The Greening of Gavin

Archives for May 2008

McDonalds Chooses Green Coffee

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After reading this article today in the Herald Sun, “Maccas hopes green beans are new short black“, I have come to a few conclusions which I have listed below;

  1. McDonald’s may have a green conscious after all,
  2. They are trying to bring green products to the mainstream market,
  3. They may be trying to capture a large percentage of the coffee drinking market from other companies,
  4. It maybe just marketing hype to suck people into their restaurants to impulse buy the other crap they sell. Super size me baby.

Coffee is one of the most energy intense crops to bring to the western market place, and is grown mostly in tropical areas which is far from the markets it is sold in. The food miles, and therefore the oil utilised, to bring a cup of coffee from where it is grown in South America, to where it gets drunk in Australia, is staggering. They could have picked an easier product to “go green” on, and get some eco kudos in the process. Even by changing to organic pickles or using wholemeal buns would have been easier. And don’t get me started on the disposable paper cups with the plastic lid! Not very sustainable at all, unless they are made from recycled materials.

Don’t get me wrong, I like coffee, and I think that the Fair Trade branding is a good thing for producers, but I believe that we waste a lot of resources by drinking a cup of “green coffee” from McDonalds imported from South America, when we could either buy coffee from East Timor or other Asian countries, or beans grown right here in Australia. A lot less resources would be used if we all adapted this methodology. Locally grown produce is always a better option than shipping or in some cases flying produce from the other side of the world to your plate.

With all things considered, it may not be such a bad thing that McDonalds are tying to do, because I have found from experience, that once a mainstream citizen buys one green product, they start to ask many more green type questions about themselves and the way they live. They then do a little more research and start to buy more green products, and it is a cascade effect from thereon in. Next thing you know, they will have solar PV on their roofs and be driving a hybrid! Seriously! Funnier things happen at sea, I know, I have been there.

Saving Energy in the Kitchen

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On Sunday night, I cooked our dinner in my new pressure cooker. The results were outstanding, and where just as I remember from my childhood. The meat was so tender, the tastes were amazing, and it only took 30 minutes (once the pressure built up) to cook the meal! Before I cooked the first meal, I had to season the cooker by boiling 2 litres of milk and 3 litres of water. Apparently, because it is aluminium, this boiling of milk/water seals it and stops the stains from forming.

I started out simple and made a Beef Stew, with seasonal vegetables. Here is the recipe from memory, as I whipped it up on the fly when I cooked it.

Gavin’s Beef Stew

500gm Stewing Steak or any cheap cut of red meat, 2 cm cubes
3 large potatoes, diced 2 cm cubes
1 stick of celery, chopped coarsely
1 large onion, slices
3 large carrots, sliced
3 cloves garlic, sliced
100gm mushrooms, sliced
1 sprig fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1 litre beef stock, low sodium
3 tablespoons cornflour
3 tablespoons gravy powder
1 half cup water
2 tablespoons oil
salt & pepper to taste

Heat oil, add onion, garlic, rosemary and celery to soften. Add beef and brown. Add remaining vegetables and stock, seal pressure cooker, and cook for 30 minutes from when the control valve starts to jiggle, reduce heat so valve just moves. After 30 minutes, turn off heat, reduce pressure as per cooker instructions and remove lid. Make a paste out of water, cornflour, gravy powder and thicken stew. Bring to boil with lid off, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve with mashed potatoes and crusty bread. Serves 6 with sufficient seconds!

A fantastically simple meal, and it was very hearty on a cold Sunday evening after working on the chook house all day. I could not believe how tender the meat was, especially after only cooking for 30 minutes. Kim was very impressed, because she is normally put off by beef because of its chewyness. Normally that type of steak would take at least 90 minutes to get to that stage in the oven. The vegetables all kept their natural favour and were really distinct in the mouth, with the potato breaking down just enough to help thicken the stew.

This type of cooking is not only energy efficient (I cooked on the medium gas ring on the lowest setting), but you can utilise the cheapest cuts of meat, and they will be tender in no time. I reckon that even game, such as kangaroo and emu would become very tender in a short time. Every time I have attempted to cook roo it has been tough as old boots! I might give it another go now.

I also found heaps of recipes on the net at the Pressure Cooker Centre, where Kim ordered it from. It is a Perth, W.A. based company, and it took 2 days to get to Melton. The model I have is a SILAMPOS Classic aluminium 10 litre. It was simple to figure out how it worked and the instruction manual was easy to understand. I would recommend this cookware to anyone who wants to lock in nutrition, and to cook meals quicker without resorting to processed fast food.

I dare say that I will be cooking many more meals in this great piece of cookware.


Chateau le Poulet

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Finally, we made a start on the chook house on Sunday. However, to complicate things, we are doing two projects at once. We are converting the area around the clothes line into a vertical garden as well. This will serve two purposes, one, to block out the low fence to the neighbours, and, two, be able to grow passionfruit and kiwi fruit in a tight space.

For the vertical garden I am using CCA treated logs as the main supports as they have served us well in the past with the ones I put in 6 years ago not showing any sign of rot. They will be all joined together with three cross beams, which will support the trellis. We will then put in some raised, narrow, no-dig garden beds at the base of the trellis and plant passionfruit and kiwi fruit, and maybe there will be some space left for some runner beans in the summer. Here is a picture of Megan digging one of the seven holes that were required for the support posts.


Note the string line so that all the holes and therefore the posts are in a straight line! And here is Amy taking a break, and she looks so impressed. They took turns digging half a hole each with my trusty auger. They were a great help, honestly, and I thank them very much!


Adam then set the posts in place with quick set concrete, whilst I made sure they were level. Here is the what we have completed so far. Here is the four poles against the fence line. Note; the fence is on a lean, not the posts!

And here are the last three posts against the shed. We managed to get all the required posts in the ground for the vertical vege-patch garden. You can see the existing pea beds to the right.

The chicken coop or Chateau le Poulet, as Adam and I have named it, will mostly be made up of an existing structure that we are adding a largish roosting/nesting box to, and will enclose a 3 sqm area in chicken wire. Kim has told us that it has to look aesthetically pleasing to the eye, as does every other project I embark on. Adam has done all of the hard work whilst Butch and I supervised. Here is Butch checking out the standard of work now in his very dapper jumper!


Here is where Adam took up some of the paving stones and weed matting. This is so we can then build the structure. The hole is for the nesting box that we are building. It should be big enough for them to roost in during bad weather. There will be another post where Kim’s shadow is, for the fourth corner, and there will be a door facing the plum tree.

We have designed the nesting box so that it will have a hinged lid to get to the eggs and so that we will be able to clean it. The main cage will also have a door and the floor will be covered with sugar cane mulch, and when it gets mucky we can rake it up and put it straight into one of the compost bins to add to the vegetable patch later on. Here are a few photos of Adam and I attempting to construct the nesting box. It is 85 x 90 x 85 cm so that it will fit in the hole in the structure.

We managed to get one side on by the end of the day, and we are making the walls of the box by overlapping some fence pailings that were given to us by a friend. It is just like aluminium cladding but with wood. It will have a corrugated iron roof that will be hinged as mentioned before. We plan to do some more work on it tomorrow night, and should have most of it finished off and fitted into the main structure by next Sunday. I also plan to get the chicken wire and the rest of the cross supports on the weekend, so we should have all the materials to finish off both jobs.

The total cost to date is $240 for both projects, but only about $60 for the chicken coop. My estimates are that it will probably cost another $170 to finish everything off, but that will not include the timber for the raised no-dig beds that will be going under the posts and trellis. I will have to find some cheap red gum sleepers from somewhere.

So far so good, and with another few days of hard labour from the kids and careful supervision by Butch and myself, we should be able to fill the cage with about 3 to 4 bantams or Isa Browns that we should be able to find locally. A big thanks goes out to Adam, Amy and Megan for helping out with the physical labour. I treasure your muscle-bound, young, hard-working bodies!