Violence of legumes for my Sunday lunch.
I boiled a lot ‘rice and lentils for my meal and for my cats.
Then I mixed them with minced meat and small vegetables cube (for cats).
For my meal , I did a mix with tomato sauce, peas, fried onions and sundried tomatoes in oil into strips. Fantastic!

I just wonder why I chose to open a can of peas (certainly not the children of this April) instead of fresh beans that I had in the fridge from the fresh market and especially in season?

Stupid me, stupid me three times. For not thinking before acting, for being left with haste because the dish would come much better, with different tastes .

Not that I’m sorry about this dish, was not bad at all ,but now I find myself with a new can be disposed. So I searched a bit on the web, and I found funny and colourful ways to recycle cans and much more, and now that out is a bit cold keep the windows open, and i can play a bit’ to creative recycle .

I had already built a music instrument and I was very proud of it, so much to take (almost) always around when you play with capoeristas.

Now, what else can I invent? Simple decorations, for example. O strange musical
instruments as they BungtBangt & Capone’s group does, which I hope to invite for the second edition of MusiCamp.
Am I digressing? Yes, and for now I say bye to you and I start my work.
What is the object, the more beautiful made, with recycled materials in your home?

Translation: Alberica

This is a super recipe: Midnight Pasta
Oh, how well sounds the word pasta?
Reminds me the childhood and small macaroni with tomato sauce, pinched up from the plate with greedy and still little fingers.
Pasta, the one that if you eat at midnight makes you gain weight more than anything else, that you would run an hour to char it, the one that you eat directly from the pot burning your soul,the one that fills all the spices and the possible remains of the fridge, the one that stitch on the belly and on the thighs.

This evening I cooked the Midnight pasta because I was greedy to try the fresh peas I bought at the market and shelled pod to pod. But is it already the right season? Mah

And then the zucchini, uh, that taste from the vegetables garden (or at least it seems to me), I sliced ​thin and sautéed with the onion and nothing more.

Do you want the recipe?

Midnight Pasta:

Ingredients: pasta of your choice, oil, onion, zucchini, peas, turmeric, salt, pepper, and good blues music.

Cook the pasta in boiling water while in an other pot the onions gets brown in a bit of oil. Add zucchini cut in thin slices or in small cubes , then the peas, salt, a little pepper and turmeric to go-go.

Eat directly from the pot, not to dirt the dishes, but this time using fork, not with fingers as a child.

Trivia:
Turmeric – curcumin, are anti-inflammatory and antioxidant, the body absorb it thanks to the combination with black pepper.

At the end I cut my hair without any help of the hairdresser.
I took a pair of scissors, and ZAC!
Despite of that, my face remains the same, just shorter than six inches.
However, this does not prevent me to take inspiration, maybe tomorrow or tonight, suddenly cut them again, and then in the worst of the case a saint hairdresser will adjust my work, in silence, without any critics.

And why I cut my hair?
Obviously to save shampoo, conditioner, water and energy for the dryer. Vanessa Farquharson also did the same (but  she didn’t crop to zero as I thought at the begin), and I say, I never thought about the fact that long hair pollute more than short one! To cut it  in winter would have been smarter, when demand of power to dry it is greater, because as soon as the season gets a little bit warmer, I let it  dry at the air. So you can calculate the seasons based on my hairstyle, and not just on my colourful dresses bit like hippy.

[It is also very likely that the haircut made ​​a cut also on my ability to make sentences with sense. Now, seems I'm using the words like dices that I'm shaking in a glass, composing the sentences at random. Maybe it's just spring’s influences or maybe it's just my impression.]

This is just one of the strange things I’ve done in the name of ecology.
Now I just have to try alternatives to shampoo, such as Aleppo soap or Aloe Vera one.
Any suggestions?

What is the most absurd thing that you have ever done for the environment? I don’t know, like take shower with buckets and bowls to save water, wash clothes in the rain, being naked as long as possible not to dirty the clothes (at home, we hope), eh?

Translation: Alberica

This evening the “Leri” started to creak, and while I came home and thought about her, and how much I love my bike. Yes, I thought every time cycling made me happy.
Marivì donated Leri to me at Christmas 2007. I remember I came home with a big smile and ribbons attached to the handlebars that floating in the air.

Once, a boyfriend took me for a couple of miles on the barrel, and while we were whispering words full of love, an old man shouted o us, smiling: “Even I was carrying my wife like you guys when we were still in engaged!“.

I remember I learned to ride thanks to my grandfather and I fell just once in my life about two months ago, trying to climb a curb too high (a rowdy who didn’t appear when I was six – yes, I learned cycling later – is emerged now).

I hurt myself just once when I was little: I was seating on my dad’s bike we fell because I had accidentally put one of my foot in the spokes.

I remember one time we were three fruends on a bike and we barely managed to stay balanced laughing so much, getting beeps and ringing of sympathy from the drivers. Poor bike.

I remember the first time I cycled with no hands it was downhill. Dangerous.

Once I rode hand in hand with a lover and another time I came home crying so much that the tears ended up in my ears.

The bike makes me independent, my bike suggest me alternative routes. Allows me to observe the colour and smell the scents and the smells of my Milan, to remember the names of streets and connect my memories.
My bike is always with me, holds me back sometimes. I get with her the groceries, I ride beside a friend who jogging, I cross the city to meet someone through pedestrians and cars, singing and swearing.
The bike is for all seasons, especially in spring when thousands of bells populate the city and bloom cycle paths, strokes illegally on the busiest streets.

Give me a bike and I’ll be happy… lost, but happy.

What is your best memory (or post) about bicycle?

Translation: Alberica

In spite of my No Shopping life (no clothes, make up or technology), every day my table is full of new boxes, fliers and plastic bags.

The reason is that I often receive little presents (like a new razor) or something like 15 (yes, 15) menstrual cups, samples to swap with my friends, or else because sometimes my lapse of concentration makes me make mistakes and take brochures or free press newspapers. :-S

So I thought that I didn’t just take these virtues as a dress to wear, and that also my imperfection, vanity and doubts are involved in this project.

As I wrote before, this is a chisel job, that doesn’t involve just my actions, but my whole conscience, my will and the interior and social life.

Also Colin Beavan thought it was easy, until he hurt his mother when he gave up an aeroplane journey to visit her. Or else, Vanessa Farquharson (Sleeping naked is green), who made a change per day (366 days), and turned off the fridge, but didn’t manage in giving up meat completely.

The meaning of values and conscience changes, but pulls also the people you are surrounded of.
This happens both negatively and positively.

So, if I can be happy to see that some of my friends got vegeterian after they met me, I can also see that I look like a bad person if I don’t accept to be taken home by car, or if I dont’ go out for a drink with friends.

I found out that the way to be happy is not easy, and that many times I have to balance relationships, mental health and persistence.

By the way, I’m not downhearted. I’m just learning how big and unexpectedly meaningful is this project: much more than I thought.
And this make me very, very happy.

My name is Claudia, I’m Italian and I write to introduce my low impact project, that started a few weeks ago.

It’ll be a one year experiment: I’ll try to reduce my carbon footprint (eating vegan, using the bike and, I hope, solar energy) and part of the project will be the use of “Ethic and Ecologic Sexual Accessories” :-) like vibrators, condoms and so on.

Many friends of mine already ordered condoms in your website, and I’d like to talk about your website and “test” some samples. ;-)

A few weeks ago, I started to look for some ideas about the Low impact love.

You won’t be surprised: I found a whole universe of information, online.
For example, there are many products (like birth control methods, accessories, toys and lubes) which are made of natural ingredients, good for vegans, oli-free and cruelty-free (www.thesensualvegan.com), or else, condoms made of bio, ethic, ecologic rubber.

So, I wrote some emails to ask for some samples to “test”.

The first pack I received was from the kind Kia, who works in French Letter, a Fair Trade company that sends ethical and natural condoms, is carbon neutral and fights against AIDS in Zambia.

If you think about that….even love has an impact on environment!
So, why don’t we think about using ecological accessories? We’ll respect our health and also the planet.

What else?

…

Stay two-ned and follow the blog to read the next posts about a no impact love ;-)

Good evening!
My name is Claudia, I’m writing because of my “Low impact project” that started a few days ago.
It’ll be a one year experiment: I’ll try to reduce my carbon footprint (eating vegan, biking and, I hope, using solar energy) and part of the project will be the use of a Menstrual Cup and Cloth Pads [or degradable tampons].
Many friends of mine already ordered Menstrual Cups in your website, and I’d like to talk about your website into my blog of this experience (sorry it’ll be soon translated in english).
What about a little exchange?
[...]

This is the way my relationship with Teresa started. She works for Feminine Wear, who sells cloth pads, sea sponge tampons and menstrual cups.

Me and my bad english and Teresa, so kind.
This post is about girls, but it’s important to realize that every day many
pads and tampons get rubbish to be burned or lost in the oceans.
So I thought it would be good to go back to the past of our grandmothers, when the disposable didn’t even exist.
Reuse, wash, take care of objects that will be with us for many years, can make us women of better values.

Six months ago I began to use a menstrual cup, but I hadn’t tested yet those products that Feminine Wear sells.
So I asked Teresa if she could send me something, and volià! Here they are, some useful products from England (too far, I know), in a degradable envelope.

Next month you’ll know how I felt with this products. ;-)

Here is my last email to Teresa, my new friend:

Teresa GRAZIE!

your pack has just arrived!
thanks also for the sweets ^_^ and your sweetness! :-)
I’ll write right now a post to say WE did it, and next month I’ll tell how it is with your products. I’m sure it’ll be perfect!

Since I met Giovane Arrogante I changed many behaviours, and especially I gave up buying roll-on and sticks, rather bicarbonate.
Bicarbonate is very useful to clean the house and the body, and it works also as fungicide and sterilizer, or else it’s good to bake a cake or soften your towels.
Anyway, we all use it frequently in the house, or we should, if we wanted to live One Impact Lives.  ;-)
But nobody told me before, the bicarbonate industry seems to be the cause of the whiteness of a beach in Rosignano, Italy.
Of course I would like to see that thing with my own eyes and investigate, but the doubt makes me think that I should simply give up using that product.
It can be easily replaced by kaoli and essential oil, and so on.
To make a deodorant, for example, you’ll find here an easy recipe, but what about the toothpaste? I’ll find surely a solution. To clean vegetables I’ll use vinegar, and to my cats, for now, degradable litter.
Here it is the recipe.

Armpit dust – Kaoli and essential oils
Ingredients:
corn flour, 2 spoons
kaoli, 2 spoons
essential oils (you have two options: 10 drops for each oil: tea tree, lemon, sage, or 15 of lemon and 15 of tea tree – my stock)
Mix the ingredients dropping the oils and stir to make them homogeneous.
Keep it in a glass pot and apply it with a cotton ball.
The recipe comes from Francesca Marotta’s book, Cosmesi naturale in pratica.