Our Hungry Planet.

For a while now there has been some media coverage about food waste, but mostly the media has been more interested in trying to create an illusion that the world will be unable to feed the expected rise in world population by 2050. When I had the chance to do an online free course run by Reading University entitled 'Our Hungry Planet' I jumped at the chance, I had hoped that during the six week course I would have learned something that I was not already aware of.  The course was interesting and it was a good chance to interact with other students as well as the course lecturers, students were expected to keep a food diary and monitor their food waste, although many were like ourselves,  zero waste households, very few were actually producing any of what they ate. Most were highly dependant on Supermarkets, and that included people who live in so called underdeveloped countries, but nowhere was the blame for major food waste put fairly and squarely where it belongs and that is on the Supermarkets. From the way they treat their suppliers, expecting them to take the hit financially for foods unsold or because the supermarket had cancelled all or part of its order, to the amount of food that they dump daily, food that is still fit for consumption but nearing its sell by date, or in the case of M&S sandwiches, they will not allow their supplier to use the first two and last two slices of bread to be used in the making of these sandwiches, so the four rejected slices are dumped. This amounts to 13,000 slices of bread per day.This is a scandal.

A very good read.

A book that is well worth reading is by Tristram Stuart, simply called 'Waste', it brings the whole issue of feeding  the world into context. There is enough food currently being produced to feed the anticipated increase in world population, but the world has to stop wasting food the way it is currently.

Distance travelled, 50feet.

  Do we need to import Spinach, Mange tout peas,  Broccoli and Cauliflower in the middle of summer from Zimbabwe and Kenya? We are over run with all these crops at the moment, why are the stores not selling Irish or at least UK produce instead of importing these easily grown crops over five thousand air miles? The Mange tout peas were priced at 1.29 euros for a 200g plastic coated packet as was the Broccoli, not what I would call cheap for things that grow like weeds.

Once again at the weekend we headed for the Sligo coast, it was very windy where we live and we had expected to see big waves and a big sea, but it was calm.

We found a little cove that we had never discovered before, very pretty and sheltered, just a few old cottages which have been restored and one larger house which would need at lot of work if not rebuilding.

Maybe a tad to close to the edge now?

We were particularly intrigued by the ruin, not the usual two or three roomed cottage as was the norm, this had been quite a substantial house , with four rooms downstairs, four bedrooms and three chimneys standing on good land,

I could live with that view.

          with views to die for.
 This must have once been the home of a prosperous  family, maybe it is a little too close to the cliff edge though.

This little cove was full of surprises, a fresh water stream flowed into the sea, and three caves,

one of which had a pillar in the middle with what looks like a face,

A natural caryatid.

it appeared to be entirely natural.

We also found fossilized coral in the carboniferous lime stone rock,

these fossils date back some 350 million years,

we had not realised that this coast line is renowned for it's fossils.

Yet more fossil coral.

Again it was a lovely trip out and the little lanes that take you down to the numerous little bays are full of wild roses, honeysuckle, rosa rugosa, fuchsia bushes and oxeye daisies.