Recyclepolooza

We've all heard the stats- Americans will use up one billion times more crap in their lives than some kid born in Africa or Cairo, there's a texas sized pile of plastic in the ocean, if you throw out a plastic bottle you've essentially hugged an oil selling terrorist-, and M Night warned us THE TREES WILL HAVE THEIR REVENGE!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately, our apartment does not have recycling of any kind. Hell, at this point it doesn't even have laundry. But we want so, SO badly to be good and not fund terrorist trees, so we try, we really try. We try so hard that at any given moment the pile of 'to be recycled' is in fact taking over a good 15% of the place. There is, at present

- the second garbage can for cans-to be taken to recycling pod thing by store or on way to Hollister

-the trash can under the sink for glass bottle- same

-the plastic lined paper bag (oh, the irony) of yet MORE glass bottles-same

-the two large boxes of smaller boxes to be taken to ...i'm not sure where

-the paper bags full of paper bags- these may conceivably be left with our CSA on pick up day, though by now there are SO MANY I don't think they'd like me too much. Also one could theoretically take these to the store but can NEVER freakin remember and even if I did don't you think I'd use of the half dozen or so reusable bags I have collected over the years for this purpose

-the growing bag of plastic bags, also under the sink, to be taken to the drop off bin at Lunardi's. I cant afford to shop there, mind you, but they're nice enough to take my bags.

- on top of all thise there are usually a few 'odds n ends' of things we dont really know HOW to recycle but cant' bear to throw away - juice cartons, wine bottles (for some reason the recycle pod doesnt want them) floating around the counter tops and taking up room.

-also, I really feel I should be composting, but I've yet to find a good way to do that, and there is no room to store the damn stuff.

*whew*

I forget, are *we* the generation our parents didn't save the Earth for, or is that the next one.......?

What I'm Eating- Beans and Veggies

Ok, this one isn't exactly complicated, but it would certainly have been outside the scope of my culinary imagination not too long ago, so I'm proud of it.

(What's that you say..? Paper....? Shhh.., quiet you! I'll get there, I promise)

My original plan was just to cook up some rice and that bag of beans that's been sitting around forever- one of those, hmm....what's left in the cupboards I hadn't previously seriously considered eating but now we're down to it so let'ts give it another look type deals- but then I got super fancy and threw in some carrots, potatoes and celery the last 20 minutes I was cooking the beans.(I had also added onions at the beginning.) Also plenty of salt, pepper, and oregano. Served over rice, and Voy-la.

I would love to also grill up some tofu..but, um, oh right, paper.......la la la....

A little 'Eye of the Tiger', please

So, last night as I'm drifting off to sleep, I have one of those both fortunate and very bad moments of 'oh, wait a minute...don't I have to...' In this case the sentence being completed with 'write a 6 page essay I didnt get the prompt for because I was a tired out slacker last week and didnt go to my seminar class...?' That's right folks, I am a freaking GENIUS. Smrt, in fact, with a capitol SMRT. *facepalm*

Luckily, through the miracles of modern tech, I was able to finagle the assignment out of a now sainted classmate. It is due at 4 PM tomorrow. In the meantime I have to drive kids to Hebrew school (its how I make the big bucks these days :-P), and study for and take a quiz in my 11 am class, but after that I have another four hours of paper writing grace.

May I get a countdown please....and....GO!

What I'm Reading

Continuing our World War I Theme this book was written in 1930 (All Quiet on the Western Front came out in 1929). Before the late 20's there were very few books written on the war, but with All Quiet suddenly publishers knew the war would sell. This one is about female volunteer ambulance drivers for the British Army. I'm only about 75 pages into it but so far I love it and had to share.

The main character keeps talking about what a coward she thinks she is as she deals with things you and I will hopefully never even be able to fully imagine. She writes the kinds of letters home she knows they all expect to hear 'It feels wonderful to be doing my bit', etc etc because she knows its what they want to hear. Her main reason for staying is ostensibly fear of shame should she return, but the sense of duty to the wounded soldiers she and all her friends convey is heartwarming at the same time.

 I love books where the characters display that practical 'well, here it is so I might as well put one foot in front of the other and deal with it' attitude.One of the things I am most consistently impressed with as a modern person living in hitherto unimaginable convenience in folks from the past is their ability to suck it up and deal. I think that's something as a society we might want to get back to.

 All sorts of amusing modernity culture shock moments- women cutting their hair to deal with lice, smoking and swearing, etc. Very well worth the read, and another fairly quick one at that.

What I'm Eating- this one's for Rydell :-D

I am going to go ahead and say I have conquered collard greens- with the proviso that there is still room for fine tuning. I tried with them a couple weeks ago, but I think I was just unwilling to accept how much cook time they really needed- they came out bitter and too crunchy. However potentially delicious fiber and iron filled veggies will not be denied, so I went a head and ordered another bunch from my CSA this week.

Then I saw this article on HuffPo today:
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/16/134564185/you-dont-have-to-be-southern-to-love-greens?sc=fb&cc=fp

I went ahead and took all the meat parts out of the last recipe. I used a leak as well as yellow onion, and added some chopped cabbage- according to the article, collards are in the same family as cabbage, so I figued they would cook about the same. I also threw in a little lemon juice since the article mentions it can counteract the bitterness. The result was a big giant pile of DELICIOUS AWESOMENESS, and will be repeated.

(hmmm........CSA, HuffPo.....upon reflection I am coming off a little hippie in this post......I promise something more caustic in future...I can be quite offensive, really!)

What I'm Reading

well, among a million other things, anyway- grad student- but I particularly wanted to share this one. It takes the story of these two very passionate young people dealing with a world gone loco, and uses it as a focus point to describe a whole world in transition during the war.

http://books.google.com/books?id=w632o-xZ4_MC&printsec=frontcover&dq=your+death+would+be+mine&source=bl&ots=0GnrIzLKDd&sig=PL0Q4cOCQqjL9vx_vwsyrNmhZ58&hl=en&ei=DIiBTeXxCpGosAO0yJzwAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

BTW if anyone wants to explain to me how to hide a link under a tag or upload a picture to my posts, that'd be swell :-D

Aloha

I've toyed with starting a blog for awhile, if only because I think it will help me to stop an appreciate the moment- hence the current title. Grad school is racing by- I'm already halfway through my second semester out of four (if all goes well). I need to slow down and appreciate all the little pieces of the experience, along with all the other moments whiz banging past me. 

Still toying around with the layout here- the current picture is one I took at the Old Hall at Hardwick in Derbyshire last spring. At the time I was very much living in the moment- traveling, staying still, reading, drinking, breathing. It was an important time- I came out calmer, more grounded. Now I need to retain that grounding as I move through my current experiences.