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.