Purple carrots

So here we are back in the country, and that means that when you get hungry at about 1 o'clock, you have to magic up some lunch from what's in the fridge. No nipping out to Hale and Hearty for a scrummy thing of soup and a fancy cake.

The cupboard was looking pretty bare, but I found some purple organic heirloom carrots in the fridge from Willy Nelson over at River Brook farm (our friend Paul said everything at River Brook is funny colours - pink potatoes, purple carrots, white tomatoes...), and decided to make curried carrot soup with them. Felt very resourceful and Nigella-esque - until my 6-year old blender decided to deposit most of it on the floor. Salvaged it somehow (alright, with a potato masher) and it ended up being edible, if a little redolent of mashed-up watery carrots.

But the flavour was hardly the point. This soup had a) saved me at least $7 (soup for two from chi-chi lunch joint: <$10; bag of hippy carrots: $3), b) saved the planet from pesticide contamination and c) contributed two less plastic (or cardboard) take-out containers to landfill. In fact, if we lived here for a year and I made soup instead of buying it every weekday lunch, that'd be 261 fewer plastic containers. Double that for the hubby and we're up to 522 - not to mention the paper baggies and the 522 annoying plastic utensil packets - aargh, and now I'm imagining all that multiplied by the six years I worked in Manhattan; or what about multiplied by all the readers of this blog (of course there are....several); not to even contemplate what you get to once you've added all those Thai and Sushi evening deliveries, and I'm looking at...well, the whole of Milanville would be shoulder-deep in waste. Oh, I have been so naughty, if I could take back all those plastic containers I would, but now they're all filling up a landfill site already and it's too late! I thought the only reason to look like a saddo and bring your own lunch was to save cash but I promise that if I do end up going back to work in January I shall bring my lunch with me as often as possible and positively flaunt it in my colleagues' faces as a badge of my eco-friendliness.

Ahem, anyway, so my point is, this was carrot soup for the soul.

And later, checking out a link sent to me by the lovely Courtney, I became even happier about the organic carrots. This site has a chart of the relative toxicity of different non-organic fruits and veg so that if you're a bit skint, or you're faced with a supermarket like the ones up here where there's no choice, you can at least pick the lesser of the evils. Carrots, it seems, are #13 on the list of the most toxic fruits and vegetables you can eat if not organic, so in fact I'd done me and Dot another favour. Hurrah!

Of course the bad news is that clocking in at numbers 1, 5, 6, 7 and 8 respectively are peaches, nectarines, strawberries, cherries and pears. Guess what yours truly literally gorged on the non-organic-but-highly-appealing Citeralla versions of while pregnant with Dot this summer....

This happy little tome then goes on to say:

There is growing consensus in the scientific community that small doses of pesticides and other chemicals can adversely affect people, especially during vulnerable periods of fetal development and childhood when exposures can have long lasting effects.

Oh Dottie, Mummy is very, very sorry.

This is all too depressing. I'm off to reset the mousetrap (what, you didn't think I'd forget, did you?)(and actually, make that 'rebuild' - guess who dismantled the previous incarnation and of course hasn't stuffed up the hole behind the cooker?) and then to bed to toss and turn with angst. Oh my god, I just heard a mouse skittering across the floor overhead. Really. Right, this time I mean business...

Bloody husbands

Bloody husbands. They're completely useless sometimes. Not only do they burp, fart and spend hours sitting on the loo, they also RELEASE THE MOUSE YOU'VE PAINSTAKINGLY CAUGHT WITH THE PATENTED HOMEMADE STEVE SMITH HUMANE MOUSETRAP BACK INTO THE KITCHEN!!!!!!!!!

Yes, it's true. To high excitement I went downstairs this morning to find the mousetrap sprung, the baking tin collapsed on the bottom tray and a small pile of telltale droppings just outside it.

The hubby eyed it suspiciously. "No, there's nothing in there, it's just collapsed or it would be making a noise," he sniffed. True, the mousetrap was eerily quiet, even when I gave the tin a little tap. But what of the droppings, then? Unless he'd looked at the cheese, pooed and nicked off again in an unlikely display of self-restraint, there had to be a mouse inside.

"He might have been there, but he's obviously escaped," was the hubby's response. "Face it, your trap is crap."

Obviously I couldn't check it inside the house because if there was a mouse, he'd escape (you know?). No, we'd have to wait till I was ready to go out.

I told Mum on the phone. "What will you do with him if there is a mouse?" "Drive five miles down the road to release him, as instructed." "Not very eco-friendly to drive five miles to release a mouse, is it?" Smarty pants (apparently she'd been discussing the trap in the pub last night with her mates). So I resolved to combine the mouse liberation outing with my planned trip to the organic farm shop (River Brook Farm, amazing place), but that doesn't open till 10, so I came upstairs to put Dot down for a nap in the meantime.

Unfortunately not everyone on the house has as much patience. My husband is borderline OCD when it comes to clearing things away and clearly couldn't resist the mousetrap. He just came upstairs looking sheepish. "I took the top off and there he was," he said. "He looked at me, I looked at him, and before I could do anything, he shot off behind the gas oven." Oh ye of little faith! Vindicated, but foiled!

So we're back to square one. At least we now know the trap works. But the next question is, will the mouse fall for the same trick twice, or has the hubby ruined everything? It'll depend if he (mouse, not hubby) can resist the clarion call of the New York State Helluva Good Cheddar. Well, we're off to the big smoke tonight for a few days so I guess we'll try the trap again when we get back and see what happens (and no, we can't leave it out while we're gone. Apparently he's a very cute little mouse and if he gets in there tonight, he'd have snuffed it by the time we get back. Not ideal).

Anyway, guess who's going to be spending the rest of the morning on their hands and knees behind the gas oven plugging up the hole where the pipe comes in? (Clue: not moi.)