Sunday, August 21, 2011

alle Melanzane

My carbon footprint is not doing so well these days.  Of course we still ride our bikes to uni most days (I'm up to more than 1500km for the year so far!), and barely drive anywhere, and don't buy much stuff.  But, since the start of July, I have flown to Perth and Melbourne, and been a passenger on a drive to Cairns and back.  Andy has been a passenger in a road trip down to Keppel Island, about 10-12 hours of highway driving.  And we're in the final planning stages for a Round The World trip which will put all kinds of nasty emissions out there on our behalf.  So I'm feeling a little guilty.

So when a friend (hi James!) offered me some garden-fresh produce, of course I said yes.  In terms of 'food miles', I'm going to go ahead and assume these eggplants (and some yummy cucumbers) had a grand total of zero -- because they were transported by bicycle.


And they were super yummy, cooked down for half an hour or so, then mixed with tomatoes and herbs, following the recipe for Spaghetti alle Melanzane from Urban Vegan.  Except, instead of spaghetti, I served with gnocchi.

Because the other thing that suffers with all of this going places is spare time, so quick easy meals like this one are a necessity!

4 comments:

Hannah said...

I've been thinking of you a lot this week, Theresa, wondering how everything is going career-wise and travel plans-wise! I hope everything is wonderful :) xo

Nadine said...

Your round the world trip sounds just amazing! Very jealous. My carbon footprint is a bit bad at the moment too.. have got into some very bad car usage habits which are proving hard to break cos its been really cold here and I like the heating, its too cold on a bike!!

Kari said...

1500km on bike is impressive! I think that goes some way to countering the plane travel (especially as that can be hard to avoid when you live in Australia). Fresh produce transported by bicycle sounds helpful too, both for carbon purposes and for dinner :)

Carissa said...

I love when people offer me fresh produce from their gardens! I'm always like, YES PLEASE!!! That's awesome how you bike so much. I wish that I had more places close to me that I didn't have to drive.