We love good food and we love to cook. Because we live 40k from the nearest town, we've learned to create our own take-away delights. Home made burgers, pizza, chinese, kebabs and more. All cooked from scratch using raw ingredients. Over time we've found we no longer enjoy the commercially bought versions of many of these foods.
Last nights challenge came when visiting family members expressed a desire for wonton soup. I had most of the raw ingredients, including home made chicken stock in the freezer. Sadly, there were no wonton wrappers. The offer was made to drive into town to get them, but after some discussion about food miles and a quick search on the net for recipes, we decided to make our own wrappers.
I'd never made these before and was surprised at how easy they were, three simple ingredients - flour, egg and water. I was even more enlightened when I realised I could use the same dough to create ravioli, lasagne and other pasta. Low cost, nutritious, fun and much lower food miles and packaging costs. Why would you buy the packaged versions? The answer to this came to me straight away - time. It did take time to make the wrappers and the resulting meal. However, I can say that this would be offset by time savings later. We fed four people on our efforts last night, have enough left over to feed four more tonight AND even more to pop in the freezer for another time.
Personally, the satisfaction I felt working with my daughter in the kitchen and presenting a nourishing and tasty meal, with as much care for the environment as possible, to our family was worth every bit. When I think back to my life in the corporate world I can remember very few moments that gave me the same intense satisfaction.
Here's what we had:
Wonton Soup
Fried Wonton
Plum glazed organic chicken
Fried Rice
Every dish was hand made from raw ingredients. Of these ingredients the following were produced on our property: Bottled Plums, orange juice, lemon zest, eggs, herbs, chicken stock.
A quick check on the Organic Linker food-miles calculator shows we saved somewhere between 6533km and 7000km on the wonton wrappers alone. If the product were manufactured in Asia and travelled by plane this would save around 399kg of carbon. (a very rough but impressive figure).
We could have done better and will do in the future. We have an organic pork farm in our region where we can purchase our pork for mince. We can grow the Bok choy cabbage and we will be growing our own chicken (once the great chook tractor project is finished. We have the incubator but it has been too hot to hatch chicks just yet). The installation in the new year of our solar grid connect will also improve our energy footprint and lifestyle.
There are many small things you as a consumer can do to decrease food miles, carbon usage and improve your health and lifestyle without having to make unmanageable changes in your life. It's all about being aware and responsible for your choices.
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