fábulas sustentáveis

It is one good thing I started to do during the PhD. I discovered that I can stay hours knitting without getting bored. Just enjoying that... I’m creating a product of high quality.  Knitting is a way to reclaim independence.  Knitting can help a local industry.  Finally, it feels really good to make something by hand. But there is one thing more: it feels really good to knit something for someone else and made with love. 

De facto, para se alcançar a tipologia de consumo preconizada pela roda dos alimentos, os cidadãos residentes em Portugal deveriam aumentar em cerca de 5 vezes as quantidades consumidas de leguminosas secas e suplementar ainda a sua dieta com hortícolas e frutos em, respectivamente, mais 79% e 48%.  Por outro lado, o consumo de carne, pescado e ovos e de gorduras e óleos é excedentário, tornando-se necessário reduzir as quantidades disponíveis para consumo em, respectivamente, 70% e 67%. Portuguese consume 10% more meat/seafood than they should to achieve the healthy requirements (INE 2010). In the other way around, less 10% of vegetables. A shift from one to another would reduce environmental impacts and provide a healthier diet.

One read this book , first published in 1971, and it is difficult to believe that people diets will improve in the future. Can you imagine, in the 70s!???...I was not even born! I do not even say that everybody needs to have a perfect diet or that we all need to be vegetarian. I'm not vegetarian and live good with that decision just by the fact that I eat meat very seldom. And with the time that I have been doing vegetarian meals, I want less and less to cook meat. There are a few points in the book that are very simple to explain: 1.  Hunger is human made. The food production system takes abundant grain, which hungry people cannot afford, and shrinks it into meat, which better-off people will pay for.  But I did not fully appreciate that our production system not only reduces abundance but actually mines the very resources on which our future food security rests. How is it possible that more and more grain is used to produce meat when at least a quarter of the worl...

Quando alguém escreve assim sobre peixe, fica pouco por dizer. Não há tese de doutoramento que consiga descrever melhor o consumo de peixe em Portugal. As palavras parece que têm sabor. A qualidade do peixe é reconhecida. Os ciclos naturais são respeitados. E explica que o peixe é um alimento selvagem porque tem de ser "caçado" no mar. Se ninguém ainda o fez, eu agradeço aqui em nome dos peixes. -- When someone writes like this about fish, there is nothing more to say. There is no doctoral thesis that can better describe the seafood consumption in Portugal.  The words seem to have flavor.  The fish quality is recognized. The natural cycles are respected. And explains that fish is wild food because is "hunted" in the sea.  If no one has done yet, I thank here on behalf of the fish. Na ponta da língua | MEC 24.01.2014 Sargos, douradas e robalos: agora é que é altura de abarbatá-los Estando de cabeça perdida são mais fáceis de p...

Has in Portugal, moreover in the Atlantic, the sardine is an important fish in the Pacific. But not only for people. It is an important food for other marine animals, as birds and mammals. There is not enough information why, but the sardine stock seems to be declining in the California coast. As it happens to other top predators as tuna, that have been intensively harvested, the sardine fishery can also have irremediable consequences for the marine ecosystem. Sardine is in a low level of the marine trophic web but they have an important role for other predators. If we fish too much, there is less sardine to feed other animals and it is more difficult to recover. If we look back, we can learn from the past. Without fish, there is no fishery, no food...and in the end no sea life. The decline has prompted steep cuts in the amount fishermen are allowed to catch, and scientists say the effects are probably radiating throughout the ecosystem, starving brown pelicans, sea lions and...

After vacations, friends, family, and an incursion to Africa, time just flows. It has been a lot of time in the computer. Writing and re-writing. Deadlines are passing out. I'm trying to stay alive.

13 December, is closed to the Winter Solstice, the day with the shortest daylight. The sunset is at 15h25 in Göteborg. So the light needs to be celebrated. A girl, coming in the dark, should give us light. People get together in the morning, sing and eat saffron buns . It is a special moment. Everywhere in Sweden it is celebrated. Interesting is to understand that it is dedicated to Lucia of Syracuse (d.304), also known as Saint Lucy, a tradition originally coming from Italy. This year I was in Sweden for the first time and I made part of it.