To all the mothers of the world
To all the mothers in the world…
who sing their babies to sleep…
who nurture and nourish them…
who love and cherish them…
who teach them right from wrong…
and send them out into the world like ships from a safe harbour…
I wish you happy mother’s day.
I can’t take any credit for the lovely photos - thanks to Phitar on Flickr.com. You can see his Mother and Child set here.
A visit to Padstow and a walk through the dunes to St Enodoc
February 28, 2008 by admin
Filed under Beaches, Devon and Cornwall, Leisure, Nature, Sightseeing, United Kingdom, Walking
On my recent weekend in Cornwall I visited Padstow, a typical Cornish fishing village. Let me clarify - I don’t mean typical in terms of a village that time forgot, but typical in terms of smart restaurants, art galleries and gift shops and the locals complaining about being priced out of the housing market.
Much of it’s down to the impact of Rick Stein, celebrity Cornish chef with a string of TV series under his belt and a number of culinary enterprises that dominate the foodie scene in Padstow. A few years ago I thoroughly enjoyed my dinner at his flagship Seafood restaurant, admiring his art collection on the walls, but this time we had teenagers in tow, so it was the local chippie for us.
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In August, Padstow is packed to bursting, and even on a February weekend it was buzzing, with fudge and ice cream shops for the children, some arty gift shops and boutiques to keep me happy and enough sunny benches for the menfolk to enjoy a pastie and a pint.
There’s a haunted Elizabethan manor house set above the town, or you can hire a bike from the car park and follow the Camel Trail along a disused railway line beside the beautiful Camel Estuary, as far as Wadebridge and beyond. On our visit however, we decided to take the ferry from the harbour that plies back and forth across the estuary to the holiday village of Rock.
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Landing on the beach, we turned our back on Rock, so favoured by the smart, London crowd, setting our faces instead towards the estuary mouth. The broad beach would have been perfect for kite-flying but there was not enough wind. Instead we clambered through the sand dunes towards the St Enodoc golf course in search of the tiny church of St Enodoc that serves the parish of St Minver.
The chapel dates back to the 12th century but until 1864 it was virtually buried by the dunes that surrounded it, and to hold a service the vicar and parishioners had to descend into the sanctuary through a hole in the roof. In the 19th century it was finally unearthed and the church restored.
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Today you can find everything you might hope for in an old Cornish church but in miniature; the cut-down medieval rood screen, the mellow wooden pews and the memorials to those who died at sea.
The former poet Laureate John Betjeman had a holiday home at nearby Daymer and is buried here - he wrote this poem about the church.
If you’re looking for the Cornwall that time forgot, this is surely the place to find it - and not a bad place to be buried either.
Sunday Afternoon Service in St. Enodoc Church
Now that one and now none. As winds about
The burnished path through lady’s-finger, thyme,
And bright varieties of saxifrage,
So grows the tinny tenor faint or loud
All all things draw toward St. Enodoc.
Come on! Come on! and it is five to three.
The tinny tenor. Hover-flies remain
More than a moment on a ragwort bunch,
And people’s passing shadows don’t disturb
Red Admirals basking with their wings apart.
A mile of sunny, empty sand away,
A mile of shallow pools and lugworm casts.
Safe, faint and surfy, laps the lowest tide.
Going Bananas in Fairtrade fortnight
February 27, 2008 by admin
Filed under Eating and drinking, Leisure, World, World Issues
To celebrate the beginning of Fairtrade fortnight I got busy baking and came up with a delicious Fairtrade banana and pineapple cake.
Bananas are the most popular fruit in the UK and are a major export for Latin America and the Caribbean - in some places such as the Windward isles the economy is completely reliant on them.
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The cheapest bananas come from large plantations, which are easier to farm but are controlled by large corporations who keep the prices paid to producers as low as possible. Fairtrade provides an alternative for small producers by guaranteeing a fair and fixed price and a social premium which producers use to re-invest in community projects.
I took the banana cake into work where I put up a display of Fairtrade information - the cakes soon disappeared and I had plenty of compliments.
Hopefully my Fairtrade banana cake will also do a little to help small banana producers like Regina Joseph from Dominica, one of the chain of islands that make up the Windward Isles.
Regina has five children and eight grandchildren and owns a 2.5 acre farm close to her home. Bananas are the most important crop for Regina, providing 70% of her income, although she also grows a variety of other crops between the banana trees such as hot peppers, yams and cabbages which she sells locally.
When Regina became a certified Fairtrade producer in 2000, Fairtrade encouraged her to plant trees, such as grapefruit, oranges and coconut palms in buffer zones at the edges of her fields to help protect the banana trees during the hurricane season. Regina has never used chemicals on her farm, preferring to follow the Carib tradition of respecting the natural environment. Instead she creates compost for her fields from the mown grass and rejected bananas which she applies to her banana fields. Regina says;
The advantage I see in Fairtrade is that I don’t have to use chemicals, which is good for my health, and a healthy environment. It helps to pay the bills and send my children to school; I am getting more for my bananas now.
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Thanks to the social premium paid by Fairtrade, Regina’s community has been able to build a community hall, install street lighting and buy a lawn mower to reclaim an overgrown sports field so that children can play football, cricket and rounders again. Regina has upgraded her packhouse with a clean water washing system and built a pit toilet flushed by rainwater collected in a tub.
You can read more about Regina’s story here and do take a look at this short film about two Fairtrade banana producers in the Dominican Republic.
I was also interested to hear from Trinifood, a food journalist and blogger from Trinidad who’s also buying Fairtrade bananas. Read what she has to say here.
If you fancy treating yourself to some Fairtrade banana cake, here’s the recipe, adapted from Tana Ramsay’s family cookbook.
Banana and Pineapple cake
150g light brown Fairtrade sugar
85 g softened, unsalted butter
2 large free-range eggs
4 ripe Fairtrade bananas (mashed)
1/4 of a Fairtrade pineapple, peeled, cored and finely chopped
250g self-raising flour
1/4 teaspoon Freetrade cinnamon
Cream the butter, eggs and sugar together. Add the mashed banana, chopped pineapple, cinnamon and flour and mix well. Turn into a greased loaf tin and bake at 180 degrees for about 45 minutes.
Thanks to BROWSER on Flickr.com for the photos of Dominica. Other photos from the Fairtrade website.
