We discovered Whitegate farm today, just off the A140 in Suffolk. Had a very friendly chat, bought some lovely milk supplied by their cows, and saw that they sell some wonderful cheeses! We will definately be back soon…. #livinggentler
We are putting together a blog page about what we feel are environmental confidence tricks by some big corporations. We have updated the page around liquid soap packaging, and would welcome comments about plastic micro packaging ready for our next update on https://livinggentler.wordpress.com/a-plastic-confidence-trick/
Well now here a thing…. Due to our love of liver, kidney, and haggis we already consume a reasonable amount of organ meat in our diets, but we can always do more. This campaign is designed to encourage people to consume nutrient dense organ meat, and reduce wastage from the meat industry in the process.… Read More Organuary 2020
Sincere Yuletide greetings to all our family, friends, and readers. So we tried our hardest to be as sustainable as possible and still enjoy a ‘normal’ christmas, as it turned out we had some unexpected fun along the way. Crackers… Usually supplied in a plastic box, filled with plastic ‘novelties’ that don’t even make it… Read More Christmas sustainability!
We like shopping locally, and we love buying local produce unfortunately local producers are largely overlooked by many. So a simple brunch plate such as in the picture…. Whats in it? The bubble and squeak patty is made from carrot, swede and potatoes from a farm in the next village. They have a little stall… Read More Local suppliers… Who are yours?
At the end of September I had a cardiac event. Sitting reading with number two daughter I got a sharp pain which wouldn’t go away… Hours later it was still there so I made the phone call I never wanted to have to make. 90 minutes later having travelled over 50 miles the ambulance arrived… Read More Counting blessings
The @livinggentler family had a lovely day at Tintagel, Our trip including a walk on the beach. With beautiful scenery everywhere, it was a shame the beast of waste plastic reared its head.. Myself and my eldest little environmentalist managed to find five pieces of waste the remains of a cola bottle, a blue milk… Read More Beauty and the beast!
We really are blessed here in Wickham Market, not only do we have an excellent butchery/ Deli/ Wine shop, and a Coop that sells local produce, but we also have a mini market on a Wednesday. So today it was drop the kids to school and a rainy walk into the village for some shopping,… Read More Shopping local
Unpopular, unprofitable, and unproductive. Fracking has been a contraversial subject for some time now. Aside from the environmental impact, in a time when we should be looking at moving away from fossil fuels the success of fracking on the UK mainland was always going to be questionable. Now it seems with the end of their… Read More An end to UK fracking?
The kids are loving our experiments with homemade bread. This is our latest 50/50 Chia, Poppy, and Seasame bread. Really pleased with the taste and texture.
Sustainability is a key feature in our living gentler philosophy and small wins count for a lot when living on a budget…. So we were recently giving sustainability some careful thought. ‘Energy star’ has researched the lifespan of common household appliances, and on average the humble electric toaster ends up in recycling after 5 years.… Read More Notes on sustainability
Nice day at the beach today, chilling, swimming with the family. The beach was surprisingly clean considering the number of people using it. We kept our rubbish and put it in our recycling when we got home. Along with a ketchup sachet, the end of a yogurt squeezable tube and some unidentified small pices of… Read More Day at the beach.
Anything that champions environmental and animal friendly ways of farming needs looking at. This film shows us there is an alternative to agri grown meat produced by the huge meat suppliers… And there is no surprise that pasture for life meats are more beneficial to us than meat from pellet fed indoor mass reared livestock.
One of the things we can do to contribute to our livinggentler strategy is to assess the impact of our actions. So looking at a simple loaf of bread, we ask questions about it and find we generally get these kind of answers for the average supermarket loaf; How far have we travelled to buy… Read More Our daily bread!
We at @livinggentler towers are glad to hear IHG are working to remove single use plastics from their hotels. It is going to take three years and is starting with those little bottles of toiletries that everyone takes for emergencies but never use… Intercontinental hotels group will phase the plastic nottles out of its 843,000… Read More Doing their bit! But its going to take time.
We have discovered a wholegrain lower sugar breakfast cereal the kids loveHoney Spelt PuffsOnly two ingredients spelt wheat and honey.
I don’t often have my blood boil but the pictures emerging of pollution on beaches over the last few days had done it! So where are these beaches and why isn’t something being done about it? Well my friends these are british beaches and this is the mess left by the great british public around… Read More The great Britsh Summer
I love that Waitrose is trialling a large range of packaging free products, it is a shame it is only a very limited trial in an Oxford store. Hopefully the outlook for this is positive and people will enjoy getting cereals, pasta, coffee and a host of Waitrose and their suppliers products in less packaging… Read More More packaging reduction news.
Good chatting to the lovely people at Old Hall Farm, great to meet their new lady butcher and hearing about their zero plastic, local produce, and rare breed ambitions…. As I travel around I find more and more farms are starting to sell direct, some on a small scale others like Old Hall Farm are… Read More Great ambitions
So we are always looking at ways of reducing out environmental impact. We have used Splosh products before with success so we are now looking at their dishwaher tablets. We are cautious as we live in a very hard water area and we have struggled to get a mainstream dishwasher product that gives us consistent… Read More Trying something new
98% meat sausages (pork and apple) from Old Hall Farm Woodton. Lovely sausages and a reduction in our plastic consumption due to the non-plastic tray they sit on. Topped of by bottled, yes bottled cream and banana… Yum!
The reality behind sustainable palm oil. Lack of regulation, licence breaches, deforestation and indigenous people ignored, this is government backed Malaysian. ‘sustainable palm’ production. We really need to rid ourselves of this uneccessary product created out of the greed from big business. Soon there will be no habitat left! https://m.malaysiakini.com/news/475322
We @livinggentler towers were really happy to see a luxury brand retailer taking its evironmental credentials more seriously. This is great news what are other retailers doing? https://www.retail-week.com/department-stores/selfridges-palm-oil-free-nine-months-ahead-of-target/7031818.article?authent=1
Lovely to have some great raw Jersey milk at home after calling in for some refills at Amwell End Farm.
So today we are heading to London to see the Matriarch of our family. On our way we will be visiting one of our favourite raw milk producers in Hertfordshire, and even possibly buying some of their lush icecream!
Palm oil and plastic free Easter baking!
We are loving that Clipper teas are now plastic free with the amount of tea we get through at Living Gemtler towers this will contribute greatly to our reduction in plastic. The tea is pretty tasty too!
Found the lovely Colletts farm today in the Essex countryside. They do lovely raw Jersey milk. They are currently a low volume producer just starting out. Sophie has lots of experience around Jerseys, it seems they run in her blood. It was nice to chat and hear how passionate she is about animal welfare and… Read More More milk
Hi everyone, We have recently moved and are finding there are only so many hours in the day, with painting and decorating, plumbing and electrics all our energies are taken in getting the house as energy efficient and habitable as possible. Consequently this blog has been crying out for an update for a long time.… Read More Only so many hours in the day
We like this story a lot, and it is a very under used service. Not only have Morrisons brought back brown paper bags, but you can now reuse your own clean plastic food containers to take home meat, fish, and other products from the in store market street. Reuse your plastic at Morrisons
