Grow it, Cook it, Eat it.The freshest, healthiest, tastiest food is what you grow and eat yourself!

Everyone who lives in Ireland knows how much it rains, even when the sun is out! There is no shortage of water in Ireland but fresh drinking water is becoming more and more scarce.

A lot of time and money is spent cleaning our tap water to a degree that it is safe for drinking and then its piped to where you live so it seems a bit mad to use drinking water to water the garden when so much is falling out of the sky and being channeled into the gutters where we live.

At home I am using 2 big bins which I have placed under the gutters. Its quite easy to take apart the modular gutters and redirect the roof runoff from the gutter and drains into any kind of storage you can find.

In this photo below I have just taken a section out of the gutter so the water falls into my collection bin and not down into the drain as if it was useless waste.

Having a bin full of water also saves me time when watering in the evenings. I can just plunge the watering can into the water container and fill it in 2 seconds rather than waiting several minutes for the low pressure trickle out of the tap to fill it up.

In this photo above the end of the gutter was missing anyway so I didnt have to take apart anything just simply place the bin under the end of the gutter.

The first time I put these 2 bins out they filled overnight!!

We might be experiencing global warming but Ireland certainly isn’t drying out!!

Did you know that there are 250,000 raindrops in 1 litre of water?

Try counting them if you like!!

For starters this program hears from Richard Burton who is a nutritional therapist based in Bray.  Richard explains how important diet and lifestyle are in staying healthy and explains that our genes perhaps aren’t as important in determining health as was once thought. Richard gives us some basic tips on what plants to grow in the garden that are healthy for us to eat. Richard is a director and founder of The Irish Institute of Nutrition and Health which is a clinic and also a college offering courses in the field of holistic nutrition. www.iinh.net

Richard’s interview establishes one of the pillars of this series in terms of thinking of food as medicine and not just something tasty to fill a big hungry void.

So go and buy some seeds instead of pills!

If you just want to hear Richard Burton’s piece: Richard Burton, Nutritional Therapist

Then for the main course we visit FEAST which is a “growing, cooking and eating project” happening in St Annes School, Fettercairn in Tallaght.

The enthusiastic 9 year olds of 4th class are going to grow all the veggies organically for a big feast they are going to have when they come back after the summer in September.  Its the perfect project to visit for this series what with all the growing, cooking, and eating and more veggies than you can shake a big shtick at!!!

We hear from some of the school children as well as their teacher in the garden Phil Wheal and from Tony Fagan, director of Tallaght Community Arts.

You can hear just the Feast piece here: FEAST, St Anne’s Primary School

If you click on the links the audio will play in the browser or if you right click on the links you can download the sound file to your computer(Control click on an Apple Mac)

And for desert?
Well that course is you! We have built this website to show some of the things we are talking about on the radio but also we want to hear from you the listener!!

We are very interested in getting feedback from you so please feel free to leave a comment or perhaps some suggestions for food stories in upcoming shows?!

You can download the whole of Program 1 here: “Grow it, Cook it, Eat it” Program 1

Thanks for visiting and do come back again for more programs and photos,

Bon appetit!