guy also waiting for the bus. Got to Tescos and discovered I'd been misled! No Fairtrade Rice Drink, and in fact they'd never even heard of it! Not sure what went wrong there. However I did manage to get a few other things, including a wonderfully ripe Avocado, and various spices: ginger, black pepper, tumeric, and cloves. I also bought some honey and jam, things you can get in a lot of places, but until I found the ricecakes, I didn't have anything to put them on!

I went to Sainsburys as well, in search of brazil nut oil. I didn't find it though, so that's an adventure for another day. I did however treat myself to a latte and a chocolate brownie at the cafe before venturing back out into the cold!

For breakfast I had muesli and yoghurt again, with some coffee I shared with my housemate. He got to have milk in his though. I've decided to make my own soy milk... I'll report back on how that goes.

Lunch was rice cakes and bananas and was actually really nice! I also bought some orange juice from my students union shop.

Dinner was my left over 'red dragon pie'. But with the addition of a fair amount of black pepper, I really enjoyed it! I also had some of my new ripe avocado on rice cakes and that was also very yummy.

After reading somewhere about Fairtrade man trying to make quinoa flour, I decided to have a go. I spent my evening listening to lectures from podcasts and grinding quinoa! So far I've made about 10g! I'll get there.

Fairtrade Fortnight Day Four

2008-02-25T11:17:00.001-08:00

Didn't buy anything new today; a nice break from food shopping!

For breakfast I had some muesli with Greek yoghurt and honey, some black coffee and some grapes. I'm having to be a bit stingy on the yoghurt, until Coop gets more in stock. This makes for a slightly too dry breakfast, but once that's sorted, I'm sure it will be more enjoyable.

Lunch was sliced banana on ricecakes. I also soaked some grapes in red wine, which was very enjoyable!

Dinner was a bit of an experiment! I substituted pretty much everything in the recipe I was 'following'. Basically I was trying to make a quasi red dragon pie ( http://www.eighth-day.co.uk/recipes/bredrago.htm ) . This is a variation on shepherds pie, using aduki beans instead of meat. The aduki beans were pretty much the only ingredient on the recipe that I had. But I went ahead regardless, and boiled together some aduki beans, quinoa and avocado in aduki bean stock. I then added some curry powder, being the only spice I had, topped it with rice instead of potato and baked it for a while. It was quite edible, but very much lacking in flavour! I have some more spices now, so might try again.

Fairtrade Fortnight Day Three

2008-02-25T10:55:00.001-08:00

Shopping List

Coop:
Fairtrade Greek Yoghurt and Honey
Orange Juice

Morrisons:
Avocados
Rice Cakes

M&S:
Satsumas
Lemon Curd

Today was quite tough. I didn't realise how much time cooking was going to take! The soya beans are yet to be a success! Plus I was at a party, and it was quite difficult to eat satsumas whilst watching people eat jacket potatoes! I had some Quinoa for dinner, with some avocado that wasn't quite ripe. Here's a word of advice: don't boil avocado to hasten the ripening process. It doesn't turn out to well!

Hightlight: some juicy fresh mango!

Fairtrade Fortnight Day Two

2008-02-25T10:54:00.001-08:00

Shopping list

Just Natural (independent shop)
Quinoa
Soya Beans
Aduki Beans

Tradecraft shop
Cereal bars:
chocolate and raisin
blueberry and raisin
Cashew nuts
Spicy plantain chips

Coop:
Chocolate cake

For breakfast I had Tropical Muesli with tropical juice instead of milk. It was interesting... A new experience that will take a while to get used to! I've seen a fairtrade rice-milk listed online, but I haven't found it yet. Also, I'm told Coop do a fairtrade yoghurt, which I've also not found.

Lunch was going to be some pasta, but I was out and just had a cereal bar and some plantain chips - which were really nice! It seems to me that it's particularly difficult to find savoury fairtrade foods. Fruits, chocolate s, cakes... plenty!

Dinner was much more successful! I made cashew curry which was really nice. Could also have benefited from more spices, but softening the cashews and then mixing in some ground cashew powder made a good curry! Finished the meal with some chocolate cake and a glass of wine. A pretty good day I think!

Tomorrow I'm off to M&S in search of an avocado and maybe a coconut!

Fairtrade Fortnight Day One

2008-02-25T10:51:00.000-08:00

Shopping list of the day

Oxfam:
Tradecraft basmati rice
Curry Powders
Lemon and Chilli Cashews and Peanuts
Cereal bars:
Banana and honey
Mango and Walnut
Pineapple and Cashew
Tropical Muesli

Sainsbury's:
Bananas

Coop:
Tea
Tropical Juice
Mango

Student's Union:
Apple Juice.

For lunch I had a couple of bananas and cereal bars and for dinner I attemped some form of banana curry with rice! It wasn't a great success. The banana was too sweet really. I need to get some more spices.

Fairtrade Fortnight

2008-02-25T10:49:00.000-08:00

As a challenging, fun project, for Fairtrade Fortnight, I have decided to eat only Fairtrade foods. I hope to discover the range and availability of Fairtrade foods on offer, and along the way, some interesting new foods and ways of cooking them! Of course it's perfectly ethical to but and eat locally produced foods, but my project is to highlight food that is traded fairly for those who most need support! I'm going to post a diary of what foods I've discovered and where. If you should come across something I haven't been able to get hold of, do please let me know where you see it! Also if you should know of any recipe ideas based on my pretty limited food range, I'd be delighted to hear them!