There have been several stages in my journey towards being more green. The first was recycling, then Food Miles and starting to grow my own food. From there I went on to composting and now I’m thinking about waste in general.
Last year, Pete and I stopped having our organic vegetable box delivered, because we just weren’t eating our fruit and veggies. Now that life is more settled we’re going back to it – we love our weekly delivery from Abel & Cole. The aim is to eat more fruit and vegetables, whilst cutting back on packaging; Abel & Cole supply most of their produce loose in a cardboard box (which you give back to the driver for re-use) and odd things here and there in compostable bags. Back at the depot they compost a lot of their own waste.
At our end, we sometimes struggle to keep up with the supply, and the beginning of the week is the time when we need to use up last week’s stuff before the next lot gets delivered. And so, inspired by The Book of Rubbish Ideas, we now have Rubbish Meals.
Rubbish Fruit Salad
One favourite is fresh fruit salad, the recipe for which I have in a notebook from when I did Home Economics at school! You don’t really need a recipe for fruit salad, of course, but I use it to look up the quantities for the syrup.
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 5 min
Total time: 1 hour 10 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients:
lemon: 1
Water: 250 ml or 1/2 pint
Sugar: 100g or 4 oz
Directions:
- To make the syrup you dissolve the sugar in the water in a small saucepan and then bring it to the boil. Boil for about a minute, and then leave it to cool.
- Once the syrup is cool (or, if you’re in a hurry, cooler!) you can squeeze the lemon into it.
- Then you’re ready to do the messy bit – chopping all your ripe fruit into chunks and stirring them into the syrup.
- The whole lot goes into the fridge to chill nicely, and will keep for a couple of days.
If you’re pressed for time then you can use the syrup from tinned fruit, although it’s a much less refined affair. You can skip the lemon juice if you don’t have it, or use lime instead. Or if you’re feeling healthy then you can use juice.
Most fruit goes very nicely in a fruit salad, but if you’re adding banana then leave it to the last minute – it goes very squishy and brown after a while. And although my fruit salads are generally ‘pale and interesting’, you can add more colour by leaving the peel on your apples.
And if you want something a bit more fancy, then why not try fruit in mulled wine?