Thursday 2 October 2008

Feeding the 5000 with no plastic

Well, perhaps 20 people (and some are half size). But for a whole weekend. I've written a (brilliant) menu plan. Things I can't see a plastic-free solution to (yet) are in red. Leave comments if you have ideas!

Drinks
Adults: Tea, coffee [milk from milkman in glass bottles]
Kids: water, squash, hot chocolate

Snacks
Apples and raisins [how healthy! and raisins come loose at Single Step]
Flapjacks [homemade, but there may be some vegans so we'll need soya spread or something]
Sweets [for a game, from a traditional sweet shop with glass jars...]

Friday night
Vegetarian chilli with rice and cheese. [rice, soya 'stuff', kidney beans we can buy loose, fresh tomatoes from the market, but what about oil for cooking?] Then apple sponge or something.


Saturday Breakfast
Cereal [I might find this in Preson on Saturday], toast, jam, baked beans, orange juice [milkman], soya milk

Saturday Lunch
Pizza with salad [made by the kids, hopefully! Yeast, from Single Step. Jars of sauce would save work, but is there plastic in the lid?]


Saturday Dinner
Vegetarian BBQ with jacket potatoes and salad [but perhaps not lettuce?]
Veggi sausages / burgers often come without plastic, but which brands?
Desert - fruit dipped in / BBQ’d with chocolate + marshmallows for BBQ

Sunday breakfast
Cereal, toast, eggy bread, orange juice

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Coffee - try Atkinson's on China Street. I think that they do have paper bags. If not, you could try bringing your own. It would be filter coffee, though - you would need to buy filter papers or use a cafetiere.

You can probably get squash in glass bottles with only a tiny bit of plastic in the lid. These tend to be more expensive, though.

I can't quite solve the hot chocolate dilemma, but if you were to buy cocoa powder (cardboard box, plastic lid) and add sugar you would get a similar effect. Instead of hot chocolate you could try warm milk with honey, or something.

Surely flapjacks can be made using oil instead of spread... How about that olive oil from the market? Alternatively, try the oil section in Sainsbury's - you may be able to get some in glass bottles with minimal plastic in the lid.

You could make muesli (or maybe buy it) with Single Step ingredients.

Are baked beans not OK as they come from tins?

Rose said...

Thank you! I shall investigate these things.

It is quite likely that the tins from baked beans are lined with plastic.

And the problem with most of the solutions are that they are expensive, and we're on a really minimal budget (£4 per child, £0 per adult... though I'm sure we'll spend more than that!)