Things have been very busy for me with Uni starting up again. I've been doing a reasonable amount of cooking, but nothing too new or exciting. I managed to re-tweak my vegan version of my grandmum's zucchini bread. I still have two zucchinis that need to be shredded, so expect a photo and recipe sometime this weekend.
However, the theme that I wanted to talk about today is the environment. This year, I am the President of a student group called Environmental Concerns Organization, ECO. Now I consider myself to be a very environmentally aware person (examples include, oh well, me becoming vegan partially for environmental reasons, driving my car only once/twice a week, recycling like a fiend, and many more), but, since I fully took over my duties, I have been thinking about it even more so. I've been doing so much more reading online than normal as well as having my opinion asked of me. Which is sort of cool, actually, and brings me to my next point.
Cafeteria trays. Seem sort of innocuous, don't they? I don't eat in the Uni cafeteria anymore, so I hadn't thought about them in a while. A writer from the Uni newspaper asked for my opinion about the trend of Unis going trayless. Can you guess whether I'm for it or against it?
Did you even need to guess? I love the idea of going trayless for several reasons. First of all, it helps in reducing the water and energy that would normally be used for cleaning the trays. Secondly, it helps reduce the waste of food because people will not be piling food on multiple plates since they are forced to take only what they can carry. Having less room by not having a tray really helps people to think about the amout of food that they are consuming. Sometimes it seems like many people do not realize how wasteful our society can be in such manners (which is something that irritates me to no end), and going trayless would help people be more conscious about such things. The issue of overeating is another issue that can be alleviated in the same manner. No tray, means (hopefully) a more appropriate amount of food is eaten.
I especially loved my clincher sentence (yes, I realize that makes me sound like a dork). Part of it was used as a highlighted (and bigger) excerpt, though I feel like they didn't use the most important part. Here it is in its' entirety: Going trayless would be a bit of an adjustment to make, but I think the positive ramifications of being more environmentally conscious and more aware of our society's (not necessarily positive) habits far outweigh any possible complications during the onset of such a practice.
Now, I feel as if I should go search out other seemingly innocuous things and expose them. That, or go hug a tree or something of that sort.
What is this you may ask? It is the Eggplant Paprikash from the FatFree Vegan Kitchen. It was amazing. It was suggested to serve it with noodles, but I was lazy and had it with couscous instead. (Plus, I had eaten pasta the previous day.) I pretty much followed the recipe except that I omitted the onion and only used 1/4 cup of sour cream, if that, and I ad-libbed with soymilk for the rest of it. 
