Eco achievements

My Eco Self's eco achievements this week have been quite impressive - highlights include;

• eating leftover lying-low tomato sauce for four days straight. I made it again for a friend coming for dinner. I had good intentions of using up all my food waste too - the sauce calls for the onions to be discarded at the end of the recipe. I was making carrot and lentil soup with leftover carrots from my vegetable box, and the recipe called for tinned tomatoes and onions. So I thought I would just chuck in the onions from the sauce. This would have worked if I hadn't burned the lentils to smithereens.
• not washing for four days. Not by choice, mind you - I have just returned from the Greenbelt Festival.

Festival food is somewhat of a challenge. My friend Ruth and I were camping, and I made an attempt at bringing my own food so that I wouldn't spend a fortune buying food from the stalls around. Well, deep in my heart I knew the call of homemade chickpeas with lemon juice and freeze-dried parmesan wouldn't resound that loudly with me...so I looked around for more appealing options. There weren't many. My favourite festival option is the Tea and Toast Van.

They serve Fair Trade and organic food, and it's all vegetarian and locally sourced where they can. I had to draw the line at the veggie-bacon option (it looked like a rather unpleasant mortadella), but the mozzarella and red pepper tapenade toastie I had was very tasty. Oh, and they have free fruit for kids. There were a few vans which sold organic burgers and sausages direct from their farm (a great idea for a farm to diversify like that, I think) - but on the whole I think sticking to vegetarian is the way forward at these events...

My Eco Self is definitely drawn to pastel-coloured vans. Remember Lola's ice-cream van? I still think selling food from a pastel-coloured van may be my culinary calling.