Allotments

I'm happy today because this morning I met with Jenny, overseer of the allotments that turned out to be just five minutes walk from where I live. I have put myself on the waiting list for an allotment of my own, which, says Jenny, could actually happen any time between next week and 30 years from now. I feel patiently optimistic.

Jenny is evidently a master gardener. Her own plot is bursting with a staggering variety of edibles: raspberries, lettuces, cabbages, tomatoes, potatoes, broccoli, strawberries, fennel, dill... I lost track. She also keeps chickens, chickens who seemed happy and approachable and about which, in principle as a vegan, I have still to make up my mind. Jenny makes jam, chutney, preserves: I asked her if she sold any of her produce. She said no: she eats, freezes, pickles or shares it all. She has an indeterminate number of children.

The allotment site also includes a small orchard, where Jenny showed me gauges, apples, redcurrants, plums, and a shed. All sheds smell the same: woody and damp, spidery and homely. I could live in a shed, I think, quite comfortably.  I wanted to take lots of pictures, but I didn't.

On the first Sunday of the month, the allotmentiers (there are about 20 plots) meet and help each other out, drink tea and share produce from the orchard. Volunteers are welcome and wanted, which tells you exactly what I'll be doing next Sunday.

Jenny even told me of an old, Irish man who has a plot that isn't very well looked after (she showed me it; it wasn't) who might even be willing to share. She implied, but did not say, that I could be the one to share. Not sure where that puts me in the waiting list, but I ambled back home with a big grin on my face.

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Microgreens Week Six: Grow in the Dark

If I'd been a bit more organised and "present" than I managed to be this week, I'd have started a tray or two of microgreens every other day, to get an actual rotation going. Things didn't turn out that way, so yesterday I stock up on mung, adzuki, and started some off soaking overnight. Two trays of adzuki beans and two trays of mung beans have gone on to the shelves this morning.

It's starting to look like growth of all three of these microgreens is just as good in the dark as in direct sunlight, if not better.

Here are the adzuki and mung beans I sowed last Sunday/Monday, after a week in my dingy hallway:

I also thought I'd try a bit of companion planting with microgreens, too.  The idea here is to have a kind of table top microgreen garden that I throw a handful of seeds in every so often, so they're ready for harvesting at different times.  Each time I eat a few, I'll sow a few more.  This has been on the go for about five days now, and initially looked like this...

...and today looks like this:

Featuring peas, adzuki, mung and red cabbage.  All seem to be getting along just fine, though the peas don't seem quite as enthusiastic.  They're on my table though, which is next to a window, so that could be the light factor again.  Interesting.

After having zero success back in January with growing kale - none of the plants I started made it much further than the seedling stage, I've had considerably better results with growing them as microgreens.  Here is a tray of kale seedlings grown on my kitchen windowsill, after one week:

Here, less impressively, is a tray of "dwarf" kale:

Not really sure what its problem is, but it's welcome all the same.

I'm wondering what to try next.  Sunflowers?  Any ideas?  What's the yummiest microgreen?  That is the question.

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Microgreens Week Five: Mung Beans for Breakfast
Microgreens Week Four: Learning By Doing

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The Cost of Living: 22nd-28th July 2017

On Tuesday I woke up and after physically having to shake myself out of some exceptionally bizarre dreams I said to myself, "I'll go to work today".  I didn't have to go to work that day.  I chose to.  A strange but mostly satisfactory arrangement exists between my employer and I these days where I am contracted to work at least 15 hours per week on a flexible basis: a basis so flexible, in fact, that nobody seems to want to know in advance which hours, or even which days, I'm actually going to be there.  Last week I was on annual leave, so didn't have to go in at all, although they still paid me - an even more satisfactory arrangement - and I had not intended to return until Wednesday but as I said, I chose to go in on Tuesday.  I could have stayed in bed.

I don't enjoy my work.  I don't not enjoy it either.  It just is.  My colleagues are pleasant, and the work is simple, if frustrating.  For 15 hours a week it is more than tolerable, and it pays the bills.  So I could have stayed in bed on Tuesday but I did not.  I was feeling out of sorts on Monday, unable to concentrate on anything much at all, and waking from the dreams that rippled through my mind overnight I felt another day in that mental state on the cards again.  So I went to work.  Some bureaucracy and ordinariness might help, I thought. 

I was right.  I actually got quite a lot done.  I have never in my employed existence worked the standard 9 to 5, Monday to Friday grind, and have great sympathy for anyone who has no other option.  Eight hours a day is far too many to spend at work.  The same for five days a week.  It is insane.  Sweden recently experimented with six-hour working days, and initially saw some positive results in terms of employee wellbeing, reduced absences, and even a better quality of work (including in hospitals, where patient care quality improved - an area where high quality work actually matters).  However, since employers continued to pay workers for a "full" day, this proved to be too expensive in the longer term.  Good on Sweden for trying though.  Hard to imagine the UK even considering such a thing.

Six hours a day, for me, is plenty.  I have to really push myself to get anything more done in eight hours than I would in six.  I wonder how much work, on average, actually gets done relative to the length of a person's working day, here in the UK or anywhere else.  Work smart, not hard.  Of course this is a luxury, I know.  I just enjoy speculating about these things.

I mention this because on Wednesday, when I might otherwise have gone to work and come home, I found myself out of my mind again and did what I had promised at the beginning of the month I wouldn't do: I ate a takeaway and got drunk.  Or rather, I got drunk, at which point getting a takeaway seemed like a great idea.  I don't know what any of this tells you, psychologically, about me.  Perhaps nothing.  It happened, though, and that is that.

Here are this week's numbers.

Saturday 22nd

Breakfast:  Coffee and mung bean microgreens.
Lunch: Fried rice and red onion
Tea: Roasted chick peas

Food shopping: £3.89

Day total: £3.89

Sunday 23rd

Breakfast: Adzuki bean microgreens and coffee
Lunch: Nothing.  Snacked on other microgreens until mid-afternoon.  They are surprisingly filling, which is an excellent sign.
Tea: Tortilla chips, bread and hummus

Gardening supplies - trays for more microgreens, and fleece covers: £6.75
Food shopping: £4.95

Day total: £11.70

Monday 24th

Breakfast: Pea shoot sandwiches

Lunch: Lentils and celery with brown bread and pickled spinach

Tea: Nothing.  Went to bed quite early, didn't feel that hungry.  Must be all the brown bread.

Didn't spend any money today.  Day total: £0.00

Tuesday 25th

Breakfast: Coffee and soup

Lunch: Soup

Tea: Vegan burrito at Barburrito in Piccadilly Gardens.  Noteworthy is that as well as having satisfactory vegan options, here's a fast food outlet in a city centre that also has 'zero waste' options: you can order a 'naked' burrito, which comes in a reusable bowl, without any wrapping.  Avoid napkins and there you have a zero waste vegan meal.  Impressive.   £9.35

Day total: £9.35

Wednesday 26th

Breakfast: Pea shoots and bread.  Already by 10:00am my mind was whirring, and now that I wasn't going to work, when initially I was, I wandered off for some fresh air.  Found myself in Ground Up in Bury for

Brunch: Coffee and sourdough with vegan peanut butter and a banana: £5.25  While I was there I noticed someone come in with several tins of obviously homemade cakes, which she exchanged for cash.  I wonder if they might be interested in buying some of my microgreens if I get to the point where I'm growing more than I can eat myself.

Tea: Sweet potato, spring onions, garlic

The I bought a bottle of wine, and drank it.  It felt good.  Then I ordered a takeaway, which did not.  Ate about half of it and fell asleep.  Do I actually hate work?  Is this why?  Does it matter?

Plant pots: £29.99
Food shopping: £5.03
Postage for book sold on amazon: £1.58
Food shopping: £2.74
Wine: £4.99
Takeaway: £16.60

Day total: £66.18

Thursday 27th

Breakfast: Coffee
Lunch: Sweet potato and broccoli
Tea: Toast with pea shoots and mustard

Food shopping: £2.79

Friday 28th

Breakfast: Coffee
Lunch: Sweet potato and broccoli
Tea: Pea shoot and pickle sandwiches

Coffee and vegan cherry brownie at Fig and Sparrow in Manchester: £5.25

Salary: £188.99  This is my base rate for 15 hours work/annual leave.  I something like 23p in tax on this, and nothing from my student loan, something that I will probably never pay off, which amuses me.

Day total: £5.25

Total spent this week:  £99.16

WEEK END BALANCE: +£89.83

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Related posts

The Cost of Living: 15th-21st July 2017
The Cost of Living: 8th-14th July 2017
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The Paradox of Minimalism

Minimalism is all the rage just now - but what is it and why does it matter? As a trend, it matters not in the slightest.  Trends never do.  But there's something about minimalism that distinguishes it from mere fashion, from the narcissistic lifestyle fetishism we "share" in each others' faces endlessly in the age of instagram.  At least, I think there is.  Perhaps I'm wrong.

The current kings of the minimalist world are Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus - "The Minimalists" - a highly successful website and (for want of a more accurate term) brand, incorporating films, books, various "services", and currently, a speaking tour.  All of which are available for purchase at theminimalists.com, where they define "minimalism" as follows:

"Minimalism is a tool that can assist you in finding freedom. Freedom from fear. Freedom from worry. Freedom from overwhelm. Freedom from guilt. Freedom from depression. Freedom from the trappings of the consumer culture we’ve built our lives around. Real freedom". 

Sounds great, and absolutely nothing like a cult.  No, I'm sorry.  That's unfair.  This is a perfectly good definition.  It's not the only possible one, but it's a key point: minimalism is about freedom. Consumer capitalism is a culture of anxiety, a culture of more, and a culture of me.  Almost all spiritual traditions teach that an insular, egocentric individualism is corrupting, both to the self and to the world that self inhabits.  To always take from and never give to the world inevitably leads to anxiety, because the ego never can be satisfied.  It is in its nature to want.  The fantasy is never enough, and the reality is always too much.  Consumerism feeds the ego-beast on the lie that the next thing will be it: the thing that makes you complete, the best, the leader of the pack.  Until the next thing comes along: next year's upgrade, next season's "must have".  And so on, year after year after year after year...and then you die.  And whoever dies with the most toys, wins.  Everybody knows this.

One fascinating thing about minimalism is its emergence from this culture as something inherently critical of it, and perhaps even entirely opposed to it.  This is something that happens periodically, sometimes in more radical forms than others.  Think dadaism, communism, situationism, hippies, punk.  Eventually, however, all such movements, however initially subversive, soften, and find their niche within the wider cultural context.  So malleable is postmodern culture that it can accommodate apparently anything, even those things that initially threaten it.  Today we have reached a point at which it seems nothing can really threaten the status quo at all, so steeped is everything we experience in uncountable levels of irony.  In 1976, before high street record shops had refused to sell it, and national TV and radio stations had refused to play it, workers at vinyl pressing factories refused even to handle the copies of "God Save the Queen" they were being asked to manufacture and distribute.  Of course, it went straight in at number one anyway (sort of).  A fascist regime, indeed.  Punk was, for a very very short time, truly dangerous, revolutionary.  It is hard to conceive of "the system" being so unaccommodating to such a potentially lucrative pop culture trend today.

The next paragraph of theminimalists.com's definition reads:

"That doesn’t mean there’s anything inherently wrong with owning material possessions. Today’s problem seems to be the meaning we assign to our stuff: we tend to give too much meaning to our things, often forsaking our health, our relationships, our passions, our personal growth, and our desire to contribute beyond ourselves. Want to own a car or a house? Great, have at it! Want to raise a family and have a career? If these things are important to you, then that’s wonderful. Minimalism simply allows you to make these decisions more consciously, more deliberately".

Herein lies a paradox.  In my twitter feed a few days ago, where I follow various self-promoting minimalists, this happened:

It's a paradox I quite enjoy living, in any case.  You take it seriously by not taking it seriously.  Is minimalism about getting rid of stuff, or acquiring the right kind of stuff?  Is it somehow about both?  Is it, perhaps, neither?  Is it nothing at all?  Is it, like the ever more ubiquitous phenomenon of "motivational quotes", not quite nothing, but just something enough to be annoying?

On reddit last week, one poster ranted:

I just watched that piece of shit documentary on netflix. Oh my god those insufferable twats had me questioning if they were genuinely trying to pass their bullshit or if they were actually trolling people who live simply. "Im a hugger," made me want to physically harm my laptop. These twats are all former high earners who are basically living pseudo-retired by their early thirties and telling us to give them a hug and live free while they wear ray bans and designer clothes and hock their book on any media outlet that will entertain their narcissism. I hope that documentary purely exposes these bullshit artists.

The rant was well received.  It asks the right questions. If this is all just some kind of viral marketing campaign (and what, these days, isn't?) then we're all going to end up looking like right idiots.  (Not that we don't anyway, but you know, even more so).  If we're giving our time and attention and money to narcissists who are saying absolutely nothing then, well, maybe we deserve it.

Your priorities are what you do each day, the small tasks that move forward the second and minute hands on the clock.

— The Minimalists (@TheMinimalists) July 24, 2017

Yeah thanks.  I know.

It doesn’t matter what organized religion you belong to, or what god you worship: they all want you to live a simple life.

— The Minimalists (@TheMinimalists) July 23, 2017

Really?  I think most organized religions disagree.

The simplifying process, like life, is ever-changing. Minimalism is fluid.

— The Minimalists (@TheMinimalists) July 22, 2017

OK...What?

There is no doubt that getting rid of stuff is good and necessary and right.  We have reached peak stuff.  More and more of us are waking up to this.  We need to slow down, unplug, clear our heads, free our minds.  Stop consuming, lest we be consumed.

Perhaps this is impossible.  Perhaps there is an inherent need to consume: I'm not talking only literally, where of course that is true, but in this vaguer sense.  The religious might call it a god-shaped hole, and are ready to explain of course that their god is just the right size and shape to fill it.  But this is implausible, and we all know it. Religions, all of them, offer something just too...specific.  Today we talk about "spirituality" more comfortably than we do about "religion", since this is something we are supposed to have some intuitive grasp of, and something that can be shaped according to our own needs in ways that a religion cannot: but this is no more plausible, and no more satisfying - as evidenced by the innumerable fad quasi-religions spiritual fads for sale (and they almost always are for sale, not merely on offer).  Perhaps there is nothing that can satisfy us: not a god, and not the absence of one either.  If you're really looking for something, you must accept the possibility that that thing isn't actually there.

What does minimalism offer?  Well, if what it offers is for sale, then don't buy it.  You don't need to buy things that show you how to stop buying things.  You don't need another thing to show you how to get rid of all your other things.  It will be a con: consumerism's dying breath, perhaps.  If it offers a perspective, encouragement, or even inspiration, then give it space to do so.  Good ideas have a life of their own, and will come with you.  Bad ideas stay exactly where they are.  But it's just too soon to tell which one of these minimalism is.

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Life Flows On Within You And Without You
Is minimalism boring?
Marx, Money and Me
"I have everything I need"


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Everyday Things You Don't Really Need At All #2: Toothpaste

For the past two weeks now I have been cleaning my teeth with nothing but bicarbonate of soda.  In doing so I have learned two things:

1.  It is perfectly possible to do this.
2.  It is perfectly impossible for me to take of picture of myself showing my teeth without looking like a psychopath.

I present, as evidence viz. number 2, the following:

Give me a hug.

If you're able to take a picture of your own teeth without coming across as a lunatic, then I salute you, because I just can't do it.  Now, on to number 1.

There are many toothpaste recipes online that will be of interest to zero wasters and the frugally minded.  A lot of them require the use of coconut oil.  I looked into this, and the coconut oils I could find for sale locally were all imported from half way around the world (the Philippines, mostly).  This seems against the spirit of 'zero waste' and environmental concerns in general, so I started to wonder: what's the simplest recipe for toothpaste I could find?  Most seem to be some combination of coconut oil, sea salt, peppermint oil and...bicarbonate of soda (AKA baking soda*)

Turns out bicarbonate of soda is all you really need.  Here's an article, which although it's (inevitably, sigh) flogging a product of its own, advises that brushing your teeth with baking soda is safe and healthy.  Here's another, which goes into more detail, and isn't flogging anything.  Certainly seems worth a try.  So tried it I did.

Toothpaste is a funny thing.  It comes in those squeezy plastic tubes useful for almost nothing else (off the top of my head, only tomato puree) and I can't say I've seen many blog posts or zero waste sites with creative ideas for what to do with the empties.  Generally the advice is just to recycle them, as you might with other disposable plastic.  Recycling is fine in principle: but it seems to me that, in this new wave of environmental consciousness, recycling is to zero-wasting  rather as vegetarianism is to veganism: a great idea, but not something that captures the essence of the problem or contributes to real, systemic change.  What's more, recycling isn't something the individual has much control over.  There's some evidence that things you put out for recycling don't actually get recycled at all.  So that's more plastic in the landfills, and the sea. 

So, keep it simple.  Don't buy toothpaste at all, and don't worry too much about "recipes".  Bicarbonate of soda does the job of removing plaque, and keeping your teeth presentable.  A tub of bicarbonate of soda costs about the same as a tube of toothpaste, but lasts much, much longer.   Cleaning your teeth with bicarbonate of soda can give you teeth as amazing as mine.  Teeth that  I'm definitely not going to eat you with, or anything weird like that. 

*A bit confusing as a Brit looking into this - and perhaps equally so if you're American.  What Americans know as baking soda, Brits know as bicarbonate of soda. There's also something called "baking powder", which is baking (bicarbonate of) soda plus acid (sodium acid pyrophosphate and/or moncalcium phosphate).  So just be careful if you want to start using bicarbonate of soda to clean your teeth, that you don't start rubbing acid into mouth, which is probably inadvisable.  Baking soda good; baking powder, bad.

#wastelesswednesday

Next!

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Everyday Things You Don't Really Need At All #1: Washing Up Liquid
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Microgreen Crop Rotation

Time for another experiment.  It occurred to me this morning that keeping a constant rotation of microgreen trays on the go is going to require a lot of compost, perhaps more than I'm able to produce, even with the worms hard at work.  So I thought I'd give some 'crop rotation' a try.  It's a tried and time-tested method of farmers, so I'm feeling optimistic about it.  Here's what I did.

Breakfast this morning was pea shoot sandwiches, which left me with another tray of snipped shoots to process.  Peas grow long and spidery root structures, that intertwine with one another when sown close together.  Lift up one shoot, and a whole section of soil (sometimes the entire tray) lifts up with it, revealing a densely tangled web of roots underneath.

The standard practice for microgreen growers seems to be to just dump this in its entirety into the compost or worm bin,which makes sense, because picking out every individual seed, shaking loose the soil and preparing it for re-use is pretty tedious, and if you're working on a large enough scale, probably not necessary.  Still, I thought I'd give it a go.  After about ten minutes of shaking and scraping, I was left with this...

...a feast fit for a wormery, and this:

The soil was crumbly and on the dry side, so I mixed it in with another scoop of fresh compost.  Normally on a tray this size I'm using four heaped trowel scoops of compost: here I only needed one to give enough overall to start a new tray.  I chose adzuki beans again: fast growing, and yummy.

These have gone back onto the same shelf that I removed the previous tray of adzuki beans yesterday, and I've set a reminder for myself to harvest these and compare them to the last tray exactly one week from today.  Highly scientific, I think you'll agree.  If I get about the same yield, in the same time, I'm going to count this as a success.  Join me again next week to see how it all works out.

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See other posts labelled 'microgreens' and 'indoor gardening' You might also like to watch this video about my indoor wormery and composting set up. 
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Resurrecting Basil

For quite some time I've been a fan of trawling the "reduced to clear" shelves in the supermarkets at choice times of day.  An hour or two before they close in the evening, when the items that will be thrown away at the end of the day if nobody buys them, supermarkets like the Co-op, Sainsbury's and Tesco will knock items down to a fraction of the original price.  I've bought loaves of bread for 5p, bananas and apples for 10p each and other goodies for equally low prices on numerous occasions.  In Manchester it's not uncommon to see people go into the supermarkets near to closing time and buy armfuls of packaged food knocked down to very low prices, and hand them out to the homeless people who beg in just about every food shop doorway in the city centre nowadays.  All of this is good.  Apart from the fact that anyone is homeless or hungry at all, of course.

Insanity.

Anyway, the problem of food waste is a huge one.  While retailers along with zero wasters, environmentalists and other enthusiasts are waking up to the issue and coming up with creative responses to it all over the place, the fact remains that billions of pounds worth of food is wasted in the UK every year, and this is still on the increase both by supermarkets and we so-called "consumers".  This is the price we pay for convenience, it's completely insane, and we all know it.  Let's change the world, immediately.

Another insane thing supermarkets do is sell sprigs of "fresh" herbs, wrapped of course in pointless plastic.  They're products I see a lot on the reduced-to-clear shelves.  Not normally the sort of thing I'd be willing to pay even a penny for, since I grow my own, but the other week the Co-op had a packet of basil ready for the bin, so I parted with 35p for it and brought it home.  I wondered, could basil that had been stored in the fridge and had reached its "best before" date (whatever that means) be salvaged, regrown and returned to the soil?  Spoiler alert: yes.

Basil is one of the many edible plants you can grow and keep alive in water.  It's something I've done with spring onions and leeks already.  (I wonder if such things can be pickled).  I was curious to see what might happen to this basil, so I stuck it in a jar of water and left it on top of my oven, a nice sunny spot.

Unfortunately, most of the leaves became droopy and died.  Some did not, though, and this is cause for celebration.  Today I examined the sprigs that remained, and they had sprouted roots.  Joy!

Joy

Joy

Joy

I have planted these in my little kitchen garden along with the remaining lettuce from my Dad's garden this morning.  The soil there is moist, so I'm hoping to see new life emerge from these once abandoned sprigs of basil.  Imagine if supermarkets did that.  Instead of fridges, trays of soil, bursting with edible plants.  Cut, keep or insert straight into gob.  Why the hell not?

Back to the earth

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Grow Your Own Meals Indoors, Forever and Ever?

Since yesterday's mung bean breakfast, and in the light of my little wombling epiphany this week, I've started to think more seriously about growing enough food indoors to be able to sustain myself.  It's a thrilling prospect, but I need to keep my head on ground and do some actual calculations to see how possible this might be.  Here goes.

Breakfast is "the most important meal of the day", so I'll start there.  Yesterday I ate a tray of mung bean microgreens with some leftover chick peas.  1 cup of mung bean sprouts = 31 calories and at a rough guess I'd say a tray = 4 cups.  So that's 124 calories.  1.5 cups of chick peas = 635 calories.  So breakfast was 759 calories, which is about a third of a 2500 calorie a day diet (the average requirement for a male).

The chick peas weren't home grown, they came from a tin, and made up 81% of the caloric content of my breakfast.  So that means I'd have to eat about five trays of mung beans for breakfast to be as nourished as I was yesterday at breakfast time.  Don't much fancy that - and obviously I'm not actually going to do that anyway.  It's just interesting to note.

This morning I ate the tray of adzuki beans I sowed seven days ago, also with some leftover chickpeas.  (I had roasted chick peas for dinner again last night, they really are delicious - just splash with a little olive oil and roast for about 20 mins in the oven).  The tray of adzuki beans looked like this:

I snipped them all off, cutting closer to the soil than I did with the mung beans yesterday, which gave me this:

I preferred the taste of these to the mung beans - milder, and "greener", more herbal in their texture.  Caloric content = a mystery.  I need to do some further research on this.  A question to consider is whether I'm getting fewer nutrients from eating the sprouts than I would be just from eating the beans.  I hope and suspect not - according to this site, sprouted adzuki beans have 300% more fibre.

The beginnings of my vertical microgreen growing
experiment, which I posted about here.

Let's say the caloric content was about the same, i.e. 124 calories per tray.  If I were to live solely on microgreens (probably inadvisable, if not impossible) that would mean I would have to eat 20 trays a day to get the calories I needed.  The adzuki beans and the mung beans each took seven days to grow to edible maturity, so I would need 7 x 20 trays - 140 trays - on the go at any one time to sustain myself that way.  Theoretically, in the space that I have, this is possible, considering the possibilities of growing vertically.

This is boring, but also interesting at the same time.  Doing the numbers can be off-putting, and there's always the danger of losing you're joy, but you have to be vigilant and think this way if you want to make any actual progress.  Being able to grow all my own food in a normal-sized, one bedroom flat in England is certainly an exciting idea to me, so I'll keep going.

This morning I added another tray of adzuki beans to an area in the hall way, where yesterday I sowed another tray of mung beans, immediately after eating the first one.  As some microgreen growers recommend starting your seeds off in the dark, and as I've had some interesting results varying the light levels for my pea shoots I think this is certainly worth exploring more.  Plus, my hall way is long and empty (or minimalist, if that's what you're into) so there's ample space there in which I could grow things.

The key to many, perhaps most, things is variety.  If you want to stay vegan, you need a variety of things to eat you actually enjoy eating regularly.  If you want to be healthy generally, you need a balanced diet.  If you want to be happy, you need to do different things.  It's simple, but the simple is too often overlooked.  Don't do the same things every day, even if they're the things you love.  Do new things.  Do old things in a new way.  Be in company.  Be alone.  Be alive.

And so it is with growing your own meals.  I suppose I could grow 140 trays of adzuki beans in constant rotation, but that would soon become dull and joyless, and so I would stop.  Still, the dull is a good place to start.  Out of the darkness and into the light, and all that jazz.

Yesterday was a great day for traffic to this blog, thanks mostly to getting this post trending on /r/anticonsumption, for which I am most grateful.  Hello to any new readers: I particularly appreciate comments people have started leaving.  More of that sort of thing, if you please.  That's all for now, folks.  Big post coming up next week about the paradoxes of minimalism.  Don't forget to like, follow, share and subscribe and most of all, be happy.  

Related posts

My first week as a microgreen gardener
Microgreens Week Three: Expanding My Empire

See all posts labelled 'microgreens'
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The Cost of Living: 15th-21st July 2017

I've nothing particular to say this week on the subject of my living costs.  That's mainly because this is the week in the month in which most of my 'unavoidable' expenses are paid, and as they're monthly expenses, it's fairly meaningless to include them in a post about my expenses over the course of seven days.  Anyway, that's what I've decided to do, so there you go.  Time to crunch the numbers:

Saturday 15th

Breakfast: Baked potatoes with spring onions, basil, pea shoots and cherry tomatoes.  All the non-potato items were home-grown.  Pretty pleased about that.  The potatoes were reduced the night before at the Co-op to 71p for 4.  I bought two packets.  A most satisfactory breakfast.

Lunch: Burger and a beer (my only alcoholic drink this month) at the legendary V Rev in Manchester.  And well deserving of its legendary status it is.  Everything it serves is 100% vegan.  Somewhere to take a sceptical meat eater if you want to impress them with how yummy vegan food can be.  £11.45 well spent.

Tea: pasta and sauce.  It was a very carb-heavy day.  I slept well.

Bought some new plants at the Flourish stall on Tib Street:  £13

Here's my little indoor "forest" -

Food shopping (Pasta, sauce, oil, tinned peas) - £7.05  I bought olive oil again.  Olive oil is very expensive now.  I really shouldn't buy it anymore.  The forecasts were correct.  Sometimes I forget.

Also bought some more dried peas and beans to grown into microgreens.  And some other household things, from Tesco.  £13.39

Today was also Council Tax day.  So there goes £82.

Day total: £126.89

Not exactly the most frugal day of my life.  Then again, hard to say anything I paid for money today was really "unnecessary", whatever that means.

Sunday 16th

Brunch:  A soup made of scraps (version 2)

Tea: At Sarah and Jon's.  Sarah made pasta with lots of veg, and we made pesto, using some home grown ingredients from the garden.  Sarah very kindly gave me some pesto to take home.  I ate it almost as soon as I walked in the door.  It was yummy.

Bought a couple of hand towels and suction hooks to hand them on from a local pound shop.  Towels were actual £2 each.  False advertising.  £5

Rent day today: £350  

Day total: £355

That's the way it is.  Living rent free would be nice, but there you are.  £350 a month isn't half bad though.  People sometimes say it's "amazing" I found somewhere that cheap to live.  It's not amazing.  It's just quite good.  £3.50 a month - now that would be amazing.

Monday 17th

Brunch: Baked potatoes with rambo radish microgreens.  This one tray has gone a long way.

Tea: Fried rice with onions.

Plant pot: £10
Food: £6.39
Monthly broadband bill: £19.50

Day total: £35.89

Tuesday 18th

Breakfast: Lukewarm porridge with cinnamon

Lunch: Rice with spices

Tea: Bread and pickles  £3.70 from Bury market

Tickets for the RHS Flower Show: £29  I'll get round to posting about this next week.  It was quite good.  Here are some pictures I took:

Look at the size of these fucking cabbages

Some kind of outdoor office space

An LGBT friendly bus stop.

Carnivorous plants.  Do not stick your cock in one of these, if that's what you were thinking.  Which you were, don't lie.

An enormous wicker wasp for some reason.

Normal people behaving normally.

More pictures here.

Day total: £32.70

Wednesday 19th

Breakfast: porridge

Lunch: Fried rice

Tea: Linda McCartney veggie sausages.  These come in a cardboard box, making them zero waste.  They are also vegan.  Well done, Linda McCartney.

Food shopping: £4.95  They finally wore me down, did the Co-op.  That assistant who asks me every single time I shop there "are you interested in becoming a member?" has won.  I now have a Co-op card. Bastards.  You get money back when you spend money, like with a Tesco clubcard or whatever.  Thinking about it, as frugal enthusiast, "couponing" is something I should look into more.

Income from book sold on amazon last week: £13.68

Day total: +£8.78

Thursday 20th

Brunch:  Rice, spinach and peas

Tea: Bagel and coffee at Infamous £6.45

Dinner: Fried rice with spinach and peas, plus an onion (leftovers from this morning).

Day total: £6.45

Friday 21st

Breakfast: Coffee and porridge.

Lunch: Lentils with home grown green things.

Tea: Roasted chick peas.

Birthday present: £7.68
Food shopping: £2.05
Monthly mobile phone bill: £51.46

Day total: £61.19

Salary: +£255.70

Total outgoings this week (minus non-salary income) £609.34
Total outgoings not including rent and bills: £106.38

WEEK END BALANCE: -£353.64

Running total for the month so far
IN: £799.73  OUT: £829.80
BALANCE: -£30.07

So that's that. Sometimes life costs money.  I wish I didn't, but it does.  Still waiting for Utopia.  Should be any day now.


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