The Less is More Festival is (more or less) over…

I’ve been planning for it since May 2013 and it’s taken up almost every spare moment of my time since January this year, but yesterday was the day when all that planning became reality, when all the hard work paid off and people flocked to the Grove Library to take part in the Less is More Festival. And yes, they flocked! Read more

Less than two weeks to go…

Exciting times…the Less is More Festival 2014 is less than two weeks away! There will be more than 23 presenters facilitating 30 unique workshops talking all things sustainable lifestyle-related. There will be drop-in sessions for hands on activities like deodorant and toothpaste making and sewing, there will be eco movie screenings, and for the first time there will be a whole day of kids activities too! It’s going to be awesome! Read more

An unexpected surprise in the mail

Checking the mail this morning, I found an unexpected letter.

LiM LetterjpgThe community event I organised last year has won an award! How exciting is that?! Read more

Rested, refreshed and ready for 2014!

Ah. Four weeks away from it all. It was fantastic. I finally managed to slow down, take the time to relax properly and have a well-needed rest. I’m feeling so much better as a result.

That’s not to say I took time out from trying to live as sustainably as possible, keeping things simple and continuing to embrace minimalism. After all, why should holidaying change anything?

Having spent four weeks with a small backpack weighing less than 6kgs, and not feeling once like I was without something I needed, I am sold on the idea of taking as little as possible when travelling. It was such a great feeling not to be burdened by a huge heavy backpack, and it certainly made traveling around much more enjoyable. Read more

What I’ve been up to…

Do you ever get yourself into a situation, and wonder how on earth it was that you ever agreed to get involved in the first place? This time last week, that was me. You may have noticed (from the distinct lack of personal photographs on the blog) that I’m not a particular fan of having my picture taken. So how was it that I agreed to be photographed last Monday morning wearing a pair of overalls, sitting in a knitted (yarnbombed) wheelbarrow, clutching a live chicken?

Well…

Let me tell you about the Less is More Festival. Read more

Spreading the sustainability and clean living word

When I started this blog, I was motivated because I felt like I was at a real turning point in my life. I was on a journey… a journey that started with a bigger commitment to being more sustainable, but became so much more than that.  It has led me down all sorts of interesting paths. I felt like I was learning so much, and I really wanted to share what I was finding out, as well as keep a kind-of record of my progress.

I love being able to share what I know, and as part of that I got involved with Living Smart, a not-for-profit organisation based in Australia that provides practical knowledge and skills for people to live more sustainable lives. Read more

An accidental break from blogging…and some holiday snaps

As my parents are visiting, I’ve been making the most of the opportunity to have a holiday and I’ve taken them to some beautiful places in Western Australia over the last two weeks. Firstly we went to Rottnest Island for two nights, and then came back for a day before heading off on a week-long road trip to Denmark, Pemberton and Margaret River. My intention whilst I was away was to do some blogging, and I hauled the laptop away with me, but none of the places we stayed had internet reception and so I’ve been disconnected.

Sometimes, though, it’s nice not to have choices and to have the decision made for you. I would have loved to connect with the blogosphere, to read what people have been up to, and to share the thousands of thoughts I’ve been having whilst I’ve been away, but it was actually great to disconnect with the virtual world and connect with the real one instead. I’ve had a fantastic time and feel recharged, re-energised and re-motivated.

Want to see some holiday snaps?

Here is Rottnest…

rott1 rott2 rott3 quokka rott4 rott6 rott5Next we went to Denmark and Albany…

den1 den2 den4 den5 den6 den7 den8 den9 den10 den11 den12 den13 den19 den20 den15 den21 den18 den17den16

Here is the Gloucester Tree near Pemberton. If you look closely you can see metal pegs – the tree is a fire lookout and you can climb up it! I am not game for that kind of thing so stayed at the bottom and appreciated it from there.

pemb1 pemb2I have to say though, whilst the holiday was fantastic, being back feels good too.

Mini-break in Margaret River

I just got back from a short two-night trip to Margaret River, a beautiful region 300 km south of Perth that takes my breath away every time I go there. For those of you (that’s you, dad!) who think that Australia is just one big red desert, you couldn’t be more wrong.

(Generally when people talk about Margaret River, they are referring to the region, although there is a small town of the same name in the centre of the region and, perhaps not surprisingly, a river. I found this name-sharing somewhat confusing when I first arrived in Perth.)

Rather than write a post today, I thought I’d share some of my holiday pics. Nature is amazing.

MR1 MR2mr3 mr4 mr5mr6 mr9 mr8 mr7 mr10 mr11mr12 mr13 mr14mr15 mr16 mr17 mr18 mr19 mr20 mr21 mr22In other exciting news, whilst we were away my boyfriend asked me to marry him, and I said yes.

What ‘raw food’ actually is (it’s not just about salad!)

Yesterday was July 11th, and also (you probably didn’t know) International Raw Food Day (I didn’t know either, until Google told me). When I first heard about raw food I have to admit I was seriously uninspired. I imagined cold unappetising plates of salad for meal after meal, and never bothered to look any further into it.

I’d probably never have changed my mind if I hadn’t stumbled across a cafe in Fremantle called the Raw Kitchen about 9 months ago. The food at this cafe is truly delicious, and the continuous queues outside and the difficulty in finding a table at the weekends is testament to how good everyone else thinks it is too. As soon as I ate there, I was hooked. It really opened my eyes to just how tasty raw food can be.

What does ‘Raw Food’ mean?

Put simply, raw food is food that has not been heated above 46°C (115°F). As heat destroys nutrients and enzymes, keeping food below this temperature is thought to keep the food at its optimal nutritional levels, and preserve its life-force. Raw food is sometimes referred to as living food. If you’ve ever seen a plate of over-boiled, grey, lifeless and limp vegetables, you should be able to understand this premise.

Often raw food is also free from dairy, eggs, wheat and gluten. Ingredients used are unrefined and as close to their natural state as possible. To get a variety of textures, forms and flavours, techniques such as dehydrating, blending, soaking and freezing are used.

There can be lot of effort required in preparing raw food. Cooking often makes food easier to digest, so if it’s going to be eaten raw then often it needs to be prepared in some other way to make it more digestible. Raw nuts, legumes and wholegrains contain high levels of phytic acid (phytate), which is the molecule plants use to store phosphorus. Humans cannot digest phytic acid, and it binds to minerals such as calcium, iron, zinc and magnesium, preventing us from absorbing them. To make them easier to digest, there’s a lot of soaking involved (sprouting reduces phytic acid without reducing the nutritional content), and this takes time (often upwards of a few hours). Then, to dry the food again, it needs to be dehydrated, which means using a dehydrator, which run at 46°C and have a fan for air movement, for 8 hours or longer in order to remove moisture. Dehydrators are also used to create the texture of oven-baked food.

My take on Raw Food

I would never eat an entirely raw diet because I love cooked food: I love the comfort of a bowl of piping hot soup on a chilly day, there is a huge space in my life for oven-roasted vegetables and eggs for breakfast on Sunday mornings has to be one of my all-time favourites. Plus, from a sustainability point-of-view, I believe we need to eat according to the seasons, and that means we need to freeze, pickle and preserve. I don’t think it’s possible to eat fresh food every day of the year without importing some of it, and it’s not sustainable to fly fresh produce around the globe.

An entirely or high raw food diet would also put a bit of a strain on the financial budgets of most people, me included. When you try to buy organic, local, free-range and fairtrade it already adds a lot to your weekly shopping basket. To me these are non-negotiable, because the cost of not doing them is far worse. So being able to supplement these with grains helps keep the overall cost of my weekly shop down. Pasta, bread and rice may not have much nutritional value but they’re cheap, filling, and help offset the price of expensive vegetables and other ingredients.

Whilst I understand the principles of dehydrating food, for me, cooking something in the oven at 200ºC for 2 hours makes far more sense. We don’t have solar panels and I don’t think I could justify running a dehydrator for lengthy periods on fossil fuels.

However, there’s definitely a space in my diet for raw food. Particularly raw dessert. There’s no doubt that refined foods have little (or no) nutrition. White flour and white sugar offer nothing but empty calories. So what could be better than a dessert that removes the nutritionally devoid parts and replaces them with ingredients that are super nutritious and tasty?! Yes, raw desserts cost considerably more to make, but our bodies weren’t designed to eat sugary, fatty, carbohydrate-loaded desserts every day (or multiple times a day).

What does raw food look like?

I want to share with you some of the photos I’ve taken from my many visits to the Raw Kitchen. It inspired me to investigate raw food, so maybe it will convince some of you doubter out there that it’s not all lettuce and carrot sticks!

rawmacaroonsjpg falafels cherrycheesecake rawsoupjpg rawcheesecakejpg rawpizzajpg caramelslicejpg

Even the doubters must have thought some of this looks pretty tasty!

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I was on the radio for Plastic Free July!

plastic-free-july-logo-banner-lgeWhen I spoke at the Plastic Free July launch back in April (I wrote about it here) about my experience of Plastic Free July in 2012, I was also asked to record a brief interview with radio station RTR FM.

Well, this week my interview was aired!

Quite exciting, as I’ve never been on the radio before.

I have no idea how to add media files to the blog – or if it’s even possible – so I’m just going to share the link. If you’re interested, click here to hear the Understorey Plastic Free July programme recorded by RTR FM.

Happy listening!