My grandparents live on a farm. They’re farmers. Their house is small. But they have a big garden behind their house. And their garden is different from others. You can see flowers in it and you can also see vegetables and fruit trees there. I ask my grandparents, “Why do you have vegetables and fruit trees in the garden?” They say, “Because we can eat fresh (鲜的) vegetables and fruit from it. And it can also save money.”

Every morning, my grandparents get up early. First, they clean the garden. Second, they water the flowers, vegetables and fruit trees. After that, they pick ripe (摘下成熟的) vegetables. Then they cook the fresh vegetables in the kitchen. The kitchen is near the garden. Their nice day always begins with a fresh breakfast.

Looking after the garden makes my grandparents busy (忙碌的). But they’re very happy every day.

The food British eat in Britain is very different from Chinese food. For example, the British eat a lot of potatoes. They like eating them every day. They eat bread for breakfast and usually for one other meal. They eat their bread with butter, cheese, or jam, the things we don’t eat much in China. Cheese and butter are made from milk. They drink a lot of milk, too. And they put it in their tea. They put sugar in their tea as well. They like Chinese tea, but mostly they drink strong black tea from India and Sri Lanka (斯里兰卡) .They don’t eat much rice. For their main meal they like meat or fish with potatoes and one or two other vegetables. They serve (供应) all these together. Later they always have something sweet. They call this “dessert” . They don’t have jiaozi in Britain.

We all know that foods will easily go bad if they get too warm. So we usually put them into our fridges to keep cool in hot weather. But can you make it without fridges?

In 1995, Abba, a teacher from Nigeria, found a cool way. His invention was called Pot-in-Pot Cooling System (系统).

It uses two clay pots (陶罐). There is a smaller pot inside a larger one. The space between the two pots is filled with wet sand. Fruit, vegetables or drinks can be put into the smaller pot. A wet cloth covers all of them. Some foods can be kept fresh for several weeks in it.

Abba built five thousand Pot-in-Pot Cooling Systems for the villagers in his home town. Then people all over the country began using the invention. Soon it became popular with farmers in other African countries.

In 2000, Abba got a prize—the Rolex Award. If you are trying to do something to improve human life, you may have the chance to get this prize.