Introducing Gigantic – the ethical ticketing agency whose mission is to put the love back into seeing great live music.

Gigantic are dedicated to giving the best customer service in town. How many ticket agencies do you know that give their customers a quick ring if their gig has been cancelled?

Ethical Superstore loves the fact that 10% of their ticket booking fee goes to climate change charity Global Cool, so that Gigantic people can give something back every time they go to a gig.

Managing director, Mark Gasson spent more than 14 years overseeing events at one of the biggest ticket agencies in the UK before founding Gigantic in 2006.

“We have been working hard to make sure that Gigantic is just that little bit different and better,” says Mark.

“We love great live music, we think it is important to work ethically and we know a lot of people out there feel the same way. That’s why we think Gigantic customers deserve a more friendly and personal service.”

Looking for an ethical ticketing agent? Ethical Superstore thinks that you'll love www.gigantic.com

Upon that night, when fairies light,
On Cassilis Downans dance,
Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze,
On sprightly coursers prance;
Or for Colean the route is ta’en,
Beneath the moon’s pale beams;
There, up the cove, to stray and rove,
Among the rocks and streams
To sport that night.

UK spending on Halloween is expected to exceed £120m this year, ten times the amount that was spent just five years ago. The pumpkin market alone is worth an estimated £25m now that Hallowe’en has become the third most profitable seasonal push in UK supermarkets after Christmas and Easter.

On the other side of the pond, the National Retail Federation of America estimates over $5 billion was spent in 2006.

Read more about the commercialisation of Halloween in this article, Corporate Halloween Hegemony, over at the Fuel Ghoul.

If you are going out trick-or-treating tonight then make sure you watch out for the ghoul!

Complete text of Robert Burns’ poem Hallowe’en. More Hallowe’en facts.

Fresh from River Cottage, Hugh Fearnley–Whittingstall cooks up a seasonal pumpkin recipe perfect for those chilly autumn nights.

Well, autumn looks like it’s finally arrived with a vengeance. Walking into work this morning I noticed that it’s now the majority of trees that have dropped all their leaves. There is also a noticeable chill in the air on most mornings now – so much for the Indian summer most of us have been hoping for!

Anyway, one good thing about autumn is that it’s soup season, and there’s nothing quite like some home made vegetable soup now that the nights are drawing in.

So, with Halloween just around the corner, get yourself a fresh organic veg box from Ethical Superstore and then indulge yourself with Hugh Fearnly-Wittingstall’s recipe for Whole Pumpkin Baked with Cream.

Serves 4-6, generously

1 medium (3-4kg) pumpkin or several small squashes

Up to 500g Gruyère cheese, grated (depending on the size of your pumpkin)

up to 1 litre of double cream

freshly grated nutmeg

a knob of butter

salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Slice the top off the pumpkin or squashes three-quarters of the way up and retain – this is your lid.

2. Scoop out the seeds and surrounding fibres from the pumpkin and place the scooped-out pumpkin on a baking tray or in an ovenproof dish.

3. Put enough grated Gruyère into the empty cavity of the pumpkin to fill about a third of it, then pour in double cream until the cavity is two-thirds full. Add a few gratings of nutmeg, a little salt and plenty of black pepper. Throw in a knob of butter and replace the lid so the pumpkin is whole again.

4. Place in a fairly hot oven (190°C/Gas Mark 5) and cook for 45 minutes to one and a quarter hours, depending on the size of the pumpkin. Test by removing the lid and poking at the flesh from the inside. It should be nice and tender. At this point, the skin may be lightly burnt and the whole thing just beginning to sag a bit.

Hugh’s advice:

“When the pumpkin is completely soft and cooked through, there is a real danger of collapse.”

“The larger the pumpkin, the bigger the danger. Don’t panic if it happens – it will look a bit deflated but will still taste delicious.”

5. Serve small squashes individually in bowls, with spoons to scoop out the flesh. Serve the larger pumpkin by scooping plenty of flesh and the creamy, cheesy liquid (the Gruyère comes out in lovely long, messy strings) into warmed soup bowls. Either way, serve piping hot.

Find out more about getting the best quality local organic food from farm to fork.

Recipe reproduced with kind permission from rivercottage.net

Green godliness is easy – it can be as simple as knowing your postcode.

If you’re looking to make a whopping dent in your carbon footprint, you can’t go far wrong if you start shopping locally. Getting food to fork without the fuel-heavy distribution, refrigeration, processing and packaging that the big supermarkets are guilty of, is one of today’s top ethical challenges. But – and this is the good bit – it can be the easiest green campaigning you’ll ever have to do, and it can be done online. Going local is a sure way to go green.

The local food scene is buzzing. Whether you are in town or country you’ll no doubt have noticed some of the 550 farmers’ markets springing up over the UK peddling their curious jams, oversized pies, and well, fresh fruit and vegetables picked and packed before most of us have finished our breakfast. New shop and drop vegetable box schemes will also deliver local food with fewer food miles, come wrapped in brown paper bags (remember those?) and invest direct in the local economy. And you’ll happily discover umpteen recipes for pumpkin along the way.

But in an age when supermarkets are undergoing the great green makeover, need we worry about supporting the retail giants? Well, yes. It’s not just weirdy-beardys that boycott Tesco, there are good reasons to shop local. Tesco’s current 30 per cent claim over the UK grocery market could be set to rise, Friends of the Earth’s Vicki Hird tell us: “With planned expansion in stores, and a large emphasis on the huge out-of-town hypermarkets, it is hard to see any ethical food marketing make a real dent in their operations.”

To halt the Tescopolisation of the marketplace is in part down to us as ethical consumers. Joy Carey, head of local food at the Soil Association tells us: “We think the key to future changes lies with us – the public. For example, in Cornwall, we calculated that if every tourist, resident, or business switched just 1 per cent of their spending to local items, it would put £52 million into the local economy every year. This sounds ambitious, but getting a small swing in spending patterns is very achievable.” Indeed, every little does help.

But we must keep the pressure on. The Soil Association is nervous about a Catch-22 situation arising if insufficient consumers buy local farm produce. A lack of consumers means a lack of farmers wanting to supply them, which leads to a lack of facilities, and so on. “Farmers need to feel confident that if they make changes to what they produce and where they sell it, they won't get left with unsold goods,” argues Joy.

Tracy Holland of North Country Organics , is optimistic about the future. They supply over 6 tonnes of produce each week to homes in the North of England. “People are now seeing what damage the supermarkets have done, and quite rightly want to do something about it. Our customers want to buy ‘real food from real people’ who can tell you when and where it was grown.”

And we have the technology on our side. Reducing your carbon footprint is at your fingertips. Innovative ‘postcode searching’ for your nearest vegetable box scheme or farm shop are simple ways that you can reconnect with your local producers and make your way to their farm gate. Who knows, you may even find you can walk there. How’s that for reducing your carbon footprint? Or get a box delivered to you. Either way going local is sure to put you on the path to green godliness.

To find your local box delivery company by your postcode, visit:

www.ethicalsuperstore.com/category/food-and-drink/fresh-foods/

Fresh from River Cottage, Hugh Fearnley–Whittingstall cooks up a seasonal pumpkin recipe perfect for those chilly autumn nights.

Serves 4-6, generously

1 medium (3-4kg) pumpkin or several small squashes
Up to 500g Gruyère cheese, grated (depending on the size of your pumpkin)
up to 1 litre of double cream
freshly grated nutmeg
a knob of butter
salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Slice the top off the pumpkin or squashes three-quarters of the way up and retain – this is your lid.

2. Scoop out the seeds and surrounding fibres from the pumpkin and place the scooped-out pumpkin on a baking tray or in an ovenproof dish.

3. Put enough grated Gruyère into the empty cavity of the pumpkin to fill about a third of it, then pour in double cream until the cavity is two-thirds full. Add a few gratings of nutmeg, a little salt and plenty of black pepper. Throw in a knob of butter and replace the lid so the pumpkin is whole again.

4. Place in a fairly hot oven (190°C/Gas Mark 5) and cook for 45 minutes to one and a quarter hours, depending on the size of the pumpkin. Test by removing the lid and poking at the flesh from the inside. It should be nice and tender. At this point, the skin may be lightly burnt and the whole thing just beginning to sag a bit.

Hugh’s advice: "When the pumpkin is completely soft and cooked through, there is a real danger of collapse. The larger the pumpkin, the bigger the danger. Don't panic if it happens – it will look a bit deflated but will still taste delicious."

5. Serve small squashes individually in bowls, with spoons to scoop out the flesh. Serve the larger pumpkin by scooping plenty of flesh and the creamy, cheesy liquid (the Gruyère comes out in lovely long, messy strings) into warmed soup bowls. Either way, serve piping hot.

Reproduced with kind permission from rivercottage.net

Three more great ways to shop local

1. Visit a Farmers’ Market.

For a bona fide market, visit www.farma.org.uk where all market produce is guaranteed to come within a set mile radius and be producer made.

2. Order a regular fruit and vegetable box.

The ultimate green shop and drop with year-round seasonal delights.

Visit our fresh foods section to order an organic box.

For more seasonal recipes try www.vegbox-recipes.co.uk

3. Support local shops

Make your money go further in the local economy. To find your local farm shop, try www.bigbarn.co.uk

These might be the best invention ever.

Take some delicious Divine Dark Chocolate and coat whole, dried apricots in it.

Shazam! Dried whole apricots, richly covered in Divine dark chocolate.

These really have to be tasted to be believed.

Get some today!

http://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/products/divine-chocolate/divine-delights-apricots/

Hey kids, don’t you know it’s wrong to cut up little cute mice and froggies?

No? Well, it is! So stop it!

Sign the Pledge: Refuse to Dissect is the latest campaign from peta2.com, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

I refused to dissect “when I were a lad” and that was like, ages ago.
Please join the growing number of students who have said “no” to cutting up dead animals and sign the pledge refusing to dissect. Thank you!

The postal strike is having an impact on EthicalSuperstore.com but I worry that the real loser in this will be the environment. We’ve had to suspend our cheapest delivery rate, but generally most parcels are being delivered by our friends at Parcel Force. However, the long term implications of a weakened Royal Mail are definitely bad for the environment.

Our postie—she’s actually a young woman—drops our letters and small packets off every day at home around 9am. She walks from the delivery depot with a small sack of letters and then collects the rest of her letters from strategically located pick up points round her route. It works because all letters in the UK outside of London are still delivered by the Royal Mail. She passes every house every day.

Now imagine a world where Royal Mail is weakened to the point where they no longer deliver to every house every day. Either we’ll all be driving to the sorting office to pick our mail up – 500 houses on our postie’s route might mean 500 more journeys each day by car!!!! Alternatively, lots of new van or car based delivery schemes get launched and we all get multiple deliveries each week from multiple companies. May be slightly less impact than us all driving places but ultimately much worse than the system we have now.

Postal delivery is an environmental issue. The government—the current owner of the Royal Mail—needs to focus less on preparing to sell it and more on building the service it has to be truly world class. We have cost effective, environmentally sensitive delivery to every home in the UK – do we really want to squander it?

Last October we moved into a big new warehouse in our home city of Newcastle upon Tyne. The move meant we could even afford to hire a cleaning company to keep our office and warehouse tidy and shiny – previously, I vacuumed and mopped the floors as part of living the committed life on an entrepreneur…

Unfortunately, the cleaning company brought with them a load of cleaning products with ingredients not of this world. It's taken a few months, but hallelujah, they're gone, done, toast, banished (humanely, of course). We certainly have enough stock of Bio-D and Ecover to keep us totally green and clean. Thanks for making it happen Ben, our Green Activist-Online Marketing Manager

P.S. just learned that John Travolta is reportedly a big Ecover supporter and global warming campaigner, though check out how many private planes make up the flip side of this story.

It’s been eulogised in holy scriptures, but is honey actually good for you?

Fig 1: Apis mellifera, the Western or European honey bee © All rights reserved, Lord V¹

Honey has been eulogized in the scriptures of every major religion since the dawn of time, but is the “food of the gods” really that good for you? Yes – in moderation.

Natural honey is valued for its sweetness, and is chock full of unexpected goodness. Because it’s predigested by insects many people who can’t stomach cane sugar can more easily metabolize honey and enjoy its natural energy – so it’s almost the perfect food.

Honey is composed of two main sugars, levulose and dextrose. These sugars do not need to be broken down by the digestive process, so honey is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream, giving a quick energy boost to the body. It also contains protein, vitamins and minerals, but no cholesterol. Honey has certain potassium salts that make it a phenomenal moisture absorber and a great killer of germs and bacteria. In fact, honey kills bacteria more effectively than some antibiotics.

This also helps it draw excess fluid from the blood stream, lowering blood pressure. Honey, if taken on an empty stomach with water and lemon, reduces obesity and weight. Beauticians recommend using it liberally for a glowing complexion and silky hair. If taken at night with hot milk, it cures constipation.

Honey has been used in many medical applications over the years, but recent studies are now able to prove its benefits as a topical antibacterial treatment for burns and ulcers.

Known antioxidant compounds in honey are chrysin, pinobanksin, vitamin C, catalase, and pinocembrin. Unlike most other sweeteners, honey contains small amounts of a wide array of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and antioxidants, which include a wide array of vitamins, such as vitamin B6, thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, and pantothenic acid.

In addition, honey contains essential minerals including calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, and zinc as well as several different amino acids have been identified in honey. Dark honey has more nutrients than lighter varieties. Vitamin and mineral content depend on the floral source of the honey. Honey has less than 2% sodium.

Because of its antibacterial properties, pure honey can be preserved indefinitely.

Fig 2: Apis mellifera on a Hebe bloom. © Lord V.

Are there different flavors of honey?

Single varietal honeys are creating quite a buzz in the gourmet food scene these days, but this trend is nothing new to beekeepers. Honey is a natural product that has always been highly dependent on the local environment in which the bees gather their nectar. Much like wine regions and coffee regions, different honey regions also exist.

For the first time in the history of apiculture, beekeepers are now being encouraged by food connoisseurs to situate their hives in areas that will allow honey bees to frequent one particular plant. The hope is that these insects will then produce a unique flavor that cannot be replicated anywhere else in the world.

Fig 3: Honey bee on a Lace Hydrangea. © Lord V.

Perhaps the first and most popular flavor to be recognized in Canada is Buckwheat Honey, which is a really dark honey with a VERY distinctive taste and aroma. Harvested in mid-August, the buckwheat plant blossoms for about ten days before going to seed in the fall. Unfortunately not many Canadian farmers grow buckwheat anymore, and so this highly coveted product is becoming very rare indeed. When my dad, brother and uncle spy a field of buckwheat that’s about to bloom they quickly move a dozen hives as close as possible. Unlike wild flowers that grow randomly in meadows and fence rows, farmer’s fields are the best places to harvest single varietal honey crops. Here’s a huge concentrated source, and to ensure purity my family will harvest it as soon as possible.

The most interesting single varietal crop harvested in Ontario, Canada has got to be something called Purple Loosestrife. Botanists may be familiar with this plant, which is quite controversial. It originated in Asia and first appeared in Canada about twenty years ago. Since that time it has invaded and subsequently dominated of most of the province’s wetland. Natural lovers and bird watchers fear it’s destroying the marshes and have organized armies of high school students to pull these plants right out of the ground and thereby SAVE THE SWAMPS. Beekeepers however love this plant – with its roots firmly embedded in the quagmire it always flowers, even in the driest seasons, and it yields a marvelous tasting honey with a very interesting tang – it’s a single varietal honey with a complicated taste. When preserved in glass, Purple Loosestrife Honey has a slight green / blue tint.

Fig 4: Honey bee diving for pollen in a dandelion. © Lord V.

American beekeepers are proud of their Pumpkin Blossom Honey which is a dark amber-colored liquid with a robust aroma and flavor. And California’s Black Button Sage Honey is absolutely excellent when served with vanilla ice cream. And of course the Savannah region’s Tupelo Honey is probably the most famous varietal honey of them all.

Harvested over two or three weeks in the early spring, tupelo nectar is one of the rarest and most valuable liquid resources in the world.

Yes the golden age of honey has finally arrived, and North American consumers owe it to their own taste buds to ignore Billy Bee’s plastic tubs in the supermarket – cheap Argentinean Chinese honey blends that are practically inedible – and sample a single varietal honey from a local beekeeper in their area.

Roberiffic

This article was written by EthicalSuperstore.com contributor Roberiffic.

Rob’s from Canada, and don’t tell anyone I told you this, but Rob is also the Fuel Ghoul. We’ve been admiring the ghoul’s work for quite a while now, but he seems to have gone a bit quiet of late. No doubt he’s off social networking. 

We hope you enjoyed the article!

EthicalSuperstore.com used to recommend that you try Tropical Forest’s fairtrade labelled Organic Forest Honey, but this seems to have been discontinued. 

Using sustainable methods of gathering honey from wild bees in the forests of north west Zambia, beekeepers hang their bark hives high in the trees out of reach of honey badgers and army ants.

Wild swarms occupy the hives and start filling them with honeycombs. After a couple of years the beekeepers return, climb the trees and take off half the honey, leaving half for the bees.

Find more ethically produced honey at Ethical Superstore.

» 1. ^{^}All the photography in this article has been used with the kind permission of Lord V, one of our long term Flickr contacts. All photographs in this post are © All rights reserved.

Drop by and show your appreciation for the finest macro photographer on Flickr and be amazed! Enjoy!