Money at stake for ‘Food Game’ - Blog followers may earn dividends

On Feb. 1, I will begin “Food Game.” An epic challenge aimed at determining the distance my food travels before I consume it. Join me in my endeavors to cut back on the miles food travels, from coast to kitchen, to earn a supreme prize. Or simply earn dividends from my blunders...

Rationale: Greenhouse gases are emitted when food is grown, packaged, and transported. If we can lessen the distance food travels to get to our plates, we can make this earth more hospitable.

Rules: Pick 20. I am going to pick 20 days, in February, where I have to account for the distance travelled of all the food I have consumed. Which means I will have eight days that will go unaccounted for, (freebie days) so I can still eat out and not completely destroy my social wellbeing.

If I am unable to find out where a food comes from, for example if the food is not labeled or the identifying information is not known, I have to successfully research and determine its origins, otherwise I will owe money to all of my blog followers.

Dividends for blog followers: I will pay out 50 cents to my blog followers for every food item that I cannot determine its place of origin.

CHALLENGE WITH PRIZE: I am willing to offer any challengers who are ready to vie for the battle of a lifetime, the SUPREME PRIZE, if their overall food consumption in February requires less total miles travelled than that of mine. The prize will be $3.33 and a “Mr. Brewski says ‘Beer is Good’” t-shirt (men’s small). If you are interested in some healthy competition email stevenabert@gmail.com before Feb. 1.

The Supreme Prize, is the most coveted of all blog give-aways. Planet Wisely followers have begun salivating at the prospect of bringing home the bacon, so to speak.

Heroes and hopefuls

We all want to be heroes in our own way. Some of us seek validation in those that we let into our lives, while some of us want to brighten the lives of perfect strangers. To me, the ideal hero is the one that has a vision to make life better, and lets nothing stand in the way of that vision.

Aung San Suu Kyi is a crazy-beautiful hero. She’s been under arrest for something like 15 of the last 21 years of her life, and yet shackles have only made her a stronger proponent for democracy in Burma. Right now the protesters of Tunisia are pretty damn heroic. They’ve managed to depose the autocratic Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who suppressed and arrested political opponents, conducted business based on nepotism, and contributed to a growing disparity of wealth in Tunisia. And at the moment, protestors are going for all or broke. They don’t want a single slimeball prime minister from the old ruling party to stay in power and it’s creating some pretty interesting global politics.

Of course the US can never sit on the sidelines and always has to play international cop, so our blessed motherland, not much to my surprise, has sided with the old ruling party by providing tear gas to the loyalist police force. Why? I’d venture a guess that it’s because the new ruling party could be comprised of members of an Islamic political party that has been suppressed for decades. And Islamic ideals could be mega-bad for US’ national security.

Now, I’m extrapolating, so I hope to God I am wrong about the reasons for the US’ allegiance, but I just can’t shake the feeling that our motherland has become a little more spineless ever since the Patriot Act, the War on Terror and the Bailout.

Anyway, this is an environmental blog right!? You betcha, and some great things have gone down recently - the little things in life.

The first is a delicious breakthrough in combating food waste. My girlfriend showed me a creation she calls overnight oats. Overnight oats is her method of utilizing the impossible to reach peanut butter that remains stuck to the bottom and sides of the peanut butter jar, after the peanut butter is cashed. You put the oats and other add-ins in the peanut butter jar overnight, and in the morning you have nirvana in a jar.

OVERNIGHT OATS:

- 1/2 cup of oats

- 1/4 cup of milk

- 2 big tablespoons

of yogurt

- 1/2 tablespoon of

chia seeds (not

essential, but

amazingly tasty)

- 2 tablespoons of water

- Small bit of fruit, for example: ½ of a small banana, ¼ large apple sliced and diced

Admittedly, there will be hard to clean residual effects in the peanut butter jar after the overnight oats, which brings me to my second little success of this week – SUPER SUDSY FLIP CLEAN.

We’d all love to eat every micron of food provided to us in jars. Well, hell, I know sure would. But sometimes that is an impossible endeavor, so instead of throwing your jars away and having them be landfilled, there’s a super-easy cleaning method to get the oober-difficult gunk out, so the jars can be reused or recycled.

SUPER SUDSY FLIP CLEAN:

- Put a dollop of soap in the bottom of your food jar

- Fill jar ¾ of the way with hot water

- Put the lid of your food jar back on (tight because you’ll have to shake the jar)

- Flip the jar upside down so that the suds float to the top and tickle the hard to clean garbo, seemingly infused into the jar

- Wait 3-4 hours

- Jar Hokey Pokey: Shake it all about – If you shake the jar with force most of the crud will dislodge and pass into the soapy water in the jar

- Dump out water

- Rinse

- The jar is now ready to be recycled and probably very close to being ready for a reuse. (If there is a little stuff in the jar I suggest adding more water and doing the Jar Hokey Pokey one more time before storing the jar away for reuse).

Power Up: We’re over two-thirds of the way through January and I’m ahead of pace for halving my carbon footprint in auto emissions. I’ve driven 38.2 miles and I need to drive under 96.25 miles this month to make pace.

'Food Game' to begin in quest for perfect information

Perfect information is glory. Take my Giant checkout line experience, today, for example: because of crafty collaboration between the public and private sectors, I learned precisely upon my grocery receipt’s arrival that I have $44.12 left in food stamp benefits. With this info at my fingertips, I can now plan like a rational consumer how I should budget my remaining benefits until my $200 reload comes Feb. 1.

Now, if I had even quasi-perfect information regarding how my food purchasing habits affected climate change, I would dance with a hobo to a mandolin at firelight. The problem is, I don’t know of any grocery stores in south Arlington, or the United States for that matter, that provide information about the greenhouse gases emitted from growing, packaging, and transporting the food I consume. Hell, it’s a small victory when I’m able to find where the food I consume even comes from.

When it comes to produce,

Giant is a source of perpetual wonder.

Giant confidently labels this variety

of plum tomatoes as a product of

USA and a product of Mexico.

Due to my vast lack of knowledge regarding how my diet and climate change relate to one another, I’m going to start “Food Game” February 1. ¡Get excited! In a nutshell, I’m going to record the distance that the food I consume travels, from its point of origin to the grocery store in which I buy it. This game will require me using mucho estimation, because I most likely won’t be privy to information about the direct route of my food items. Basically, the purpose of this game will be for me to trim down the total travel distance of my food items.

Side note: Food Game is a work in progress. Stay tuned for the entire set of “Food Game” Rules and Regulations.

Power Up: The U.K.is in the process of equipping its consumers with information regarding how their food consumption directly affects climate change. Check it out

Hey taxpayer: my power lies in your hands

Commonwealth of Virginia taxpayers, I could give you a big smooch because your generosity is making me greener. Twelve hours ago I became a VA Green Power purchaser and the feasibility of it all rests on your shoulders. See, I’ve been credited $273.55 in fuel assistance through March 31^st, which means every dime of my power bill is being paid by the state of Virginia – a.k.a. fractions of your paycheck.

I’m happy to use your hard earned money for a good cause and once again I thank you. Here’s how it works in a nutshell: every kilowatt hour I consume, I spend an additional 1.5 cents on my power bill to subsidize renewable energy that will be brought to our power grid. If you’d like to learn more about the details click here.

I know everybody isn’t fortunate enough to be as poor as me, so not all of you qualify for the mega-awesome transfer payments and living subsidies I get, but in case you have hearts of gold, or even hearts of Gaia, I really think you should look into green power purchasing. It makes your soul feel like its snowboarding.

Go Planet! Go Taxpayer! GoBama!

'Let's call it the Badassazoic'

Jeff Zeiss, creative extraordinaire crafted this wonder-graphic and established the new decade as the Badassazoic. To see more of Zeiss' masterworks click here.



It’s not just a new year that’s upon us, but a new decade – A NEW ERA. We’re facing the best of times, the age of wisdom, the epoch of belief, and the season of light, to borrow from Charles D. And as my friend Jeff more aptly puts it, we’ve entered into the Badassazoic.

For me, the new decade couldn’t come at a more opportune time. I’ve been in south Arlington now for four months, I’ve got the lay of the land, and I’m itching to flourish. In honor of Ben and Marina’s New Year’s podcast, I made a Reto Concreto, or a well-defined resolution, to make 2011 worthwhile.

RETO CONCRETO: Halve my carbon footprint from last year

I used National Geographic’s carbon footprint calculator to determine that I emitted about 5.25 tons of carbon last year. So my magic number this year is 2.625 tons of carbon.

Below are the areas I have to improve upon to reach my target of 2.625 tons of carbon emitted.

DRIVING: Last year I was pretty good at avoiding driving, so it’s going to be tough to beat 2010's mileage. I’ve got to drive less than 2,310 miles.

Last April through October, I didn’t drive at all. While living in Glen Ellyn, I biked to the work and took the train into Chicago whenever I wanted to reuniabrate with city dweller compadres. While residing in DC and south Arlington I’ve been taking public transportation or bumming rides to work, up until I decided to bring a car out here in November.

FLYING: By far my downfall last year was flying. I took the equivalent of six round trip flights from Washington DC to Chicago (700 miles one-way). Unfortunately, while I was soaring up in the stratosphere my carbon emissions had a more acute impact than if they were emitted on land. It’s complicated, but there is a minor consensus out there that the impact of flying, regarding greenhouse gas emissions, is 2.7 times more harmful than the equivalent impact of driving.

HEAT & ELECTRICITY: I did not use any sort of green power options available through the power company in 2010. Fortunately, this year I am so poor that I qualified for the Commonwealth of Virginia Energy Assistance Program this winter. Considering that they credited me $273.55 for three months, and the most I’ve spent so far has been $22.23 on a heating and electric bill, I’m going to try to opt into the green energy option offered by Dominion which costs 1.5 cents more per kilowatt-hour used. Stay posted to see if this endeavor is successful.

GETTING TO THE ENDGAME:

- Driving: I’m going to rely on my bike or a combination of bike and public transportation to help me cut back on driving. Check out my driving progress as I update my driving log whenever I burn more carbon.

- Flying: I’m going to try to cut back on my plane rides to help me reduce my flying emissions

-Heat & Electricity: I’m hoping that this Monday will be the day that I enroll in the Dominion Green Power plan. Stay posted.