Moving to London + My Plans + My Lifestyle + More....

Picture got from UrbanPath

I am in the kitchen eating something that I don't feel I should call a 'curry,' but was inspired by the idea of making a curry. What I made was completely oil-free and yet, it's perfect. This got me to think about my life next month and the months/years following that.

Honestly, I haven't felt my best this summer as I am living with family and my family doesn't eat the healthiest of foods. I really miss feeling awesome all the time and always being full of energy. I also miss cooking for myself and sorting out what I eat through out the week and having access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

I haven't mentioned this on any of my blogs, but next month, I'll be moving to London and I plan on eating even much more healthily than I did back when I was in the west country. I plan on eating more raw foods than I did before and I ate at least on raw meal (usually dinner). I plan on waking up in the morning and having a melon for breakfast or a bunch of mangos or a papaya filled with clementines, apples, berries and passionfruit, coming back from school or wherever, in the afternoon and having more fruits or a nice, healthy home-cooked meal and having a huge fruit and veggie salad for dinner.

The thing is, London is an expensive place. This got me to think of how I can continue this lifestyle and make it even healthier without being broke often. I started looking at nearby farmer's markets, looking for a nearby Morrisons, online stores that deliver fresh and organic produce to people living in London, such as PlanetOrganic, et cetera. All of this could still be very expensive.

Here's where my curry-like dish comes in. Some of the ingredients I used were frozen. Therefore, this meal cost less than a pound and was also relatively quick to make and the ingredients had already been chopped up (and had nothing added to them). As some of you know, some frozen produce tend to be cheaper than the same products, but when they have not been frozen. Also, freezing produce prolongs its shelf-life and keeps the food fresh and with its nutrients longer.

So, I have decided that I am going to purchase quite a number of frozen produce and for the items that are cheaper to buy not frozen, I will purchase and keep them in a freezer till I need to use them. I have also decided that I will buy quite a number of unripe produce if they are on sale and ripen them at home and of course, eat out and order food as little as possible too.

If I do order food as I know I will some times because I know I did it this past year and I wasn't even an architecture student then, I will order and support vegan restaurants such as Juicebaby.

I plan on 99% of what I eat being vegan. Why I did not say 100% is because I know that if I go out with friends, if I can't find a vegan meal on the menu and wherever we're eating can't make the food vegan (for some reason), I will eat vegetarian food. Also, I don't plan on telling my family that I might be going vegan as they still haven't accepted that I am vegetarian and haven't accepted how I eat yet and my grandfather actually offended me yesterday when he said something about "how I should eat." So, if I can cook my own food while with family, I will and if I can't and there happens to be vegetarian food available, I will eat as a vegetarian.

So, yeah, I've finished eating my curry-like dish and I think I've pretty much said all I thought to say in this blogpost (and more) so, I'm going to end here.

I will upload a few more posts this week.
Talk to you then.

~Sammy

What is my shopping like?

Heyo!

So, some of you might be wondering what I eat in a day and what my shopping's like. So, I decided to sort out a shopping cart or two online. The edible items in these shopping carts are meant to last till....Sunday or possibly Tuesday depending on how often I prepare my own meals (hmm.....they may last for a fewer amount of time then).

I normally spend between £29 and £40 a week on produce. That is a lot, I know, but I call it an 'investment in my health.' You see, I used to get sick ever so often so, if you look at the hospital, medical centre bills and what's not, on the long run, this lifestyle would be cheaper compared to me being sick ever so often without it.

Okay! Here's my shopping cart for the next few days! :)
(p.s I may or may not add a few more things to the carts before I pay for the items)

Okay! So, I just added two items to the Morrisons order. They were 1 litre of Morrisons' 100% Fruit Orange and Raspberry juice and 1 litre Morrisons' 100% Fruit Clementine Juice. They each cost £1.29. When I buy juices from a grocery store or supermarket, I only buy these (meaning that I only by juices at Morrisons) unless I am getting a green juice to drink if I am physically in a grocery store/supermarket. I buy these juices because they are not from concentrates, they do not have any ingredients added apart from actual fruits. So, the clementine juice is freshly squeezed clementines and the orange and raspberry juice are freshly juiced and there are a few more fruits in that one. I buy these juices especially because they're clean, they're nice in smoothies and some times, I just need something sweet to sip on while working and can't be bothered to make a smoothie.

Yeah! So, that's what my shopping carts are like for the next few days/week. I get good discounts at Morrisons when I go to the actual store and I have a Match&More card too so, although the cost of the produce is this high, I tend to spend much less some times (for example, I once got such a huge discount that I spent just £6 on my shopping at Morrisons).

That's all for now!
I'll write again soon :)
~Sammy

p.s I may seem like I'm advertising Morrisons and yes, I think they're an awesome supermarket so I am letting you know about them. However, Morrisons was in no way involved with my deciding to make this blog entry and they do not know about it.

Food Miles

Picture gotten from fifediet.co.uk

Hey!

So, if you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that I'm not totally against food miles and that I said that I will blog about why I am not 100% against it.

Okay! So, food miles is basically a measure of the distance covered by your food from where it is produced to the plate of its consumers and it is usually used to make people more aware of the carbon footprints of what they choose to eat and make them more environmentally conscious and basically "save the planet." This sound awesome, doesn't it? So, why am I not totally for it?

Well, the concept of food miles doesn't take into consideration all that it should do when helping someone judge whether to buy something in order not to promote or encourage businesses and companies that are emitting great amounts of carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the environment and consume TONNES of energy. For example, in the case of growing tomatoes here in the UK, WAY more energy will be consumed than if the tomatoes were grown in a warmer place like Spain and then importing it over here. Or...or....(I'm on a roll here!) growing rice in deserts or citrus fruits in Arctic nations. Their energy consumption and environmental impacts will be HUGE compared to if they were grown in a more suitable nation and then imported by the country that requires them. You see, the carbon emissions can be WAAAAY greater producing some of these foods locally!

Another thing is that the food miles of the ingredients in the ready-made foods we eat especially those prepared and consumed locally can have LARGE food miles which means that they can have some pretty dandy effects on the environment (pure sarcasm there). Take for instance a Christmas cake and bread sauce both made and consumed in London. These two can have food miles of approximately 34,000 and 10, 800 respectively. Why? Well.....(OH! I AM ON A ROLL HERE!) with the Christmas cake, the sugar could have been imported from Guyana, the orange from Israel, the nutmeg from Indonesia, the lemon from Cyprus and the nuts from Brazil!! That'll be a food mile of 34, 268 if the ingredients were gotten from those countries to be used to make a Christmas cake which will be consumed locally in London.

Lastly, fair trade. Many of you know what that's all about. Fair trade aims to improve the quality of life of farmers through the selling of their produce. Why wouldn't you want to help them? Especially those who you are way better off than? Huh?

Okay! So, you see some of the weaknesses of this concept that we call 'food miles' and you can see why I am not totally for it.

I still eat bananas from Spain, tomatoes (and pasta) from Italy and God only knows where the rest of my fruits and vegetables (and pasta) come from! I actually do not consider food miles when I go shopping. I do prefer to buy organic produce and fair trade when available, but food miles....I honestly do not look out for them.

Carbon emissions and climate change are a pain, I know, but we can be causing more damage  to the environment producing certain things locally.