Disclaimer. I was gifted a Wonderbag to review and this post contains affiliate links marked with an asterisk. All opinions are my own. It won’t cost you anything extra to shop through the links and it will help to support the blog – thanks!

To use a Wonderbag* you need to heat up and cook the pan of food first for a bit. Use a pan with short handles so it fits into the bag. I have a large Wonderbag and my Le Creuset tri ply saucepan* fits perfectly in it (find out more about why I chose to buy those saucepans here: how to choose a saucepan). Then place the hot pan on a trivet, or heat proof mat in the bag. You can put the cushion lid inside, pull the drawstring, and leave it to do it’s magic for a few hours.

How to make pasta sauce in a Wonderbag

To begin my Wonderbag review, I needed to test it out. So I decided to make a use-it-up variation on my basic pasta sauce recipe . I made the basic recipe. Then I added in various chopped vegetables from my fridge that needed using up including some broccoli, courgette and carrots. To start, I cooked the sauce on the hob for 30 minutes. Then I placed it in the Wonderbag on a wooden mat. Finally I left it for around 3 hours to continue slow cooking! Although the sauce was cooked before it went in the Wonderbag, slow cooking it brings out the flavour in the tomato and makes the sauce much tastier. It came out great and after it had cooled down I portioned it out into containers to freeze and use another time!

More info about Wonderbags

I like the ethos behind the Wonderbag. For each bag sold a donation is made to the Wonderbag foundation to “support Wonderfeasts and subsidize Wonderbags to communities across the world”.

The Wonderbag comes with a handy cookbook and guide to timings for how long different foods can be left in the bag. You can also check out their website for recipes and information about how to use it. I’m looking forward to experimenting with it more and seeing what else I can make in it!

Is it worth the money?

If you don’t want to invest in a Wonderbag, you can make your own DIY thermal cooker. I used to use a freezer bag and towels – read more about how to do it (and how to not do it) here: Make your own slow cooker.

You are probably wondering if I made my own, why did I want to do a Wonderbag review? Well, I accidentally melted my freezer bag with a hot pan. Also it was a bit fiddly getting the towels wrapped around the pan. You can get around that, but it is easier to use the Wonderbag as it is designed with a hot pan in mind.

Whether or not it is worth the investment is down to how much you think you will use it. I use mine to batch cook soup, stews and sauces regularly. You can also make yoghurt in it. If you are thinking of buying one, make sure you get the right size bag for your pans, as they come in different sizes.

I love mine and I’m really glad I’ve got it. I will be using it for years to come!

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I used to try to avoid buying packaged foods as much as possible because I wanted to stop throwing single use plastic in the bin! This was made much easier by shopping in places like farm shops, local shops and online companies. I’ve learned a lot about shopping without packaging and if I go to the right places I can get most of my food unpackaged or with limited packaging.

The limitations of avoiding packaged foods as an agent of change

Going out of my way to avoid packaged foods is great, but it isn’t a solution to the problems of packaging. For most people the desire to avoid plastic packaged foods is not top priority and it shouldn’t have to be. There is more to making a decision about food than just the packaging it comes in. For some people affordability has to be their main concern. For some the quality or variety of the food will be the most important thing and for others who don’t have much spare time they just need to get their food in the quickest and easiest way. There are also times when regardless of your priorities, what you need at the time you need it is only available with packaging. Currently prioritising zero waste isn’t always the best or most practical solution in our every day lives.

Things need to change!

A large proportion of the UK does their food shopping in supermarkets because they are convenient. They also provide a wide range of products at different price points. Supermarkets tick a lot of the boxes for a lot of people. Personally although I loved shopping outside the supermarkets, for one reason or another I’ve gone back to shopping in them. When you go into a supermarket there is usually unpackaged fruit and veg available to buy there BUT:

1. Often the unpackaged produce works out more expensive than the packaged produce. The packaging disguises special offers e.g. buy 3 get 3 free (approx – when comparing the cost of a bag of fruit to the loose version like the kiwis in the picture above)
2. There is less choice in unpackaged produce. Usually the unpackaged fruit and veg is larger in size, is not organic and is limited in variety. For example in one supermarket you can buy loose white button mushrooms. Chestnut mushrooms, portobello mushrooms or organic mushrooms only come packaged though. You can also buy loose apples there, but they are quite big. If I give my kids a large apple they will leave half of it because they can’t get through it, which is a waste. I would prefer to give them a smaller apple, but the small apples only come in bulk bags.

It feels like people are sometimes penalised for buying unpackaged foods in the supermarkets.

Does packaging reduce food waste?

Yes:

Supermarkets that I have spoken to about the problems of packaged food tell me that the packaging helps reduce food waste. They are right it does at their end. Packaging is usually specially designed to suit the produce. Some packets are airtight and contain gases that slow the produce from visually spoiling. Other packets have specific ventilation in the packet to allow the produce to breathe. Packaging can also protect products from getting squashed.

No:

The problem is that the work to reduce food waste at the supermarket end of things, is often counter productive. The packet itself encourages people to buy more than they need. This is because it seems like a better deal, rather than buying exactly what they want. Then when they don’t get round to using it all in time, it ends up in the bin. In the UK a shocking 70% of post farm gate food waste comes from households. Food waste is also costing the average family £60 a month (taken from a WRAP report / Love Food Hate Waste).

On top of the food waste, there is also a large amount of packaging waste.

What can we do?

I believe that supermarkets need to be accountable for the food waste that they are contributing to in people’s homes. Not just the food waste occurring at their end of things.

What can we do about this problem? What are your suggestions? I think things need to change – don’t you?

The post Cheaper in the packet appeared first on Eco Thrifty Living.

Please note this article contains an affiliate link marked with an asterisk. If you click through and buy something, it won’t cost you anything extra, but it will help to support the blog – thanks!

It’s been way easier than I thought it would. I now use a glass cup to scoop out the porridge from the bulk bag of porridge, which is so much quicker, easier, more efficient than using a ladle ever was (it is easier to fill and can take a larger quantity) and a mug to serve up soup and stews. Another useful substitute is a cup measure* – we have some lovely really long lasting stainless steel ones, which make an excellent ladle or scoop as well as being useful for recipes where things are measured in cups.  

I’m not suggesting you throw out your ladle or scoop if you have a perfectly good one, but if you are trying to transition to a plastic free kitchen and yours is plastic or if your ladle breaks, then try these alternatives before you rush out and buy a new one. Reading this you might think these solutions are really obvious and they are, but also really easy to overlook. I sometimes forget that things can have more uses than just those that they were originally intended for and that I don’t always need a specific tool dedicated tool to do a job!

Update: I now have 2 ladles given to me as hand-me-downs. I still use a cup as a scoop though and I find it a great alternative.

The post 3 alternatives to ladles and scoops you probably already own! appeared first on Eco Thrifty Living.

We’ve had our dishwasher for several years and over that time the plastic cutlery holder has developed a few holes. I try to always put knives and forks in pointy ends up to stop them from damaging the base, but something must have gone wrong somewhere! I found it so annoying trying not to use the compartments with holes as I found inevitably I would forget and something would fall down the hole and cause problems when I’m trying to take stuff out of the dishwasher. Luckily my friend taught me a brilliant and simple trick to fix the holes! Basically you get some cable ties * (yes they are plastic, but less than if you had to buy a whole new cutlery holder, if they even sell them anymore for your dishwasher) and thread them through the holes that are meant to be there to block of the holes that aren’t i.e. where a bit of the plastic has broken to create a bigger hole. It’s so easy and simple and does the trick! We’ve managed to extend the life of our cutlery holder for quite a long time by doing that!

Coming soon: Look out for my blog post coming next Monday – 3 alternatives to ladles and scoops you probably already own.

This blog post contains an affiliate link marked with * and anything you buy through them will help to support the blog as I will get a small commission. Thanks!

The post A brilliant and simple trick to make the cutlery holder in your dishwasher live longer! appeared first on Eco Thrifty Living.

It is more expensive than these 6 pack universal water filter cartridges  – they are currently £11.79 for 6, with each cartridge lasting a month, with the bamboo charcoal coming in at £13.49 (inc p&p) for 8 pieces with 3-4 pieces needed per litre of water and lasting 2 months, which means it lasts 4-6 months for £13.49 vs 6 months for £11.79. That’s not a massive price difference to pay to filter your water a more natural way when averaged out over a year and if you are used to buying the branded versions then you will probably save money.

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Thermal cookers are great for saving energy, time and money. I batch cook soup and stews and slow cooking brings out lots of the lovely flavours. Slow cooking can help you to get organised, just throw all the ingredients in to come back later to a delicious meal. Slow cooking can also tenderize tough cuts of meat (if you are a meat eater)

This blog post contains an affiliate link marked with * and anything you buy through them will help to support the blog. All opinions are my own and it won’t cost you anything extra to use the links.

You don’t need to buy a thermal cooker. It is easy to make an improvised one, with what you already have at home.

A while ago I decided to experiment with DIY thermal slow cookers, or heat retention cookers as they are also known. There are loads of types of them, the most famous being the hay box – literally a box filled with hay or sometimes a hole in the ground. I didn’t want to make a hay box, so had a look around to see what I could use.

What’s the difference between a slow cooker and a thermal cooker?

• A slow cooker needs electricity. A thermal cooker has no power.
• A slow cooker can keep a steady temperature
• A thermal cooker retains its own heat and will cool down over time
• You can put raw food into a slow cooker
• Food needs to be cooked / boiled before going into the thermal cooker

My DIY slow cooker experiment

I experimented with using two freezer bags and two towels to slow cook veg stock. This was my method:

• I brought a pan of veg peelings, herbs and water to the boil and then took it off the heat.
• Next I wrapped the pan up in a towel.
• I placed the pan inside a freezer bag.
• I zipped it up and put the freezer bag inside a larger freezer bag.
• Finally I put another towel in the second freezer bag to fill up the gap and then zipped it up.
• I left it there for 8 hours

The towel around the pan was damp, when I took the stock out. The stock was luke warm and it didn’t taste that great. I now realise that I made a couple of mistakes (and I probably shouldn’t have tasted that veg stock).

Things to avoid when making a thermal cooker:

• I used a glass saucepan, but the lid wasn’t particularly tight fitting. Glass doesn’t retain the heat well enough and even a glass lid on a saucepan is not a good idea for heat retention.
• Follow a recipe. Despite clear instructions from Jen Gale on including apple peelings in the stock mixture, I didn’t add any.
• I made the mistake of putting a hot pan in a insulated bag and melting the plastic! Wrap the hot pan in a towel before putting it in the freezer bag and put a trivet underneath the pan at the bottom of the bag.
• Don’t use your best bath towel for this, use one that has been well used and it may get dirty.

If you want to make a heat retention cooker with stuff you already have here are some tips:

1. Make sure you have an appropriate pan. A stainless steel pan with a stainless steel tight fitting lid is best.
2. Find a freezer bag which leaves as little room for air or heat to escape as possible.
3. Fill the bag with insulating material, like old wool jumpers, towels or cushions. Choose something that traps air well and make sure there is still space for your pan.
4. The bag should be a close fit to the pan.
5. Make sure the pan is as full as possible with boiling liquid. This helps retain the heat.
6. Follow a recipe designed for a thermal cooker.
7. Put the hot pan on a trivet in the freezer bag and line the bag with towels. This avoids the bottom and sides of the bag melting.
8. Cover the pan with towels to not melt the bag.
9. Leave as few gaps in the outer bag as possible for air and heat to escape through.
10. Fill all the available space between the pot and the outer bag with insulating material.

If you don’t have freezer bags to hand you can use your oven as a replacement thermal cooker. I have used this method to make yoghurt after my thermos broke.

After experimenting with thermal and retention cookers I now have a Wonderbag* – which is a thermal cooker bag and I love it. This particular company has a really nice ethos behind it. You can read about my experience with my Wonderbag here: The Wonderous Wonderbag*ad*.

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How to slow cook without a slow cooker

I’d been thinking a lot about saucepans and slow cookers when I made a discovery. OK it wasn’t ground breaking but it was new to me. Also it’s going to be fairly useful to me day to day.  

I discovered how to slow cook food without a slow cooker. Even without an oven or hob on at a low temperature for hours. I also discovered that I don’t need a soup pan to make soup!

Exciting isn’t it

My slow cook soup method:

1. I chopped up the ingredients for carrot and rosemary soup. A couple of onions, a few leeks, some carrots, a sprig of rosemary and a bit of garlic.   
2. I put them all in my large glass saucepan and covered the veg with some stock. I filled it up to as near the top of the pan as possible with stock. 
3. I brought it to the boil (approx 10 minutes). During this time I also turned the oven on to 200 degrees C.  I had a pizza stone in the oven while it was heating up as the pizza stone retains heat well.
4. Once the soup was boiling I turned off the gas and turned off the oven.
5. I wrapped the pan up in a large towel and put it in the oven.
6. I left it in the over for 1.5 hours
7. When I took it out it was very tasty and steaming hot as you can see from the video above!  

I usually make soup in my soup pan which makes around 6 portions of soup a time.  I thought I would have made less soup because I used a smaller pan. However, because the water had nowhere to evaporate to, it all stayed in the pan. I made just as much soup as I would normally.  This was great news on two counts.  Firstly I don’t need to go out and buy a new soup pan to replace my 10 year old scratched and damaged one. Secondly it means that there is far less moisture being released into my kitchen.  This is good because our extractor fan doesn’t work well and we often have problems with damp and condensation.

Casserole without a slow cooker

I got a bit carried away with the slow cooking and then attempted to make a casserole for dinner.  I think it would have gone well except that I only left it for 1.5 hours.  It had chopped potatoes in it , and I should have cooked them for longer before I put them in the oven. It was edible-ish but some of my family members weren’t too impressed.  I think I will stick to experimenting on myself until I have perfected!

Speaking of experimenting, my next experiment is making zero waste veg stock following Jen Gale’s (and Mommy Emu’s) instructions (read them here). I am not going to follow the method I used above because it involves heating up the oven as well as using the hob. I want to save the energy used to heat up the oven and go even more low energy!  

The experiment is currently in progress and I’m going to tell you all about it tomorrow! After that I promise I will try to keep my posts about alternatives to slow cookers to a minimum (emphasis on try – I’m like a kid with a new toy at the moment) and get back to my task for the year which is making £10,000 from our home (read more here)!

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This blog post contains affiliate links marked with * and anything you buy through them will help to support the blog as I will get a small commission. Thanks! All opinions are my own and it won’t cost you anything extra to use the links.

When I decided to buy new saucepans, my first thought was to invest in some stainless steel pans. But I spent a while googling saucepans to understand which ones are the safest and most eco-friendly. With so much out there it can be overwhelming to know which cookware is sustainable and will last a long time. Here’s what I found from my research:

How to choose a saucepan?

• Avoid non-stick saucepans that are coated in teflon. Teflon is a type of plastic and you have to be careful not to overheat it when cooking. Personally I would prefer to not have hot plastic coming into contact with my food!
• Look for a saucepan that is long lasting and good quality. This will be more expensive than buying cheap saucepans, but they will last a lot longer. They will cook the food better too.
• A non-reactive saucepan is useful as it means you can cook a wider range of foods in it . Saucepans made from cast iron, unlined copper and aluminum are examples of reactive saucepans. While they are good heat conductors if you cook acidic foods the metal can effect the flavour of your food.
• Stainless steel saucepans are a good option as they evenly conduct heat and don’t have a non stick layer. They are a bit slow to conduct heat though.
• Copper pans are great heat conductors, but they can be expensive to buy. They also can form toxic substances when they come into contact with acids if the saucepan is not lined.
• Aluminum saucepans can discolour and again, give a metallic taste to food if it is unfinished. They are good heat conductors though.
• Glass saucepans are not reactive, but you have to be careful not to chip them. Plus they don’t conduct heat well.

Non-reactive saucepan materials

From my research the best saucepan materials, which are non-toxic and non-reactive, were glass , stainless steel and anodised or covered aluminium. Just make sure they aren’t scratched or dented. Of course they will have an environmental impact because of the materials used and so on, but that is the reason you want to get something that won’t need replacing any time soon. When you are decided how to choose a saucepan, ideally you want to get something that could last your lifetime and beyond.

Why I chose to buy Le Creuset 3 ply saucepans

I decided after doing all the research, that Le Creuset 3 ply Saucepans* ticked all the boxes for me.

They are stainless steel on the outside and aluminium on the inside. They have a non-reactive outside layer with a good conductor on the inside. So you get the best of both worlds. It means that they heat up quicker than stainless steel pans would on their own. They are 3 ply and stronger than one layer of metal, so they will be less likely to dent if dropped.

I also got the Le Creuset 3-Ply Stainless Steel Multi-Steamer* which goes on all three saucepans. The brand has a good reputation and although they are expensive they should last a long time.

Lastly I bought the Le Creuset 3-Ply Stainless Steel Deep Casserole with Lid*. It has a tight fitting lid and is great for using in a thermal cooker. I use it in my Wonderbag all the time. If you want to you could use it in a homemade thermal cooker . A thermal cooker is a slow cooker, which doesn’t use any power.

Again, this saucepan is pricey but buying quality pans will mean not having to re-place it frequently and reducing waste.

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Here’s how I did it:

1. I folded the towel lengthwise into 3,  I didn’t measure it or anything just folded it over the best I could.  
2. I then cut down the creases giving myself 3 lengths of towel.  
3. Keeping the lengths of towel on top of each other I folded them in half and cut down the creases resulting in 6 pieces of towel.
4. Keeping three layers of towel together I again folded them in half and cut down the creases, resulting in 12 squares of towel.
5. I then repeated the process with the other towel
6. To make sure the edges don’t fray I zig zag stitched around the edges
7. I saved the few off cuts I had in a little tub to take for fabric recycling when I next go.

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