Yoga, scrappy meals and the Ori Cafe

We've spent our weekend at an Iyengar yoga intensive. Its the last one to be held by our teacher as he is moving on to another state. I shall really miss him, he is a skilled and caring teacher, who teaches from his heart. He shall be missed by his students and now we all have to get used to a new teacher, and she to us. Interesting times.

With most of the weekend taken up with yoga there's not been much time for anything except scrap meals of hot cross buns from Bakehouse on Wentworth (the Springwood shop), toast and sandwiches as we dashed in and out from yoga.

We've also eaten out at the Ori Cafe in Springwood, dinner last night and breakfast today, feel a bit guilty about purchasing food in our 'not buying it' mode, but we never took restaurants or cafes off our list. The nice thing about the Ori is that the restaurant is separated out from the main drinking bar with its pokies and there is a lovely outside courtyard for summer and in winter, with its open fire, it can be charming and atmospheric.

The Ori's dinner menu has a large range of good quality pub food such as steaks, pasta, fish, and a decent choice of vegetarian options, plus they have a Specials board which changes frequently. We shared our dinner at the Ori with J1 and J2, it wasn't a late night as we had a pre-dawn start this morning, but our meals were good and the company better. We shared some brusectta and garlic bread, the bread was rather dull but the toppings were tasty. For mains, I had a flavorsome but a too large serving of gnocchi with roast tomatoes, baked ricotta and mixed veggies. The others chose from the Specials board, a pork chop with mash and veg and the fish of the day. Once again, delicious but rather large servings. Dinner prices range between $12 to $29 ish, pretty standard for pub food these days. Deserts are the standard cafe cakes and tarts that you'd expect. I had a scoop of ice cream, pretty dull with its swirl of bottled chocolate topping, my companions had the sticky date pud and a citron tart which they enjoyed- but once again the serves were too large I felt.

The Ori does good coffee, a very hard commodity to find in the lower Blue Mountains as well as a decent breakfast fry-up. For our breakfast this morning we both had the vegetarian poached eggs, on a corn pancake and field mushroom stack, very delicious, though the presentation was a tad 'try-hard' what with the stacking and swizzles of some sort of vinaigrette dressing to make a pattern on the large white plate.

The Ori is a great local place, its wait staff are pleasant and professional, meals arrive quickly and the food is what you'd expect, good quality pub food at pub prices. Its also very popular with locals so you'll need to book.

Earth Hour - think global act local

Its Earth Hour today and we will all (hopefully) be turning off our lights for one hour from 8.30 p.m. to show our concern for the earth's global warming crisis. So its an ideal opportunity to chat about the sustainability measures we've implemented in our community over the last couple of years.

It all started with Get Up's Climate Action Now initiative in 2007 to get online activists to meet in their local area. A group of us took up this challenge, met in a strangers home, got to know each other, formed a local action group and chose our target; we would sign the Kyoto Protocol declaration because the then Howard government wouldn't.

Our aim was to follow the protocol and reduce our carbon emissions by 30% over twelve months and to advertise what we were doing as much as possible within the community. We promoted our efforts in the Blue Mountains Gazette and through hosting community events such as a 'bring your own plate' supper where the Blue Mountains chapter of Ecopella sang to entertain all the brave souls who came to meet like minded strangers in their neighborhood. We found out about the Council's Sustainability Street initiatives and met the local's involved. We ran a couple of stalls to hand out tips and tricks on reducing your carbon footprint at our local shopping centre. We investigated setting up a lower mountains food cooperative, but didn't get it off the ground. All very local and low key, using the Think Globally, Act Locally principle.

What were our personal initiatives? Well we started big with the installation of water tanks to get us off the water grid as much as possible and we replaced our electric hot water system with a solar one, the picture shows the tanks and hotwater set-up and our proud green plumber. Nic changed from a non-sustainable plumbing business to a sustainable one and we were one of his first clients in his new incarnation.

We also implemented less expensive things such as riding our bikes as much as possible and combining the bikes with public transport for longer jaunts, putting water saving devices on all our taps, not using the house's air conditioning or the clothes dryer, shopping locally, buying local produce, consuming less, ensuring the things we bought were Fair trade and noting the 'travel miles'.

Our Climate Action Group has fizzled out sadly, busy people, busy lives, and we never got to evaluate whether any of us reached the 30% goal of reduced carbon emission, but we did raise the profile of sustainability issues within our community, met strangers who became friends and implemented green initiatives in our home, this year we've installed a one kilowatt photovoltaic electricity system and are making our own electricity to contribute to the grid, so a good outcome all round.

I would encourage you to think about how you can think globally but act locally in your own neighborhood to reduce your carbon footprint and make the world a more sustainable place.