Hot on the heels of my post the other day, my wife just got a notification through that our order this week will arrive this morning between 9-10AM.
You know what this means, don’t you?
Category: Tastes (Food/Drink)
Running Scarce
Tea, best drink of the day. Or, so the UK advert went. And I agree, enjoying several cups per day. I’m not sure I’m up into double figures, but it’s close!
I also try to avoid using plastic where I can. I’ve tried loose-leaf tea, but my wife has banned it because of the mess I make. So, I look for plastic-free tea bags. It’s not as easy as you’d think.
I know before I start that this is small-fry, but I’m going to post anyway.
A whole brand has formed around Yorkshire Tea. Several different varieties. Is Yorkshire Tea meant to be a tad stronger than Somewhere-else Tea? I’m not sure. They have pages on their web site about how their tea should be biodegradable soon. Please. Don’t bother telling me what you will do, tell me what you have done.
Biodegradable tea bags, in the UK, has traditionally meant designer tea bags. So I was very happy, last year, when a supermarket brand, PG Tips, announced that they were starting to use fully-biodegradable bags, as you see from the graphic.
PG Tips make their tea bags in several sizes (i.e. the number of bags per box) and this logo only appeared on one size. No matter, that size was easy enough to obtain. I figured that a brand like PG Tips (which is owned by Unilever) is so big they probably have one factory per box size, and only one factory had been converted to make fully-biodegradable tea bags.
I mean, this really was the ideal situation. The tea tasted decent enough, the bags were good, and the price was the standard supermarket price.
Until a few months ago, when I noticed that this size box was no longer on supermarket shelves. Neither was it on their web site.
So I contacted PG Tips. They might have dropped that particular size, but to my relief three out of the four remaining sizes are still biodegradable. What they have done, however, is to drop the logo. There is no mention whatever that their products are biodegradable.
I think they’re missing a trick here. If I go online, I can see biograbable tea bags from my local health food shop, but at 10x the price. There is a premium attached to them, so when one player enters into the market and is offering to sell them that much cheaper, it is something to shout about.
Or, maybe I’m one of only a few to be asking fo biodegradable bags – I’m probably more conscious than most – but I surely can’t be the only one to want them? Am I really the last of the tea drinkers?
Flexy Lexy
No, not a new position I just invented. I’ve been told that I am a flexitarian! A new word to me.
From Google: A semi-vegetarian diet (SVD), also called a flexitarian diet, is one that is plant-based or with the occasional inclusion of meat. In 2003, the American Dialect Society voted flexitarian as the year’s most useful word.
I still eat meat a little. I had cod last night and a few nights ago, delicious ultra-thin pizza thing called a Flammenkuerche, something I first tried in Alsace and stocked by Lidl from time-to-time. Topped with cheese and ham. But you’d be surprised, a lot of things I eat are pure vegan.Tonight was tofu and vegetable rice. My aim when I became a “flexitarian” was no more than being conscious about how much meat I was eating, vith a view to eating less of it.
Water Into Wine
I’m very good these days at turning a negative into a positive. Let’s face it there aew so many negatives!
I’ve run out of Pyrex bowls in which to cook my porridge. I’m just trying to wait for the dishwasher to be full before I put it on, so a couple of empty bowls are in there waiting to be washed.
Havever, I need breakfast, I NEED breakfast, and remembered some Pains au chocolat in the freezer, ready to bake. I mean, porridge may be good for my carbs but….fuck it!
I just need to train myself not to burn my tongue, and let them cool a while as I get them out of the oven!
More Veggie stuff
Funnily enough, on the same subject as yesterday, I had my first interrogation yesterday about my reasons for deciding to be vegetarian. From one of my fellow-volunteer friends. I think I did ok, although it is not really an argument I had presented before, certainly not to other people. Obviously I’ve mulled these things over myself, and come to my conclusion.
This volunteer is the wife of a beef farmer, which probably gives a clue what view she has. “I just don’t think a lot of vegetarians think it through”, she said, “they become vegetarian in order to see lambs gambolling around the fields, where in fact these lambs are only there in the first place as part of somebody’s commercial venture”. And, “a lot of land that is grazed by sheep or cattle is unsuitable for farming crops instead”. Both of which, I can imagine, are perfectly true. Certainly, a lot of this woman’s land is the water meadows surrounding our village. i.e, they flood in winter. I have no idea whether this also makes summer crops unviable although I don’t really see it as important.
My response was simply to say that I didn’t expect to see *more* animals, but fewer. Let’s have some rewilding instead. The only reason there are so many animals in the first place is because there is a market for them, so if I can help to reduce that market, so be it.
And, even if we *are* already farming crops wherever we can (I doubt that but there’s certainly something in what she said), then fewer animals would mean less animal feed, meaning that instead of growing crops for animals to consume, people could grow things for humans to consume instead. So it is kind-of recognising that we have force-bred animals for years, and simply doing less of it.
And, I already mentioned rewilding. I’m struggling to see a downside to this, if I’m honest, other than affecting somebody’s commercial interests.
It is funny debating with someone, because your feelings will inevitably reflect your overall opinion, but unless you actually discuss things with someone, those opinions are often not very articulate. It doesn’t at all surprise me that a veteran politician will have rehearsed and developed an argument for months or years, probably. They might well start off with a gut feel, but it takes them time to come up with something articulate, where they could maybe take the argument, run with it, and convince other people that they are right. I’m fortunate that the only person I need to convince is myself.
Mister Bump 
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