I had this blog post all planned out as soon as I heard about Walk to School Week (21-25 May 2012). Little Miss C has recently started walking both to and from nursery on her own rather than being pushed in the buggy. Half a mile each way and she loves being able to point everything out to us and tell us about what she's going to do at nursery, or what she's done that day. It's a lovely part of the day for both of us, but the slight spanner in the works this week is that she's got chicken pox so no nursery and hence no walk to nursery. Tuesday is usually nursery day so it seemed right to write ... read more
FoodCycle
Have you ever thought about what happens to food that's still on the shelves of your local supermarket when it reaches its "display until" date? Much of it is still perfectly edible, but as it can no longer be sold it instead often ends up just going in a shop's general rubbish. Wasted food - not nice, but sadly a fact of life in many shops. There are an estimated 400,000 tonnes of surplus food that can reclaimed each year from food retailers here in the UK, but all this food can be turned into healthy and nutritious meals. Food poverty is another huge problem facing us here in the UK ... read more
Yeo Valley – so much more than just yoghurt!
Sometimes a physical change of scenery can help you clear your head and see things clearly and that's exactly what happened to me yesterday. I was lucky enough to be invited, along with a handful of other bloggers, to visit Yeo Valley - home of yummy yoghurt and some equally yummy farmers (well, so says their TV adverts!) - to find out more about the company behind all the yumminess and their way of doing things. When I recently wrote here about wanting to use my blog to find out more about the people and things that make me smile this trip was exactly the sort of ... read more
Garden leeks
With all the warm and wet weather that we've had recently the garden has been shooting up, but it's also been difficult to spend time out there gardening due to it being so wet. Our veg plot is ready for things to be planted, but to be honest I'm a bit behind schedule in doing so. However, there are a few crops still in the ground that have been growing at speed recently. A long, long time ago I had my first attempts at growing leeks from seed and after a very slow start I'm delighted to say that the above photo shows the first of the crop brought in to our kitchen for ... read more
How big is #nissanLEAFcar21 – The Motion Picture
Following on from yesterday's post #nissanLEAFcar21 - The Motion Picture has now been released. Sit back and enjoy! ... read more
Just how big is a Nissan Leaf? – #nissanLEAFcar21
When I recently tried to tell you nearly everything you ever wanted to know about the Nissan Leaf I mentioned my surprise about just how roomy it was inside. It seem that my bland statement wasn't enough though and a group of local parent bloggers decided to test things a little bit further by asking the question "How many mummy bloggers can you fit into a Nissan Leaf", specifically #NissanLeafCar21? The answer it seems is an amazing eleven mummy bloggers, one daddy blogger (i.e. Alex who is taking part in the Nissan Big Turn On Challenge) and one bump! So, but ... read more
Nearly everything you ever wanted to know about the Nissan Leaf – #NissanLEAFcar21
Please don't tell daddacool this as he might get bigheaded - but he actually made one of my ambitions come true this weekend. You see I was lucky enough to be taken for a spin in the Nissan Leaf car that he currently has as part of The Big Turn On competition - #NissanLEAFcar21. It gets better though - he actually let me press buttons! Well, more accurately the touchscreen but you get my drift. So, why am I so excited? Well, this was actually my first trip in a fully electric car. I've been in a hybrid a couple of times in different foreign cities where it has been in ... read more
Damson gin – the finished product
It's nearly six months now since I started telling you about our efforts with our first batch of damson gin, but now that I'm seeing this year's blossom on the damson trees in our garden it's got me thinking about how we can use this year's harvest and I'm already hoping it's a good one. Back to the gin though... We made two batches in the end and thought that we'd bottle up the first one in time for Christmas - both for us to sample some and also to make some homemade Christmas presents. This bathc must have had about four months in the kilner jar, so not as mature as it could have ... read more
The National Trust respond
Following on from my post on Monday I have to give full marks to the National Trust for the speed with which they have responded to me. Not long after 9am on the Tuesday morning I had received an email holding response from the Wimpole Estate and that morning both the Estate and the National Trust centrally had also responded to me on Twitter. At just 2pm there was a full response from the General Manager at the Wimpole Estate which I include below. Here at Wimpole Estate we take our position of sustainability very seriously; whether this is the continual conservation work we do in both the ... read more
Let down by plastic
We made the most of the last day of Mr C's Chrsitmas holidays today to take Little Miss C along to Home Farm at the National Trust's Wimpole Estate. It is somewhere that we have visited several times before and LMC loved all the animals that she visited on the farm. On this visit she was also old enough (and mobile enough) to make the most of the ride on tractors and also all the playground facilities. For her it was a perfect day out. We enjoyed the farm visit as much as she did, but there was unfortunately one bit of our visit that left us feeling let down. We chose to eat lunch at ... read more