Cooking Tip #2

After my revelation that using a saucepan lid when you cook will halve your carbon emissions here is another revelatory piece of cooking advice. When you want to eat something that usually only grows here in the summer, like peppers and strawberries, when its not summer, supermarkets very, very cleverly fly these yummy items in on planes from Kenya, South Africa and the Canary Islands, where they grow all the time.

Why is this clever. Why is this clever you say, when doing this results in STUPID AMOUNTS of CO2 being released through the burning of aviation fuel. Well it is clever because the supermarkets can charge you £10,000,000 for the privilege of having strawberries in December and make loadsa money. So clever for them but not so clever for you.

What you could do instead is buy food that doesn't come on a plane from countries miles and miles away round the other side of the world. Therefore saving yourself a lot of money and a load of carbon emissions! Woo!

What you could do, instead of buying strawberries from the supermarket in December, is wait for them to be produced as they would normally be in the English summertime and buy them from a farm in June. If you don't live near a farm (maybe you live in central Oxford) then there are actually places that you can get food other than supermarkets you know. Try going to the Covered Market and not just for another Ben's Cookie (although you could get one of those as well if you wanted). These places are cheaper, less likely to have flown stuff in from the other side of the world and clearly say where their stuff has come from. (Hint: the cheaper stuff tends to be labelled "English strawberries" or "English carrots". The more expensive tends to be labelled, "Maroc courgettes" or "Canary Island peppers". In case you don't know, these places are lot further away than England.)

And then when you cook these lovely things don't forget to use a saucepan lid.