Table to Table

Did you know: for every Canadian EVERY SINGLE DAY 1 pound of food is wasted... Isn't that insane? How much is that? That means that Jeff and I put together weigh the same amount as ONE PERSON's annual waste. Wow. (Now just don't ask how much of that weight configuration is mine?!?!)

This morning's factually mindbending presentation by the Canadian "rep" for Leket Israel (http://www.leket.org/english/) was shocking. I have known by what Jeff ports home from vegetable growers - ripe and juicy and wonderfully tasty though somehow classified as imperfect "seconds" - that food waste is abundant. I survived my first job last night as catering help and scraping wedding guest plates made it even more obvious how much many of us squander. But a whole pound every single day for every single one of us???

How many more people could eat...

Leket Israel (known as "Table to Table" here) performs "Food Rescue" - from cafeterias, restaurants, army bases, catered events, leftovers are scrounged and given to the needy. For a cost of about 33 cents some hungry soul gets a $100 leftover wedding feast. (Apparently about 26% of Israelis regularly go hungry.)

And what about here in Canada? Why should any Canadian ever go hungry with the abundance so many here have? An age old question...and thankfully for you I won't sidle into discussion on capitalism here...

So now what can we do? What do we have a moral responsibility to do? What if it was us starving, or our children, neighbours, friends?

offeecay anyoneway???

Into the wee hours of last night I did something extremely asinine - perhaps not so silly back in the days when I didn't have toddlers hugging me awake early morning and an unusually chipper spouse practically singing "up and at 'em". But silly now, with those previously-mentioned life factors and for so many other reasons... Until 3:30 in the morning I satiated my literary yearnings with some cheesy Cecilia Ahern novel. (Did you see "P.S. I Love You" - the flick that played bully with my tear ducts? She wrote the book in her barely-escaping-teenage-hood-years - last night I inhaled "Thanks for the Memories".)



offeecay anyoneway??? [Did you perhaps already know the fantabulous fact that at http://users.snowcrest.net/donnelly/piglatin.html you can translate anything you so desire into pig latin??? Whatever would we do without such illiancebray?]

Massive cuppa caffeine adoringly rests within reach...

Here's where gratitude surfaces. Did you realize that 26% of the world's adult population is illiterate? And I can read. According to answers.com "in 2005 an approximated 1 billion did not have suitable housing and 100 million were totally homeless". And I have a home in which to read. WFP (World Food Programme) shares that "today, one in six people do not get enough food to be healthy and lead an active life, making hunger and malnutrition the number one risk to health worldwide -- greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined". And I have food AND a coffee....

What can we do to make a difference? How can I stop thinking me, me, ME?