Community sharing ideas

I love movies.
In fact next to books they are the biggest vice I have in relation to hoarding and buying.

My name is Kelly and I am a movie whore.

Kim was getting antsy with all the space the DVD's and videos were taking up. But gosh darn it its so easy now to buy a DVD for £3 and then I can't let them go. I know I might want to watch them again, or I can put them away for when the kids are older.

So this was a conundrum.
How do I justify keeping all these DVD's (aaaaand occasionally adding to the collection) and yet still keep my green flag flying?

And so the Premnay Movie Club was born!!

Local friends and neighbors submit a list of movies they are happy to lend out and in return they can borrow from the existing list. No fee, no credits, no points system, just good will!

You can see the site I set up HERE to learn more.

 Little project like this are the way forwards I think, a way to claw back a little of the sense of community and sharing that's been lost over the years.

Its early days yet and I'm hoping it will all work out!!

What green community ideas are in your area? Or what ideas would you like to see set up??
Do share!             

Fridge-less update...

A quick update on how its been without the old fridge.
Its been over a week now and you know what? It's been just fine!

Temp has got to withing a degree or two either side of 19oC over the last few days and that's been fine too.

The only casualty from the change over was a punnet of strawberries but.....well, what idiot buys strawberries out of season anyway!! And to be fair they where on the turn the day I brought them so its hard to appoint blame.

Anyway. The corner of the hall where the fridge food lives stayed between 15-19oC all week, and the wooden cupboard below it managed to keep an extra 4-5 oC cooler.
What we are planning to do now is to build a cupboard/pantry in that corner and rout out holes in the floor (covering said holes with fine mesh to stop "visitors") and draw up the cold air from under the house, as below the floor in the hall is an @2foot crawl space where the water pipes live and it is very chilly down there.
That's the theory anyway.

If anything I would say I am happily surprised at how well our fridge food has done this week.
The temp rising and the snow melting meant no safety net for us and of course the tiny fear that we might all go down with food poisoning and have to eat our words :P

In actual fact some food has kept better. Salad and fruit (like grapes and blueberries) have kept longer and more edible out of the fridge. They no longer start to brown and get that delightful slime that salad especially can get after a few days in the fridge.

Really is you think about it, the normal temp of a fridge (5oC) is aimed at keeping meat and milk from spoiling, putting it in suspended animation until you wish to consume it. But would you expect a cucumber to thrive outside at that temp?
For the omnivorous among you a workable solution could be to have a mini fridge for your meat and dairy and a cool pantry for the rest?

Its fascinating working it all out, learning to trust your senses (open, sniff, decide freshness, ask husband to taste it ...etc ;).

Dare I say it?

Is the fridge the metaphor for all that is wrong with the human race?
Are we now so unsure of our own abilities to tell if something is fresh that we have to run a "safe cold electrical wardrobe" 24 hrs a day so we DON'T have to think about it??

Maaaybe that's a little broad sweeping, but when you buy a bottle of pickle or tomato sauce and it now says "once open keep refrigerated" and you think "Holy Moly! When did I have to start doing that!! I've been leaving it in a cupboard for YEARS! I even leave it in full sun for 10 hrs at a time in BBQ season...Hmm better put that in the fridge then..you can't be tooooo careful!!"

Do we really need to be afraid of our food?         

Goodbye fridge, hello interesting times!

A few days ago we pulled the plug.
Our old(ish) upright fridge freezer, dowager with a leaky midriff and an over frozen bottom, is now officially decommissioned.
Sleep tight old girl.

Although it isn't, not really.
We have cunning plans and clever tricks for this now defunct white good, and electricity will play no part in it.

At the moment our fridge stuff is located in the hall in a cool corner, not 5oC for sure but cool enough for most things.
A more reliable and permanent solution will need to present its self in the next few weeks, if the front door is left open and the sun is shining our "cool" spot becomes decidedly warm!
In an ideal world I have the perfect room for a traditional cold pantry. Thick stone walls, north facing, potential to stone clad the floor for maximum humidity.

Only trouble is, its in the kids bedroom *sigh*.

We have wracked our brains for ages trying to work a way around this. 

There MAY be the possibility of buying a really nice insulated mobile home that we could have in the garden and convert into outside bedrooms. We COULD try to work out a way to build something ourselves.

We''ll see.
There are plenty of options available if the money is there but..well..insert slightly hysterical laughter HERE :P

So, failing turfing the kids out of their beds and making them sleep with the dogs there are other options, but sadly none so perfect.

But hey life is all compromise right!!? 

One thing that is interesting is the way we are re-thinking our food again.

For example, no more eating half a tin/jar of something then putting it in the fridge for a week, or worse still, forgetting about the left half and throwing it away.

Tonight I made stir fry with half a jar of Tempah. Usually I would put the rest in the fridge and wait for another stir fry night, but instead I am going to make a casserole for dinner tomorrow and put the remaining Tempah in it.

For years I have brought the egg free mayonnaise in squeezy plastic bottles (because even before we gave up commercial eggs altogether I could never find a free range mayonnaise that didn't taste nasty!). I am truly awful at making mayonnaise but DAMN IT!! I have eggs coming out of my ears some days I should bloody well LEARN to make mayonnaise! That way I can make only what I need and have no extra to store AND no plastic to recycle!
On Saturday I made tomato soup and for lunch the next day I turned the left over into pasta sauce.

Using snow to cool cider and fruit juice!

Everything like this is used within 24hrs.

I'm also experimenting with replacing margarine (spread) with vegetable oil in baking. So far its working really well, with some interesting muffin textured cakes. Margarine tubs are one of those things we can't recycle so it will be great to cut those down anyway.

Its been insightful anyway and will probably be even more so over the next few weeks.