Musings, lemons and chaos

Did you miss it?  Miss what?  "Another" important event on the calendar? Something that may not be of importance to you but is of deadly importance to the  "One in seven people Worldwide" who go hungry every day.  Yes, in 2012, one in seven people are going hungry every single day.

October the 16th was World Food Day.

This has really touched a cord with me (again it seems like I am waking up from a three year fog).  The numbers are just staggering;  870 million people are going hungry right now!  When I blogged about this issue five years ago (as did a lot of you) I naively thought that it might get better but it's not :(

What is really mind blowing to me is that this comes at a time when local growers and farmers in Australia are being forced to cut prices by the two large Stupidmarkets (or shut up shop and go out of business!).  They are advertising how low their prices are, and yet there are people in our suburbs who are going hungry right now!  I'm guessing that there's absolutely no money or profit in ending poverty or hunger.

Around the World there's drought, floods, the rumblings of a Global food security crisis, and yet I bet you've got an eggplant or lettuce in your fridge slowly turning into compost. Or a blackening limp carrot stuck to the lump of ice at the back (knows from personal experience....) We're still all throwing out way too much of the food that we're buying!  This is one of the reasons (apart from the health benefits) that I'm starting to get into fermenting and preserving in such a big way,

"No Honey, I've not folded the washing/vacuumed the floors/picked up the toys today, I've been busy making jams, pickles and other things that go 'Hiss, pop, bubble'"

So what am I doing to try to walk the talk?

• Getting my garden back up and producing again
• Bartering for what I'm not growing myself
• Buying Local.  Living Local.
• Preserving as much as I can by bottling, fermenting or freezing (I'm seeing the limitations of freezing - power outages  lack of space, cost of buying and running another freezer)
• Starting up a group of local likeminded people to come over and share our lifeskills knowledge (this idea has been heavily inspired by Eat at Dixiebelle's blog and her Urban Homesteading Club

As I've said before, my floors are always crunchy, my table is always sticky but I am getting my passion back for what's important in my life;  making good lifestyle choices for my family, networking with my community and giving back something to the Universe.

Now speaking of giving something back....Teacher gifts for yep, Christmas.  This year they're going to get Preserved Lemons.  I bartered lemons for greens yesterday, I have jars and lovely salt, so that's what's on the agenda for today.  Hopefully by the end of term they will be deliciousness in a jar.

Hold on you say, you've written about 'Musings' and the 'lemons' where's the 'chaos' bit?  Ummm yeah, I need to sort out this mess today as well.  My system isn't working and it's making me stabby.  Very stabby!

Any suggestions?