Upcoming opportunities to build community where you live

Neighbours Day 2017 is coming up on the weekend of March 25/26. This is a great opportunity to get to know your neighbours and build community where you live.  You can sign up here to get emails with ideas of how to celebrate (the most recent newsletter for our region even told us how to apply for supermarket vouchers to help with associated costs!), or check out the official website here - it has a number of resources to help you get started.

Your celebration could be as simple as inviting your nearby neighbours over for a cuppa, or you could band together with other neighbours to organise a full-on street party!  You can see photos of Neighbours Day celebrations in our street from 2015 here.   We typically find people from about 1/3 of the houses in our street come along and we've made a number of friends through it.

Also, Tuesday week (the 28th) is Shrove Tuesday - the last day before Lent.  This is typically celebrated with the eating of pancakes 😅.  We had a couple of retired neighbours over for a pancake breakfast last year and hope to do the same this year.  It was good to spend time with them and also gave us an opportunity to talk about what Lent has come to mean to us.  You can get heaps of ideas for how to host a low-stress, community-building celebration on the Sacraparental blog here.

A week visiting my parents

Recently we spent a week at my parents' place.  It wasn't really a holiday, as Martin went to work every day as usual, but it was a great way to spend lots of good time with them.

Whilst we were there, I also spent a lot of time admiring their beautiful garden.

This hippeastrum had a beautiful scent that drifted metres beyond the plant!

How to buy chocolate without supporting abuse of cocoa growers

I am extremely concerned about the high levels of abuse in the cocoa growing industry.  I am not willing to pay for people to be abused just so I can have a treat!

My bottom line is this.  If the workers who grew the cocoa for a particular chocolate brand didn't earn enough to feed themselves and send their children to school, or if they were subjected to serious abuse, then I won't buy that product.  As far as we are able, we are committed to living lives that allow our global neighbours to flourish.

How do I identify which chocolate is good to buy?  Below I state my minimum labour standards, discuss briefly how I assess common claims made by chocolate brands and why I love certification, and then expand on these at greater length.

Minimum labour standards

When I look to buy any chocolate/cocoa products I first examine whether the workers who grew the cocoa earned enough to live on and whether they were subject to:

1. Slave labour;
2. Child labour*;
3. Unsafe use of agrochemicals.

* child labour doesn't include all work children do.  It refers to children doing work that takes them out of school or is harmful to their natural development (carrying overly heavy loads etc.).  If the children concerned aren't slaves, child labour can generally be prevented by paying the adults sufficient that they don't need the kids' labour to survive.

Okara for a speedy, no-fuss sourdough starter

I very much like sourdough bread and keep a stash of sourdough starter in the freezer.  However, reviving it is a delicate process and I'd love to be able to make sourdough bread without that fuss.

Recently, I've stumbled upon a way to do just that!

In order to reduce our impact on climate change, I've started making soy milk at least once a week: I drink it 'as is' in the summer and make it into pudding in the winter.  Every batch of soy milk generates a cup or so of 'okara' - the depleted soy beans.  It turns out that these ferment really easily.  Other people have taken advantage of this to speed up the fermentation of idli or just to make the okara more palatable.  I've recently realised I can use it to make a speedy sourdough starter!  I haven't found any internet references elsewhere describing how to do it, so here's my method.

Whangarei holiday Christmas/New Year 2016/17

A week or so before Christmas, Martin and I headed up to Whangarei to spend time with his parents.  We broke the journey resting for a few hours in Wellsford Library - the staff their were hugely generous, giving us a meeting room all to ourselves and generally being really helpful.

Dad's vege garden's doing really well

I got my daily 30+ minutes in the sun in the hammock chair straight outside the room we were using.  Martin got through a lot of reading and I made good progress on my current sewing project.

Bethlehemian Rapsody

This is brilliant!  The Christmas story, done absolutely fantastically to the tune of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, complete with muppet-like puppets!

I have fond memories of singing along to the original with friends when I was at university, and this version is just so well done.  It was written by Mark Bradford and directed by Darla Robinson, both of Puppetunes.

Review: Ecosa memory foam mattress for someone with limited mobility

To my regular readers: this probably isn't of much interest to you.  I'm putting it up in the hope people with health issues similar to mine will find it whilst investigating if a memory foam mattress is suitable for them.

About me

I have severe CFS/ME, meaning that I am very weak.  I spend a lot of time in bed (20-21 hours per day), so a comfortable bed that minimises back pain is very important to me.  I use a bed pan (on my own) a few times a week and occasionally am too weak to roll over in bed and need my husband to help turn me.  I try to do lying-down exercises on my bed three times per week.  I'm very sensitive to stimuli of all kinds (including touch) when I'm tired.  My ability to control my temperature is compromised so I can easily get too hot or too cold.  I weigh around 110kg, my husband weighs around 85kg and we sleep in a Queen sized bed.