One little weeny thing you can do to improve your sustainability - reduce your consumption of dairy products! I know I'll be unpopular with farmers for saying so, but the dairy industry is pretty resource-intensive and damaging to the environment - air & water pollution, deforestation, irrigationblah blah blah... With the price of butter, cheese and milk being so high at the moment, now would seem like the perfect time to reduce your consumption of dairy products and pledge that those you do consume will come from a company that has sound working practises. I'm lucky my local supermarket provides organic milk, cream & cheese so I have a choice there. On the other hand I do like a nice layer of fat on my bread, I don't eat lard and I'm skeptical about the health impacts of margarine. I have pledged to cut my butter consumption by half, so here's what I do: Buy a block of butter Chop it in half Put half in the fridge Put half in the food processor Set it on high-beam while pouring organic rice bran oil in the feeder tube Scoop out the resulting mix and put it in a container in the fridge. I end up with my own half-dairy spread with the taste of butter and a kind of margarine-like texture. :)
Submitted by Lindis on 29 February 2008 12:09:46
Comments
Is organic rice bran oil (i assume we don't produce it in NZ) more sustainable than NZ organic butter?
Submitted by cacharters on 4 March 2008 21:44:10
That's a very good question! And I expect the answer is no - not once you add in the resources for transportation and packaging. I should probably change to NZ organic olive oil, but I haven't tried that combination yet so I don't know if it will overwhelm the taste or texture of the butter (the recipe as it was given to me was for rice bran oil).
I often have this kind of dilemma when choosing whether to buy an imported, organic product or a locally-produced 'conventional' product. (Obviously a locally-produced organic product would be best, but that is not always an option.)
When faced with that dilemma I usually choose the imported organic product because I believe the market will be reasonably sensitive to demand - if people are buying an imported organic product, there is a good incentive for a local business to start producing it.
But you're right in this case that there are local organic options available and I will experiment with them and let you know the result!
Submitted by Lindis on 5 March 2008 13:41:58
If you wanted to make it go further I am pretty sure you could add some water which would lower the fat content per serving too.
Submitted by Helen65018 on 11 March 2008 06:32:20
Yes Helen, apparently you can put your butter in the food processor and drizzle water into it until it can't take any more water. You then just drain off the excess water and use the butter as normal. I haven't tried this myself.
I was told both these methods (oil and water) by my elderly aunt. She was a child during the depression and a young adult during WWII - in those days people would do all sorts of things to make their scarce food go a little bit further.
Submitted by Lindis on 11 March 2008 12:07:58