Happy Birthday to me! A mostly plastic-free birthday present-wise, with the only plastic because the present came from before we started the challenge (and in any case it doesn’t break the rules…oh, and I LOVE mint chocolate, so it should be allowed just for that). (The second-hand puzzle was requested by me btw, and is not because Mr MIH is tight!)
Had a lovely pizza lunch with Mr MIH, and popped into a local ethical wholefood shop (first visit), a local farm shop, and Sainsbury’s. Here is my haul.
Some general staples in there – red lentils, wrapping paper, coffee, and some organic wholemeal flour I treated myself to test out whether we can taste the difference. Plus, cinnamon and raisin bagels (loose in Sainsbury’s – I just popped them in my own cloth bag, then went to a self service till – the lady supervising did come over at one point, but didn’t say anything, so an easy win there!), a cucumber from the wholefoods shop, and crisps from the farm shop. The cucumber were definite treats at £1.50 for the cucumber and 99p a bag of crisps! Plus, not shown, a batch of muesli for Mr MIH to try, from the wholefoods shop. I did work out an estimate of the cost of mixing our own muesli from unpackaged sources, but it was only 15% cheaper than buying from our usual no packaging supplier. However, this one came in even cheaper – I think it is not so organic or deluxe, so we will give it a go.
Here are the crisps with my homemade hummous from yesterday:
Plus, in other news, whilst we were enjoying the crisps and cucumber sticks with yesterday’s homemade hummous after school, I discussed with Little MIH that maybe the trying things 10 times idea to decide if you really don’t like them was actually meant to mean you tried them on 10 different days. But it didn’t matter, she declared she now loved the hummous. Win! I will make a bigger batch next time, and freeze portions because apparently you can.
And here is the chopped crisp packet in our compost caddy (also with the remains of a water bomb, a packet of which I found languishing in the back of the cupboard – natural rubber = compostable). We’ll see next spring if they really do compost down in just over 26 weeks!
Unsuccessful searches were: cardboard wrapped ice cream – Sainsbury’s didn’t seem to have any in stock (although they do have it online) (despite selling flat wafers for it!); peanut butter – I found 2 jars today without plastic tamper wraps and without plastic lids, but one seemed to have plasticised label, and the other I baulked at the price (it was a Suma brand one). However, the price wasn’t as bad as I thought – don’t get me wrong, it was just over twice the price, so was still very expensive, but not quite as bad as I had calculated. Plus, there was also a larger jar option, which worked out a little cheaper.
I also noticed that it seems to be the non-plastic-lid jars that have the plastic tamper wrap in various shops. I can’t decide which is the lesser evil going forward (or cough up for the Suma one)! Interestingly, Sunpat (which has a plastic lid) has a paper tamper feature, rather than plastic. I can feel a letter coming on to the other peanut butter manufacturers – I think removing the plastic would probably align with the values of the customers who buy the premium (no added sugar or salt) peanut butters, and there seems to be a viable alternative (unless the wrap also provides a seal, as I have a feeling that the plastic-lidded jars also have a seal across the top of the jar, under the lid. But if the wrap is purely to provide a tamper indication, the paper alternative should do the trick.
And, lastly, a spot for another time was clotted cream in a jar from a farm shop.
Fails
None
Unsolicited items
1 envelope window
Chocolate box wrap and inner. Sellotape.
Has anyone else made any changes recently, or had success in finding any items which had previously proved difficult?
Make It Happy 