The EcoJustice Challenge

Today, as many bloggers have noted, is Earth Day. I have been guiltily noticing some of the bad things I do, including the environmentally not-friendly practice of driving to the gym in order to run on the treadmill. Bad Charlotte.

Then I chanced upon Emily’s EcoJustice Challenge, launched today! It’s a challenge that hopes to get us to change bad habits like the one mentioned above. I quote verbatim:

So, here is how this challenge will work. The first step is for anyone who wants to participate to pass the link onto at least five other people (or even if you don’t plan to participate, if you like the idea, please pass it on). If you have a blog of your own, this can easily be accomplished merely by linking to this site in a post on your own blog. Below is a list of things you can choose to do. Once every quarter between now and April 21, 2009, I will add to this list. Your challenge is to choose something from this list, to experiment with it, and to post about it here. Or, if you’d rather not post, that’s fine. You can just choose what you want and leave comments on this blog. You can choose to implement as many or as few from the list as you would like. You can choose to stick with one (or more) for an entire quarter, or you can mix and match (one — or more — this month, a different one next month, etc.). My hope is that by the end of the year, at least one item from the whole list will have become a way of life for you and your family. And if you’re already doing some or all of these things, come up with others you want to do, share them with us, and post on them instead.

To join the blog as a posting member, please send an email to: ecojustice08 AT gmail DOT com with your user name and the email address you’d like to use for the purposes of this blog. I will add you to the list of users. Also, please post on your own blog, if you have one. That’s it. And now, here are your choices for this quarter:

1. Choose one day a week in which you will not use your car at all (barring a major emergency, like having to drive your spouse/child to the hospital for stitches). Before you immediately dismiss this one, because you have to drive to and from work every day, please think about it. Is there no one with whom you could carpool two days a week? If so, the day you’re not driving would be the perfect day not to use your car at all.

2. Choose one “black out night” per week. All lights and all electrical appliances are off by 7:30 p.m. and don’t go on again until the next morning. What will you do without lights, television, your computer? Well, the weather’s getting nice where many of us live. Sit out on the porch/deck and tell stories. Read by candle light. Write letters by candle light. Play games by candle light. You know, people did this sort of thing for thousands of years. My guess is that if you have kids, this will be an exciting and fun challenge for them.

3. Choose two days a week in which you are only going to eat organic and/or locally-grown food. Do you know that inorganic farming is one of the best examples of evolution that we’ve got going these days? All the pesticides that have been used to grow our food have helped to create “super bugs” who are becoming more and more resistant to our chemicals. We’re definitely losing this battle in more ways than one. Talk to the people at your local farmer’s markets. Many of them are growing their food organically anyway; they just aren’t certified, because it’s a difficult and expensive process to be so. Buying locally, of course, cuts down on the oil used to transport food long distances.

4. If you need to go anywhere that’s within a 2-mile round trip radius of your home, walk or bike. Where might this be? The first place that springs to mind for me is your children’s school bus stop. Perhaps the post office is close to your home. The library? For me, it’s both the post office and the bank. If you’re super lucky, maybe you have a farmer’s market that’s close by. Or maybe you don’t live close enough to anything, but you do work close by to that deli, say, where you always drive to pick up lunch.

5. Read that challenging book about the environment that you’ve been putting off reading, you know the one you don’t want to read, because it might make you a little uncomfortable (e.g. The World without Us, Diet for a Small Planet, Affluenza). Read it. Post about it. Maybe implement an idea or two based on what you’ve read.

6. Buy only those things sold in recyclable packaging and make sure you recycle that packaging.

Hooray for Emily. My plan for this quarter is to do 1 and 6. I will choose and commit to a non-driving day (and jog out from house rather than on a treadmill) once a week. Also, I plan to read and post about Affluenza and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, both of which I already own.

Please post about this, pass it on and commit to one or two of Emily’s challenges. Together, we can do it!

Sharing the Love

I have to celebrate the fact that three of my blogging friends, none of whom I have met I must add, but one can hope, have had good news recently with regard to forging relationships with publishers and literary agents. This is so exciting, not only because I have been on the blog trail with the three of them for two years now, not only because I have shared the ups and downs of being a writer with them, but also because all three are superb writers and deserve to be published, lauded and admired for their efforts. Unlike some, who become famous for blogging and then write unremarkable books, but who am I to quibble?

First up is Nova, who lives in New York, and who writes about writing and her struggles to be published with wincing, gut-wrenching frankness in her blog Distraction No. 99. Nova pitched her tween novel to an editor at Simon & Schuster based on “30 pages and a plot summary” and has received an offer. She is now busily writing the rest of the novel, while still holding down her day-job, also in publishing. Nova, your dedication to and love of writing and books inspires me.

Then, there’s the incomparable Litlove, a UK academic who blogs at Tales from the Reading Room. Litlove has created a wonderful salon for people who love to appreciate, think about and discuss books. She is kind, inclusive and writes beautifully and incisively about the books she reads. Litlove’s idea for a book on representations of motherhood in literature has been accepted for representation by an agent in London, and I can’t wait to read it once it is finished.

Flushed from hearing that news, I wondered over to another favourite and long-term blog-pal of mine, BlogLily, to hear that her thriller set in Germany during the Cold War has also been accepted for representation by an agent. Lily is a mother of three energetic boys and is a full-time lawyer who wrote her novel in the cracks and interstices of her life, and she is my hero. She has just made herself a writing-space at home, and look what happened! She found an agent!

If you haven’t already, please visit these three writers and shower them with congratulations. I am so thrilled and delighted for them, and also for us, knowing that there are going to be three superb new books on our Christmas lists in the next couple of years. Who knows, I might even get a signed copy.

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On the topic of sharing love, I was bending down in a late-spring snow storm this morning zipping a six-year-old’s coat, when she whispered tenderly to me, “Do you know what, Mummy? In your ear, you have lots of little hairs!”

Hairily yours,

Charlotte

Hooray for the Cooksister!

Thanks to everyone who voted for me in the South African Blog Awards. The award for the best South African overseas blog was given to my friend Jeanne who writes the fabulous Cook Sister! blog. She also won best SA food blog. Jeanne is a wonderful food writer, who is intelligent and funny, and one day she’s going to publish a food book that I’m going to love as much as I love Nigella Lawson’s and Nigel Slater’s cookery books.

Go forth and read the Cook Sister. You will be so glad you did.

Meme for a Wednesday

I want to be writing, but with three kids on holiday, one birthday party to bake for and one mother-in-law visiting, working on my novel just isn’t on the cards. Instead, I give you The Meme From YogaMum:

1. What is your occupation? Mother, freelance writer, aspiring novelist.

2. What colour are your socks right now? Grey.

3. What are you listening to right now? The dulcet sounds of Kika, a German kids’ TV channel blissfully ad-free, which is keeping my threesome entertained. The programme is Tanz Alarm, so everyone is dancin’.

4. What is the last thing you ate? Vanilla yogurt with blueberries.

5. Can you drive stick shift? I do so with pride.

6. If you were a crayon, what colour would you be? Turquoise.

7. Last person you spoke to on the phone? My daughter’s friend, Lara.

8. What’s your favourite yoga pose? The beautiful, peaceful tree pose.

9. How old are you today? 39 years, 3 months and 6 days. And I have No Issues Whatsoever With This.

10. Favourite drink? Like Yogamum, I believe that chai latte is the nectar of the gods. My writing coffee-house does the best chai lattes in the world.

11. What is your favourite sport to watch? Tennis.

12. Have you ever dyed your hair? Never dyed, but I have a 20-year-old relationship with highlights that I am now trying to end because of co-dependency issues.

13. Pets? Three human ones.

14. Favourite cake? Cheesecake. It’s the reason I live in Germany.

15. Last movie you saw? The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. The brilliance! The aptness! The respect for both the book and the Botswana culture! Anthony Mingella, rest in peace.

16. Favourite day of the year? Can’t say. Every day is good.

17. How do you vent anger? Some muttering, some short-stepping and then some shouting.

18. What was your favourite toy as a child? A shaggy green dog, who played Prince to the dollies’ Princesses.

19. Autumn or spring? Spring! Even a snowy white one like we’re having now.

20. Hugs or kisses? Both.

21. Cherry or blueberry? Blueberry, but only just.

22. Do you want your friends to respond? Only if they’re in the mood.

23. Who is most likely to respond? Don’t know.

24. Who is most likely not to respond. Don’t know.

25. Living arrangements? I live in a house my husband and our three pets.

26. Last time you cried? While watching The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, when the missing child was returned to his father.

27. What is on the floor of your closet? A worry of shoes.

28. Who is the friend you’ve had the longest? Dani, from Grade Two. Love and miss you, my friend!

29. Favourite smell? A cake in the oven.

30. Who or what inspires you? People who have the courage to follow their hearts.

31. What are you afraid of? Something happening to one of my loved ones.

32. Hamburgers? Nevaire. The disgustingness.

33. Favourite car? I’m not a car person, but I have to say I am fond of our big Renault because it’s taken us on many journeys to many places.

34. Number of keys on your key ring? Three.

35. How many years at your current job? Mother for eight years, freelance writer for six years, writer since I could write.

36. Favourite day of the week? Sunday - the day I sleep in and the shops are closed.

37. How many countries have you lived in? South Africa, England twice, Germany twice and the US once for three months (Atlanta, Georgia).

38. Dream job? Novelist.

Tagging my second oldest friend, Kerry, who I have known since Grade Eight, and who has been a little quiet on the blogging front lately. What’s up, girlfriend?

Petite Anglaise - a Review

I think this book is the reason why personal blogs shouldn’t become books. Catherine Sanderson is a good writer, her story of falling in and out (and in and out) of love is interesting enough, as is her love affair with Paris and her adorable-sounding daughter. But to me, and I found the same with Julie and Julia, as a memoir/autobiography/blook - whatever category this kind of writing falls into - it doesn’t have the same seat-of-the-pants edge as the blog from which it originates.

Sanderson is engaging and frank about the nature of blogging and how that has had an impact on her life. She says Petite Anglaise (her blogging alias) was more confident and assertive than her offline self, and that she enjoyed having the ability to take an ordinary incident from her day and craft an amusing post from it that would generate interest and reaction from her readers. She also readily admits to taking incidents from the past and pretending they were more current, working out issues in her failing relationship online rather than with the person who mattered and ignoring her real-life friends for her online ones. As someone who has blogged for two years, has occasionally preferred blogging to talking and who has watched blog friends leave relationships for people they have met online, I can understand and see what Sanderson went through. Lonely and alienated, she found the online world an oasis of friendship and support.

However does it make a book? Clearly Penguin thinks so. Petite Anglaise is marketable - almost anyone who occasionally reads a British newspaper will have heard of her, how she left her boyfriend of seven years for someone she met online and then was fired from her job for “gross misconduct” (blogging at work occasionally, identifying herself and thus her company online - not surprisingly, she sued). She’s famous and fame sells. The trend for bloggers to get book deals is growing: Dooce is publishing a book, one I will read because she is hilarious - she makes David Sedaris look like a wet blanket - and her blog is growing boring with all those pictures of her dogs and retro design objets. I keep going back though because one in ten posts is coffee-snortingly funny. Dooce is an exceptional writer, and deserves the success she gets.

Petite Anglaise the book, however, is not exceptional. It’s a quick and easy read. Catherine is likeable and frank. She is honest about her failings, though I was disappointed that, presumably for legal reasons, there is no mention of the firing. The book, in effect, is less than the blog.

I remember being disappointed with Julia Powell’s Julie and Julia that the book wasn’t a series of her best blog posts. I didn’t ever follow her experiment (to cook her way through Julia Child’s massive tome Mastering the Art of French Cooking) online, and I expected the book to be a series of vignettes charting her progress. Instead, it was fluffed out with less fascinating personal detail. The same is true with Petite Anglaise: the blog itself was gripping in a reality TV, slice-of-life, car crash kind of way, and the book itself isn’t. It’s fluffy, and like candy floss, doesn’t satisfy.

I suppose the function of books like Julie and Julia and Petite Anglaise is to bring the best blogs to people who don’t read or know about blogs (if such people exist). If that’s the case, then I feel sorry for those people, because what they will find is an anodyne, watered-down version of an exciting new literary form.

Celebration Cake

Today, I celebrate two years of blogging. My blog is a toddler, and like all toddlers it likes a bit of cake. Over the years, I have written about love, friendship, AIDS, apartheid, feminism, family, parenting, children, books, writing, living in Germany and cake. My post on Lemon Drizzle Cake is still one of the most popular, at over 1500 hits.

To celebrate today’s anniversary, I’m doing a food meme, ruthlessly stolen from Emily and Susan, but in honour of today, it focuses on cake.

Five Random Things about Me and Cake:

1. The last cake I made was Nigella’s Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake, which I served as a dessert with creme fraiche and pomegranate seeds liberally doused in rosewater. Nigella says this cake is as “damp and sticky as gingerbread and quite as aromatic” and it is. My husband, who does not have a sweet tooth and is not desperately keen on cake, had two slices.

2. The next cake I’m going to make is something for Easter. I’m torn between Nigella’s Easter Nest cake which is chocolately, gooey and luxurious and her Rosemary Loaf cake, which is more restrained. I think I’m heading for the rosemary cake, because there’s going to be enough chocolate around this coming weekend, and the herb will provide a pleasant counterpoint. And I have a special fondness for loaf cakes.

3. Nigella is not my only reference point for cake, but almost. I have made Delia’s Victoria sponge cake and Jamie’s shortbread, but when I’m in the mood to bake a cake I always start with Nigella. Her recipes are fail-safe, delicious and seasonal. One of my raging successes was a chestnut cheesecake for Christmas. It was nutty and heavenly. I could have eaten the whole thing all by myself. Come to think of it, I probably did.

4. For birthdays, I am a traitor to Nigella. I always bake my mother’s stove-top chocolate cake, which contains buttermilk, cocoa and oil, and turns out fudgy and scrumptious. I once posted the recipe here.

5. I am intimidated by icing, and tend to prefer cakes that are icing-free or icing-light. My mother’s chocolate cake is wonderful because you pour the icing on while the cake is still hot, and it melts into the just-cooked cake, making it even fudgier. I admire people who can ice and decorate complicated cakes. Mine tend to be more rustic, but in a delicious kind of way.

One of my blog friends, Dorothy, shares a blog birthday with me. Happy Blog Day, Dorothy. It’s been fun being your twin. Would you like to share my cake?

Red and Green II

The image is not so pretty, today. Red and green describes the colour of my eyes. I woke to find them greenly glued together, and when I finally prised them open, the insides were red. So after dropping my people at their various Higher Institutes of Craft-Making and Fun-Having, I went to the doctor. There I sat and I sat and I sat. I sat for two and a half hours, amongst moaning pensioners, expectorating teenagers and quietly wilting people of the middle years. Once I finally had the attention of a doctor, I was told it was a virus and that I need to go home, take paracetamol and rest. I basked in the light of his wisdom for a full three minutes. All in all, not a satisfying experience.

Damn, I’m cross. Cross at the waste of my time (I read my book, but still, the principle!), cross that I’m sick, cross that I can’t rest, cross that I can’t go to gym, cross that I have a precious 12 hours a week to myself and that today’s three hour allocation was balled up into a doctor’s prescription and tossed into a sanitised bin. He offered me a doctor’s note, and then when I said I work from home, made his swiftly becoming unfunny joke that there’s no being written off sick for mothers. Ha! I laughed not!

I’m fantasising about sending my children to a school with longer hours, about committing the sin of not providing a hot lunch, about having a bit more time to myself. We had dinner with newly-arrived US friends on Friday and I was explaining how school only lasts until 12.20 because the entire fabric of German society is based on the hot lunch.

Friend’s husband: So what do you give them in summer?

Me: A slightly cooler lunch.

Cheer me up, won’t you? See that shiny little badge over there on the right? Please go and vote for me in the category Best Overseas South African blog. That would really make my day and I promise to stop complaining about my health and my very extremely tough lot in life if you do. While you’re there, you could vote for my friends the fabulous Cooksister and the inspiring Vanielje Kitchen too, but save a little vote for me and my red-and-green eyes.

While you do, I’ll just lie here in the foetal position, groaning slightly. Then I’ll slap myself and go and tidy up the remains of Hot Lunch #1,026 (sausages, carrots and new potatoes).

Red and Green

Strawberries:

and Cucumber:

Otherwise known as: What You Have For Dinner When Your Husband is Out of Town.

(Eaten off the children’s plates en route to the kitchen.)

Very short post.

Otherwise known as: What You Blog When You’re on Deadline, and Still Have the Kitchen to Clean.

(Beautiful food photographs courtesy of Atomicshark on Flickr)

New Look for Spring

Kerryn’s got a fabulous new look on her blog. She found it via Smashing Magazine, which is showcasing 45 blog headers to download for free. I had a look around and chose this lovely header, which encapsulates my new mood of optimism and the feeling that Spring Is Just Around the Corner. It is designed by Serjey Gorodenskiy.

Thanks for the pointer, Kerryn. Hope you don’t mind me leaping on the bandwagon.

Tales from The Web: The Endorphin Edition

It’s been a long time since my last edition of Tales from The Web. Things have got in the way, like writing a novel and developing a gym habit. I have discovered that an endorphin high from 45 minutes on the cross-trainer lasts a whole lot longer than the endorphin high from eating a 100 gram bar of Milka. Gym is my new drug of choice, and like any addict I get really crabby when I don’t get my fix. This week I’ve sick kids and have only been able to go twice, which has made me bad-tempered and irritable. My family have been practically forcing chocolate on me. “Eat this, Mummy! Eat this and smile again!”

As a form of virtual chocolate, I offer you the March edition of Tales from the Web. Consider it endorphins packaged especially for you, as feel-good as spring lambs gambolling in acid-green fields. And if that doesn’t constitute happiness for you, then imagine you’ve just come off the treadmill, all wobbly-legged and trembly, and you’re floating out of the gym on a cloud of hormone. Feels good, doesn’t it?

Let’s start with eye candy. I bookmarked this in December, but these cakes could be Easter cakes too. The blogger African Vanielje is a chef, baker extraordinaire, photographer and writer. Take a look at her Truly Remarkable Once a Year Cakes and wish you were a friend of hers with a birthday just around the corner.

I love the Wallace Stevens quote BlogLily has as her blog tag: “It must give pleasure”. On days when I’ve felt like posting something gloomy, self-reflective and sad, I remember BlogLily’s mantra. I do think it is a good one. I have chosen a classic BL post for your delectation here. It comes from her visit to London earlier this year, where she soaked up a lot of theatre. Apparently in London in January, “it was pouring plays about sex”. Have fun reading Is Eros All?

Now we all know that sex can lead to babies, and babies, though delicious, bring a host of unexpected complications with them. Next up is a post written in response to a desperate plea. I saved it because I was taken with the thoughtfulness and kindness that went into shaping the response, and because I was once that parent, with a co-sleeping, breast-feeding baby who didn’t want to sleep unless using me as a dummy. I know the desperation that went into that original email, and I would have welcomed the same kind of non-judgmental kindness that Bluemilk exhibits here in trying to find a solution. I include this in the March Tales from The Web: The Endorphin Edition because I want to show that the blogosphere can be a good place, not just a snarkfest.

The lovely Anna is trying to work herself out of a job. Her three boys are growing up, and her resolution for this year is to mother them less so that they can learn the life-skills they will need when they leave home. I am a big fan of her blog The End of Motherhood where she is documenting this process with her great sense of humour. The post I’m linking to today is not about parenting teenagers, but is a tip for raising smaller kids. It’s what she calls “a secret sauce for parenting young children” and you can read about it here. Fifteen minutes a day to stop tantrums and reconnect with your child. That’s feel-good isn’t it?

I can always rely on Emily to make me laugh. In this post she talks about how, although she loves writing, she goes through the five stages of grief when she has write a half-page introduction to her company’s maths catalogue. As a procrastinator, I can relate. Read it, then go forth and complete all your admin. You’ll be so glad you did.

Ian is funny. But that’s no surprise since he’s Emily’s brother. Check out his Geekfield’s Guide to English Literature, a hand-drawn compendium of English literature from Beowulf to Dan Brown. Who thought graphic text books could be so much fun?

Helen was considering giving up writing, but then she needed the loo. Read how The Most Inspirational Toilet in Sydney gave her her writing mojo back. Could I have one in Heidelberg please?

For all-around chickeny cuteness, go and check out Mandarine’s new tenants, the Orpingtons. We had bantams as children, and they caused us no end of happiness. Unfortunately, they didn’t last long, because the suburbs of Pietermaritzburg were a cut-throat place even then, and they were taken out by a hardened gang of vervet monkeys. However, that’s not going to happen to Mandarine’s chickens because (a) they live in France, and (b) they have a lovely house. Oh, and if you read French, which I can if I try really, really hard, you can read Mandarine’s new blog where he details his attempt to farm a garden big enough to feed his whole family. (Which means he one day may have to sacrifice an Orpington, but we’re not thinking about that yet.)

That’s the Endorphin Edition for now. If I don’t get to the gym soon, I’m going to have to eat one of these: