This has been a very long and tiring week. After an amazing but busy weekend, I was up early on Monday to go to Edinburgh for the day. One very long day as I was not home until after 1am!  Luckily my kind manager suggested I work from home on Tuesday, an offer I gladly accepted.

In the evening I watched Cowspiracy.  I had wanted to watch it for a long time and it is now available on Netflix so you can easily watch it.  Please watch it.  It is such an important film. Important for now and for future generations.  There are so many important messages from this film it is hard to pick the most important but here are some of the frightening facts:

Do you boycott products containing Palm oil because of the rainforest destruction involved in its production?  26 million acres of rainforest have been destroyed for palm oil but 136 million acres have been lost for animal agriculture.

Half of the grain and legumes produced in the world today are for livestock, not humans. If that food was provided to humans, no one need go hungry.

Do you try and save water because it’s an important resource?  In the USA today, 5% of water consumed is for domestic use but 55% goes to animal agriculture.  

It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce 1lb of beef.  So one quarter pounder requires 660 gallons of water.  That is equivalent to 2 months worth of showers.  2 months of showers worth of water for one burger.

Raising animals for food uses 30% of the world’s water consumption, uses 45% of the world’s land and is responsible for 91% of the Amazon’s destruction.

Maybe you don’t eat meat and stick to fish.  The amount of marine life killed during harvesting is too large to count accurately but the estimate is 28 billion animals pulled from the sea last year.  That is so many there is not enough time for species to recover.  For every 1lb of fish caught for eating, an additional 5lb are also caught.  At this rate, the oceans will be dead by 2048.  So too will all the animals that depend on fish such as polar bears and seals.

There are so many more scared facts but I won’t go on.  I urge you all to set aside an hour and a half to watch this film.  Don’t blindly and ignorantly contribute to the destruction of the planet.

So having seen Cowspiracy, I was more determined than ever to remove animal products from my diet.  I have been very erratic with my photography this week but here are some of the meals I have eaten.  They are not necessarily the best but just the ones I photographed.

A grape and grapefruit breakfast one morning at work.
  A very simple lunch; carrots, cucumber and watercress with half a tub of humous. 
    I grew that cucumber 😃
  That was not quite enough to satisfy me but a mug of green tea and bag of popcorn filled me up.  I really like green tea and have been drinking quite a lot recently.  This one is particularly good.  I bought it at River Cottage HQ .  It has brown rice in it which gives it a lovely earthiness and makes it seem very balancing, somehow.  Harvey likes it too and it is very pleasant enjoying a pot together at the end of our busy days.
  For supper tonight I roasted lots of my tomatoes, with a peeled green pepper, garlic cloves, olive oil, salt and pepper.  When it was roasted (about half an hour at 170 C) I blitzed it in the Vita Mix and stirred it in to some wholemeal pasta.  Served with kale crisps.  I rubbed oil and some salt in to some Cavolo Nero and popped them in the oven for 15-20 minutes.  A simple but delicious dinner.  
 Have happy weekends.  And watch Cowspiracy, please.