One of this weeks main stories in the UK has been the sudden disappearance of vegetables and fruit from our supermarkets. Vegetarians panicked in their thousands as first of all tomatoes, then cucumbers and lettuces disappeared overnight. Supermarkets reacted by limiting shoppers to three each. Husbands and wives started the old trick of going shopping separately to allow them to buy six lettuces between them.

People, who despite their New Year’s resolutions, had never touched a salad all year, were suddenly cramming anything remotely resembling a vegetable into their trolleys.

As usual the media started hunting for who was at fault for this disaster. Snowdrifts in Morocco, parky weather in Northern Spain, UK supermarkets only willing to pay a sheckle and no more to farmers, not enough workers to pick crops, high energy costs resulting in uk suppliers not growing indoor crops, Brexit. You name it there was a mighty list of reasons why the world was a lettuce short of a Caesar salad. The only thing is, it wasn’t the world, it wasn’t Europe, it appeared to be only the UK was affected. At last we were special…….

As Europeans tweeted pictures of full shelves in France, Germany and even Kiev our ingenious shop keepers came up with ideas to solve the issue……

Our government minister for Food, Therese Coffey, suggested we should eat turnip instead. Now, I like turnip, generally, once a year on Burns night. For some reason I just can’t see turnip sandwiches taking off. However, in the interest of achieving my 5 a day I thought I’d give it a go. I bought this book……

Then headed off to purchase a turnip or two only to find I’d been beaten to it……

I think I’ll stick to my chicken pot noodles for now……..