At the end of April, I was sitting in the famous Fiddlers Green pub in Portaferry (Northern Ireland by the way for those new to my blog) to celebrate the end of yet another successful fieldcourse. It was my first (and only) Guinness of the week, and little did I know that it would also be my last (for 6 months anyway..).
As someone known to 'hold her drinks well', after my sporty and healthy life led me to reduce my intake, I was surprised at how one (just one!) drink seemed to affect me, so adding to tiredness of a week of early mornings and late evenings working with the students I was ready to collapse in bed pretty early. But even so, after just one drink and an early night, my morning run was somewhat disturbed from it and the all of the following day I felt less than my normal strong self. And that's when I decided that maybe I just shouldn't drink for a while. And this while has lasted 6 months, in all honesty without me noticing or without me missing it! Let's have a look at some changes that it made in my life:
I recommend for everyone reading to try, not necessarily forever, at least one night out without drinking and see that you don't need it to be funny/liked/dance/talk to people - and if you do find yourself thinking that you need the booze to do all these things, then, maybe, is time to tackle the issue instead!
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Most of us are aware that exercise should be incorporated in our busy schedules if we want to lead a healthy life. Guidelines recommend a min of 30 min of daily moderate exercise (something that increases your heart rate). Exercise is often viewed as something "too expensive" to be included in daily routines, and that's true if we look at gym memberships, swimming pools, clubs and classes... And if you include the fact that eating healthy is also more expensive than eating junk food (on this note I believe something really should be done by higher authorities!) - it may seem that healthy lifestyles are not affordable! But let's have a look at ideas to exercise for free :
So - no more excuses - get on your gear and get out!!!
Coffee.. as many worldwide I am part of the 'coffee-addicts': without my first morning cup I can barely make sense. But how can we coffee addict ensure that our addiction is as sustainable as possible??
First: choose fair trade
Those beans that give us so much pleasures comes from countries far away where workers can be exploited, so make sure not to contribute to their exploitation by choosing fair trade, look out for the symbol and remember that cheaper isn't always better!
Second: coffee machine
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New fancy machines have recently taken over the coffee market - these often use pods which are disposable... if you have one of those don't worry there are solutions: recyclable pods, recycling through the company, or buy a refillable pod!
Third: Give coffee a second life |
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Plants also benefit from coffee properties so revitalise your greens by giving them some of the leftovers or adding grain to the terrain !!!
So - could we learn how to cook them and make good use of a nuisance species?
In Italy, for example, we eat a closely related species, Carcinus aestuarii, along the Adriatic. Fishermen harvest the crabs just before they molt, and these softshelled crabs, called Moeche, are placed in an egg mixture, then fried and eaten mostly as aperitivo - YUM!
On a really interesting website, called eattheinvaders,org (also amazing for recipes of other nuisance species, including herbs) there is
a recipe for soft shelled crabs:
2 soft-shell crabs per person
about 2 teaspoons of butter per crab, or enough to cover the bottom of the pan
Cleaning a softshell is easy, for in this condition it is far from being its usual belligerent self and can be handled with impunity. With a sharp knife remove the eyes and the stomach, which is the soft substance just below and behind the eyes. Make a slit along each side, fold back the top skin a bit, and remove the “devil’s fingers”—or gills—those spongy strips just under the back. Rinse the crab in cold water and the job is done.
Melt butter over medium heat in a pan equipped with a tight cover. Put in the crabs, cover, and sauté for about 10 minutes, shaking or turning them occasionally so they brown to an even golden color all over.
Soft-Shells should be served with French bread. Garnish the crab with lemon slices, parsley, and watercress.
And for the Moeche
As many soft-shell crabs as you can find
3 egg yolks
1 cup flour
3 tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese
salt to taste
Wash the moleche, or softshell crabs, in salt water. Beat the egg yolks and place in a bowl with a pinch of salt and Parmesan cheese. Mix the crabs with egg, allowing them to rest in the bowl for a few minutes to absorb the yolk.
Dip the crabs in flour and fry in hot oil (375 degrees for approximately five minutes or until golden brown). Dry them on paper towels to absorb the grease. Sprinkle with salt and serve hot.
From the same website, a comment from Mark Zanger says "I’ve hit only some big ones on the bay shore of lower Cape Cod, but find them so delicious they are worth picking from the shell. [...], I will stir-fry them black-bean sauce in the Cantonese manner.", and apparently chefs have been challenging themselves to try new recipes. Rich Vellante, executive chef of Legal Sea Foods in Boston, told the Boston Globe that green crab stock had a “pleasing ocean flavor.” He thought he could do something with it–and has started testing risotto and minestrone dishes.
So I am calling all "wanna-be-chefs" to try out new recipes with these nuisance, I for one will challenge myself to try out some new recipes and why not, maybe host a crab party (NIOZ people you are warned in advance now, put your cooking hats on!)
And keep your eyes open for some of my own trials on the recipe page (when I actually find some time to do so) and if you want more info on my work feel free to contact me :)
Some interesting articles of crabs effect on mussel plots in the meantime (will add one of my own once it gets finally accepted....):
Capelle, J. J., Scheiberlich, G., Wijsman, J. W., & Smaal, A. C. (2016). The role of shore crabs and mussel density in mussel losses at a commercial intertidal mussel plot after seeding. Aquaculture International, 24(5), 1459-1472.
Calderwood, J., O'connor, N. E., & Roberts, D. (2015). Effects of baited crab pots on cultivated mussel (Mytilus edulis) survival rates. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 72(6), 1802-1810.
Maybe it's just an Italian say but what it basically means is shopping for local, low impact primary ingredients (fruit, veg, meat, milk produces..) - effectively produces that are so local that have travelled 'zero km'. (okay, maybe one or two...) .
As I am trying my best to limit my supermarket buys, while adapting to life in a new country (with a new language!!), I want to share what my latest finds have been and hopefully inspire you to search for similar or set something like this in your local area!!
Markets:
I found that on Friday morning there is a really good market full of local produces - especially fruit and veg from local farmers! Farmers markets are the way to go.. Wish they had more meat, but for that I saw a sign today on the road and I will go scout it next time I cycle past (it's Sunday as I write and everything seems to be closed here..)
Stalls:
This, to me, was even are more peculiar and curious find - which made me really happy!
This allowed me to buy some pretty yummy pears and apples for just €2 for two big bags and two squashes which I am really curious about (hey for €0.50 each!) - Okay I had to cycle 9 km back with them so technically they were 9 km food :D
Much much better than supermarket, where most times food doesn't have a clear origin, has travelled for long times (also losing some its great vitamin content if you think of fruit and vegs!), and it is kept in packages! Better for your health, better for the planet and better for your community as you are buying from a neighbour!!
I have just arrived (well I arrived on Thursday), and I have to say I am excited about this new chapter in my life.. One thing for sure, I am excited to get accustomed to the new foods (I will have to be careful with the cheese though!), but I am even, strangely, more excited about my first buy: a BIKE!
Because, can you live in the Netherlands without one?
Short answer: probably no. And it’s so flat, that it will be zero effort biking, just as I like it.
Environmental benefits
Goes without saying that biking is part of a green and sustainable lifestyle. Faster than walking, you can use it as a great commuting alternative, perhaps integrating it to public transportation if your commute is too far (as they seem to do in the Netherlands a lot, with many train stations equipped with big bike lockers). Or why not go for the challenge and go the extra mile door-to-door?
According to the Queensland department of transport and main roads, cycling 10km everyday to work would save 1500 kg of fossil fuels each year..
Not only that, but parts to make a bike are less environmentally damaging (think batteries, and waste from parts that break on a car? And all the electronics… )
Health benefit
And you are not only saving the environment and being sustainable, you are also being healthy. Cycling can be part of your 30 minutes recommended daily exercise, you can incorporate some HIIT (high intensity interval training) as part of your commute to have some additional benefits, or maybe download a tracking app and see how you are improving, maybe challenge yourself to go faster, or maybe take your evening commute to a longer route to destress after work? And why not, maybe you will become addicted and go for weekend rides or even biking holidays or join a local cycling team…
However: CHOOSE WELL
First of all, choose a bike that is good for you: is it comfortable? Comfortability will determine how much use you will get out of the bike. Also, riding the wrong kind of bike (wrong height, wrong settings..) will potentially lead to accident or over-using injuries..
If you don’t like it, or are likely to get hurt on it, chances are that the bike will be left to rust in the garden, leading to waste. So, choose well, take your time, study. If you feel like you got the wrong one, try swapping, or sell it before changing it.
I would recommend that to limit environmental impacts, a bike should be bought second hand – why producing more if there are plenty of good ones already out there looking for a loving owner before becoming rusting waste? Maybe, if you fancy some extra work, you will bag yourself a nice bargain which just need some TLC – but hey you would have saved a bike from the dumpster and made a good action for our planet!
If you really really want a new bike (no judging here.. there are reasons for wanting a new fancy shiny bike, I get it…), then study well the company where it comes from. What are their environmental and ethical standards? Where are the bikes produced? Where are the materials sourced?
For children bikes, they will be replaced often during the course of the child growth, as the bike will need to get bigger and bigger. Thus I believe new bikes would be a bit of an unnecessary waste (of money too!). Second hand shops/online platforms should be your main point of contact – yes maybe the kid wants a shiny new pink bike, but it can always be fixed with a nice coat of paint and could do for a fun Sunday activity!
So, my aim for the next few days: find my perfect second hand bike for my everyday needs and commutes. Best point is that I love the look of Dutch bikes, and the second hand market here seems pretty good so…finger crossed!
It's THAT time of the year again: sunshine and warmth can only signify one thing, summer holidays!
As you might have already guessed from previous posts on travelling and taking local holidays I am not the classic holiday maker.
And there is only one place that I can travel to where no matter how long the journey was I feel 'at home'. The sea, but more precisely, my father's boat (or as I like to wishfully call it.. my boat..).
Living on board:
Now, this 'home' is not a mansion. It's a reasonably large sailing boat, being 12.6 m in length, with two cabins and all the commodities such as kitchen, a living area and two toilets - and you can, I swear, live very comfortably on it. However there are a few lessons to be learnt, and I will share with you those learnt in the past 19 summers on it (wow, how time flies...). These lessons will apply mostly to spending just a few summer months on the boat, not to full-time life on board, although I guess some could be applied to both situations equally
1) Pack light: lesson number 1 and possibly the most important one to cohabit well (more on cohabiting later..). Storing space on board is limited, and often priority for storage is given to items that are required for boat maintenance and other essentials - and this rule is of particular importance if you are going on someone else's boat. Using little space as possible and being tidy is often seen as a sign of respect, and this is one of the most common arguing causes so... So don't expect to bring your whole summer wardrobe and have space for it (plus, do you really need all of those clothes? Think about donating some to charities and feel lighter overall). Bring only essential items, plan to wash them often as you go, living on board often does not require glamour. If you really want bring just one outfit for those rare occasions where you will moor in a nice town and think you will want to go out for dinner feeling nice. If you don't like wearing the same things too often think about getting some 'double-face' items (two colours or fantasies depending on which side you wear), or a dress that you can wear in multiple ways - they are great choices. To be honest I usually end up wearing the same 2-3 t shirts, the same pair of shorts and a bikini all summer long and usually space in my bag is taken over by studying books and electronics (the kindle is an amazing choice for reading books...).
2) on the same topic use a fold-away bag: a backpack is perfect, or any other kind of bag you have that you can hide away in a storage compartments. Trolleys and other wheeled bags are a waste of space....
3) Choose your company : I recommend that for on-board living the boat isn't filled to full-capacity. Might be good to make it cheaper if you are renting a boat for a week, however space is not only limited for objects but for people too - and when people are space-limited often conflicts arise. For prolonged periods I recommend to go with someone you know and go-along with well. Bear in mind that in this case by 'going along with well' I don't mean you laugh a lot together, but you know and respect each other spaces, you know how the other will react in certain situations, some that might be more stressful than others, and know how to act accordingly. I.e. don't bring your new partner on it if you care about your relationship.. just my suggestion.
7) lastly but not leastly, and this encompasses many other things within: BE FLEXIBLE! Living on board may throw you down some new routes, take them, figure them out, some may have steep curves where you have to slow down, others will have pits to avoid. Go ahead, be careful and remember to have some fun in the process!
Back to the point: What was the school about? We spent one week at STARESO learning about benthic ecosystems (= the seafloor), which are intrinsically very connected to the pelagic system (= the water column). For example primary production by plankton in the water column is both dependent upon the nutrients released by the seafloor and will also bring some of these nutrients back to the seafloor realm once it dies off.
Day 1 lesson 1: Scale is very important!
So how do you measure these impacts? Classic/older approaches tended to focus on changes in species richness, diversity… However it is hard to place impact potentials to these metrics – species are changing worldwide.. so what?
Lesson 2: Focusing on functioning is more important.
But what is functioning? How do you measure it? As I mentioned at the beginning, nutrient exchanges between water and seafloor are extremely important. Nitrogen, Carbon.. the balance between these essential nutrients is what keeps waters clean, fish healthy, seafloors stable etc.. Goes without saying that maintaining the right balance will maintain essential services such as the provision of food and the maintenance of tourism.
And here is where the summer school really did came in: we learnt many techniques to measure fluxes of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, metals and other nutrients from the water into the sediments. Learnt to see how species can contribute to these fluxes, from collection methods to laboratory to statistical analysis of such complicated data. We learnt how to use less-invasive methods such as cameras that can penetrate the sediment allowing us to gather quantitative data on the health of such sediments. Hey, we even learnt how to model fluxes of nutrients (O, C, N) in seagrass beds using complicated mathematics that were taught in an easy-to-understand way (perhaps the swim breaks to oxygenate the brain helped!).
I am now ready to take it all on board and use these new techniques in my future scientific explorations. So watch this space. And in the meantime, remember, everything is connected. So respect the ocean and the surrounding land (all of it, it will connect somehow). The planet is providing for us, but it all hangs in a delicate balance. Until we understand more, let’s try to do our best to keep it in balance and keep it as clean as possible, as nature made it…
Feels both like it was yesterday and like it was in another life, when as a naive 19-years-old I arrived at the Plymouth railway station and began my UK adventure...And now, 8 years later I am ready to close this chapter to start the next adventure in Dutch-speaking lands...
I am going to keep this post positive and, instead of compiling a list of things I am definitely not gonna miss or I struggled with, I will compile one of those I will miss instead
So here the sentimentalisms start From the UK in general..:
From my Belfast and NI time:
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Of course I am also gonna miss all friends and people I have met on my journey, however technology is so advanced nowadays that I am sure we will keep in touch and we can visit each other so I won't get too sentimental!
And just to leave you all with a great quote from an even better book:
'What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies'.
Jack Kerouak - On the Road
I admit, or better confess, to have been a vegetarian for many years myself, with some flexibility whenever I returned home for short holidays, as my family found it too hard to comprehend, understand and even allow me, so had to close an eye. For various reasons, I have not been a vegetarian for a couple of years, and so I want to reassure all that this is not going to be a 'judgemental' post like many we see on the web nowadays. You eat meat, fish, dairy and eggs? So do I! However I am constantly trying to understand how to make this more sustainable. For example by eating less of all of the above, i.e. only one of them once a day, or have one or multiple vegan day a week.
But back to the seafood - why is this old-school concept that eating from the sea is so sustainable still alive? We know well by now (or should) that the sea does not provide us with unlimited resources. Yes, is vast and extremely deep, and there is still so much that we don't know about it - yet we are depleting many fish stocks and we are fishing down the food web.
And what about aquaculture? This is often considered a sustainable choices, farming fish so we don't deplete stocks.... but funny enough most don't realise that some fish feeds from aquaculture actually come from the meat industry, or we fish small fish (such as anchovies and sardines, which make for pretty great human food!) in quantities that are not as sustainable as many think! Not to talk about antibiotics, and the risk of farmed fish escaping and changing local gene pools, or even becoming invasive species.. There are all sort of ecological and environmental hazards associated with aquaculture.
But - as you know, the aim of this blog is to provide some solutions, not just reiterate the problems.
So here is how I try to be as sustainable as possible while eating seafood:
- Go small scale. The smaller the boats the lower the damage in my opinion and the greater the chance to help some fishermen and their family instead of funding some big company.
- Variation is key. Try different fish, maybe some crustaceans, molluscs. Don't always eat the same things. Try something new, it's exciting to try out new recipes and new flavours, and you spread the
- eat less of it
- Get a whole fish, understand where your food comes from. Teach your kids. Take them to the market or to a fishing town/fishing harbour. I am a strong believer that the fish fingers culture and ready frozen fish fillets have taken us away from remembering where our food comes from, what our food is and was.
- use the scraps. If you buy whole fish, head and bones can make great fish stock that you can freeze and use for other recipes later!
- And moreover, buy only what you need, and realise that often less is more (this goes for everything...)
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