Anti-food waste: The Real Junk Food Project

So around the corner from  the patch of space where I reside, a new cafe has opened up: a Pay As You Feel Real: Junk Food Project cafe, and I gotta say, if we all switched to a good binge on this kind of junk food, we would all be a lot better off.
The premise of the cafe is quite challenging, but essentially takes wonky fruit and vegetables supermarkets and the like would ordinarily bin, and use it to create super health meals. I know what you're thinking. Wonky vegetables? Disgusting. Curse those auxins and the lack of Abscisic acid. If my carrots aren't as straight as the posture of a Prince with a broomstick up his arse, I will have none of it.

Around one third of the food we produce globally is wasted for a variety of reasons, often needlessly. At the same time, around 795 million people don't have enough food to eat healthily. So these guys work on a grassroots level and intercept food wastage from local stores, food that is needlessly wasted. Like wonky cabbage. Wonky carrots however, awful.

Cathays, Cardiff.

Travelling to Albania: Step One

So, after giving my lovely companion a Lonely Planet Guide to Europe, but fairly restricted by crippling debt and the difficulty of maintaining $$ work in the final years of university, we have opted to travel to Albania! A quietly emerging country it seems to be, one of the Balkans, this place appears to be perfect for the more weathered traveller looking for a rugged, eu naturale vibe. Indeed, first glimpses have shown Albania to be a home to mountains, beautiful beaches along the Riviere, a wholly foreign composite of fauna and flora, and an intrinsically intriguing culture.
                             
This is not the first time I have planned and travelled independently, having previously wandered through Mozambique, Swaziland and both the northern/southern parts of India, and I have always kept a journal during my time there, but this time I've decided to start blogging my progress of planning this latest escapade. At the very least it will share my method of sewing together a plan for travelling that might help fine tune the hefty research of yourselves!

Now, we are thinking of going for two-four weeks tops (lovely friend having an adult-world job etc etc), which I've budget to be anywhere from £500-£1000, naturally increasing from one figure to the other with time extension.

I could rattle off flights etc etc., but really, the most important thing first is to clarify: what do you want to do?

For us?

A little bit of city, trekking, and finally beach. This is layout I've enjoyed before, because the trip is then more exploratory, and gradually winds down to a chill-out right at the end (BEACHBEACHBEACH, lassis on the beach).

This is where I get pretty split, because on the one hand the Islands of Tsamil, Borsh, Himara and Dhermi look to have fantastic beaches, right down in the south of the country. For us though, that would mean cutting out the Peaks of the Balkans, right in the north.

                                    ************************************8
So it turns out the Peaks of the Balkans are accessible, to a degree, in Korce,, 27 miles out from Berat! After a few hours of research I've devised a travel triangle from Tirana to Berat (3 hour bus), to Korce (27 miles minibus/2 day walk), Korce to Sarande (9 hour bus), Sarande to Gjirokaster (1 hour buss), Gjirokaster to Tirana (7 hours).


And this is step 1 of planning the journey done.

A Will To Change

We. Are a strong nation. We. Are a proud nation. We have our principles. And we do not back down. The conviction of the United Kingdom has inspired such pride in to my swelling chest throughout my lifetime, and what has particularly uplifted me on this jovial cloud of triumphant impression and glee is the forward thinking steps we are taking in the right direction.

Oh, I'm sorry. Turns out our navigator was holding the map upside down and a gorilla with a kidney infection urinated all over the bit that shows the (moral) compass. I mean, digging up the National Parks seems like a good idea...."frack off," am I right?  But at least we're on a soggy, smelly path (quite literally if you're one of the unfortunate flooded), which is of course, better than no path at all.

 I mean, some people are trying at least trying to get us on track to a sustainable lifestyle, and doing pretty damn well - or maybe my judgement is clouded, since next to the Conservative party a dog taking a dump on a daffodil to try and make it grow faster looks like a pioneer in Green policy.

What I find truly shameful, is that for all a happy stereotype's worth of us Britishy Britons slam America for being a devolved version of the United Kingdom (that pro-gun policy though, I mean, ease up on the testosterone or you'll end up overdue a castration after the testicles gargantuan themselves and overtake the brain), America's own Mark Jacobson has developed the most ingenious road map for the United States that has been thought capable of eliminating the U.S dependency on fossil fuels.

Who would have thought that making a pre-existing infrastructure 10x more efficient would be a faster, more beneficial and straight up valid way of straightening out the mess of global warming that's smeared its way across the planet like a fresh cow pat over a pair of Jimmy Choo's?

The feat is a leap in to the dark, and as has been the way with many a sensible scientist, he has met his fair share of rebuttals (but at least he's not been imprisoned, dishonoured, burned at the stake or clobbered to death by Newtonian apples - Newtonian apples of course, simply being all of the apples).

What the plan needs:
- 78, 000, 000 rooftop solar systems
- 49,000 commercial solar plants
- 156,000 offshore wind turbines

I really don't know why all new buildings in construction currently aren't forced to simply install solar panels all across them. Easy game. Easy energy. The artistic impression of architect Vincent Callebaut's idea for a sustainable Paris is stunning for instance. A positive mecca of green empowerment!
                    

Welch (2016) in the National Geographic rated Jacobson's plan as on par with other "ambitious endeavours" such as the nuclear bomb and military WWII arsenal. I mean. Perhaps not the most attractive comparisons to pull when trying to sell such a grandiose idea to a wavering, very American public, it can't be denied those other "ambitious endeavours" weren't successful. And it does seem quite unlikely all the implanted green technology would spontaneously, simultaneously combust as a measure of some sinister military feat - unless you're in a new-agey Stormbreaker novel.

The Cave of Crystals, Doorstep of Death, Maker of Malodours and Most Spectacularly Soggy of Spectacles

Caves. Are dank. Wet. Pitch black. Dangerous. Often times rather unpleasant. But they also house the most spectacular fauna and flora; beautiful formations grow within, and the heavy, hushed gravity of the systems are something well worth the visit. Indeed, there is no experience as refreshing as, after having been underground for eight hours, resurfacing out of a little, half-built hole in the ground and smelling the clean air, the fresh grass and often livestock, all senses feeling heightened after the cut off that is being within a cave (I've put in some pretty pictures to prove how marvellous caves are at further down).

The gifts humanity leave the Earth as we walk across it, poke our fingers in little holes or touch things we shouldn't, also often end up as dank, rather unpleasant growths. Rather akin to a verruca-infested kid bombing in to a swimming pool, shredding its warty skin all over the unassuming, dermatologically-content public.

And yet I am in the process of drawing up a research proposal to investigate and pinpoint the key bacterial human indicators present in the cave systems of South Wales, with the intention of them being potentially usable for an index of biological integrity in cave systems. This can hopefully be linked to future use in environmental impact assessment and cave management strategy.

There are specific micro-organisms to be looked out for over a four-month study period:
Staphylococcus aureus - skin micro flora present on/within human epidermal tissue.
Fecal coliform bacteria and E. Coli - present in the gut and feces of warm-blooded animals.
Alternaria and Cladosporium, strains of filamentous fungi, which commonly grow on cereals, simply owing to the fact that if any food debris is going to be dropped, it will likely be cereal bars hastily stuffed into overall pockets on a caving trip.

(If you have any comments/interest in this baby proposal, feedback would be gladly recieved)

Hopefully, in identifying the true extent of the impact of human breach into the cave systems, or the lack thereof, the management of the caves can be improved - or not. But at least another little insight in to the hidden ecosystems of the caves would be greater understood.

Just to demonstrate how truly incredible caves can be (when they're not mucky, cold puddles), the picture below (credit National Geographic channel) shows scientists perching on crystal spires in the Giant Cave of Crystals, underneath the Chihuahuan Desert, Mexico. The crystals, mostly gypsum, have grown so big largely because of the cave's internal temperature of ~58 celcius.


People have died in the past trying to get to the crystals, presumably for amoral purposes. It is a killer cave if unprepared and no mistake. The crevasses are sharp and deep; the heat would make popcorn out of your nuts were you exposed, if you haven't been cut to shreds beforehand.