Recycling: "or how people suck"

Some of my trash takes a trip to heaven every week. It's a known fact (at least in my own head) that trash yearns to be reincarnated. Wouldn't you? I much prefer the idea of coming back in a new form after I pass on rather then just lying like a lump some where. The other can of trash, though I'm pleased to say is a lot less then the recyclables, is sent off to much less enjoyable afterlife. Poor trash. In fact it's afterlife pretty much sucks, buried in a lined hole for eternity or at least till the futuristic generations dig it up to marvel at how stupid every one was in the past.
"Look at that, straws! You use them once for a short period of time with the full intention of throwing them in the garbage to be buried. Can you believe we came from those imbecilic idiots?"
*insert rant about stupid human race producing non recyclable everything and burying all our waste in big holes here*
It's too exhausting to write how frustrating it all is but on the positive side I'm recycling more now then I used to. I buy products more often based on their packaging. Spices in containers I can recycle, same with milk. There's a lot of things that can be done with a little effort and thought so that makes me feel good. Plus how much good karma am I building up by being less responsible for the pollution of the planet then every one else? Sweeeeet. hahaha Nothing like doing a good deed for the glory of it. I'm gonna get tshirts made:
"My trash kicks your trash's ass"

RANT!RANT!RANT!

I have decided that people, I mean all people, are stupid. No really, think about it. We exist on this beautiful planet and are clever enough to advance from dirt and sticks to huge skyscrapers, cars, computers and oodles and oodles of mass produced things. It's insane, I can't even imagine how we got from rocks and sticks and plants to this keyboard I'm typing at, the screen I'm looking at. It's almost like magic. I won't deny I enjoy all the wonders of new technology and living a bit above the rocks and sticks level....
But the thing that's so stupid about humans isn't that we can create all these amazing things from literally nothing it's that we think it's o.k. to just bury all the old stuff. Or thought it was o.k. to go ahead and create things that we didn't know what to do with when they were past their purpose. Who's idea was that?? Maybe in the *old* days it made sense because everything you buried was a lot closer to it's original "dirt and sticks" incarnation. Like if you buried your left over meal scraps, and old wood bits it actually helped your land be richer. But then we clever humans figured out how to make things that were stronger and last better and don't disappear as easily into the ground as the bones and plants and wood. But the habit was there, bury the trash, If we don't see it and it's not in my yard it doesn't exist. I think I can understand how after an entire human history of just carting your old stuff off to be buried that it would become something we're all used to.
But I don't like it. It hurts to put stuff in the trash can and know it's going to be buried in a hole some where. I looked it up, it's a *lined* hole so it doesn't mess up water systems...so..o.k....then what?? What happens when that hole fills up. And say by some miracle of miracle the whole thing manages to compost itself in like a zillion years? Do you want your great great great great grand babies digging in dirt made from diapers and and old radios and icky Band-Aids? Uggh and that's just some of the lesser nasty stuff that gets buried every day!!
It just seems so wrong that all the world is TRYING to start recycling programs etc AFTER the fact. AFTER every one is already used to just throwing stuff away and not thinking about it any more.
I'm one of the people who enjoys all these new things that come from human advancement in modern technology. I buy clay made from plastic, I buy glue and sparkles and all these things to make MORE things and I wonder if they'll be trash themselves in a hundred years. I try to balance my life though, I try to be aware of the choices I make. So besides the hot glue and paint and ribbon I use old bottle caps and wrapping paper and lightbulbs etc.
My garage fills up with blender motors and old office chairs and assorted doodads that I don't really want......BUT......I can not bear to throw them in the trash. It's frustrating because I don't necessarily NEED 2 working blender motors and an old food processor but how can you donate 2 working blender motors to a thrift store? They're sort of useless unless you have 2 good blender jars and no motor. The bizarre thing is if you want to buy JUST a new blender jar it costs as much or more then a WHOLE NEW blender........what????????
I kind of think that lugging these items around is a sort of penance for the way our society lives. At least if I do have to throw something in the trash I don't do it with out thought. I've had these blender motors for months and in one case years now and if someday (I hope not) we have to finally throw them out it will be with as much seriousness and forethought as deciding to get a pet or have a kid. I bet I give MORE thought about my blender motors then half the world does about making new people. Life is strange isn't it???
In a way I wish I was the type of person strong enough to just say *screw it* and go live off the land in the middle of nowhere and try existing with a zero trash producing lifestyle. Does that sound crazy? Is it crazier than an entire planet of people using NON-RECYCLABLE products every day with the sole intention of literally digging a hole and burying it??? How about if we all had to bury our own trash in our backyards. That seems fair to me. How long do you think it would take for the world to switch over to a more eco-friendly lifestyle if you had to wade through your used tissues, diapers, soured up milk cartons and razor blades and Band-Aids every day? How long would it take to quit buying stuff like that so you didn't have to keep digging deeper every night when you got home from work so you'd have more space to bury the day's trash. I think it's brilliant...oh...but that's right....that would be inconvenient.....oh well then we wouldn't want to inconvenience an entire world of stupid people. hahaha I know every one isn't really stupid, it's more like the whole human race has a bad habit. And lots and lots of people are aware of it and are even trying to fix it.
A gal's gotta blow off some earth friendly steam some times ya know? I'm by no means a fanatic about this stuff I just try to be aware.
Things I hate:

• straws
• take out food containers, sometimes you can't avoid them but doesn't mean you gotta like them.
• containers that have number 5 plastic for the container and a number 2 for the lid...why?? WHY?? Why make the lid something I can recycle and the container not??????
• styrofoam, this stuff might be evil. It too can be quite handy and is a marvelous invention I suppose, but what the hell do I do with the huge pieces that come in practically every thing you mail order. On a side note I have a lovely Styrofoam collection if any one would care to see it. Useful for mailing my own packages and potential crafting use but I'd feel better if they announce styrofoam recycling some day

So you don't think I'm a complete negative Nelly here's things I LOVE:

• packing peanuts that are made from starch! They're biodegradable. BRILLIANT!
• Edco Disposal services, they let me put all my recyclables in ONE bin, this makes it less complicated and therefore more likely a person will recycle. If you don't need to sort cans from plastic and paper life is much easier!
• Number 1 and 2 plastic, cause it's recyclable where I live.
• wrapping paper, a few years back it wasn't on the list of recyclables, at least where I used to live it wasn't, then I discovered that my beloved EDCO accepts it in their recyclables, Oh man that was a happy day. I use old wrapping paper in crafts but now I don't have to be the freaky relative who makes every one save every scrap of it at christmas for fear it will be dumped straight in the trash cause now I know it can go in the recycling, oh yeaaaaaaahhhhh.

Now for a final note I have a general world wide suggestion, why can't take out containers be made out of waffle bowls? SEE why ice cream is the MOST brilliant food, it comes in edible containers, damn....I just realized I didn't get a waffle bowl the other day when I had the chance.
Maybe next time I get take-out I can bring my own waffle bowl and just say fill er up! Mmmmmmm tasty!

UPDATE:
I just found out my Mother gets to recycle plastic 1 through 7 where she is....I am so unbelievably jealous......I wonder if it would be appropriate for me to mail her my plastics 3 through 7 so she could recycle them for me......

The Smell of IT!

If you open up our kitchen cabinet you will fairly faint with pleasure. Seriously. Not because I am such a fantastically neat homemaker, that my pantry shelves organization are a thing of beauty, but because of the olfactory experience that awaits us every time we open the door. (I love run on sentences) Sure we might be reaching for innocuous things like olive oil or coconut cream but the nose buffet that awaits our quivering nostrils is a thing of great beauty and mystery. I myself have swooned a time or too from the sheer pleasure of the lovely odors that that greet me when I open the door. (why is odor always associated with a bad smell, why can't it just mean A smell and leave it up to the description to detail whether it's sweet or nasty) I can assure you the aroma that wafts in delicious little clouds from our cabinet is definitely sweet though.
Vin de Noix.
Oh my, I have goosebumps.
The very idea of it coming into existence in my very own cupboard is almost too intense to think about.
Vin de Noix, french for Wine of Nuts.
But how did we happen upon such an unusual thing to have brewing in our cupboard you might ask. And I might look at you with suspicion in my eyes wondering if you're going to try and sneak some of my precious elixir. Of course we haven't tried it yet but anything that smells THAT good has to be qualified as precious elixir.
It started back in June, I was wandering aimlessly about the internet and ran across a blog where a lady was detailing her vin de noix making experiences. Her descriptions were as a siren's call to me. I stared with hypnotic rapt at my computer screen, muttering incomprehensibly, new words that were like bursts of flavor on my tongue.
Green walnuts...ohhhhhhhhhhh..........what's a green walnut and where can I get some I wondered.
As I read more about this magical liqueur one could make at home I was struck with the absolute overpowering need to make some myself. GREEN WALNUTS, where are you I wondered.
Green walnuts turned out to be exactly what they sound like, unripe green walnuts still in the shell and husk.
The thing is though that they are only available at certain times of the year and specifically the last couple of weeks in June. JUNE??? Why it was June now....well not NOW but back then when I was discovering the Vin de Noix and the green walnuts it's made with.
If we were to make Vin de Noix ourselves we had to do it NOW. (again not NOW but the now then, the 3rd week of June) or else we'd have to wait a whole year for green walnuts to be available again.
I think it was kismet I discovered the Vin de Noix at the exact time of the year the main ingredient is available for only a very brief time. It's like the world was saying you HAVE to make this, you HAVE to. I can not argue with the world.
So a quick google search revealed to me a source for green walnuts. A California walnut farm... (are places that grow walnuts called farms? Or can only places that raise things with legs be called farms? Hmmm I'll have to look that up.) Anyways they sold me 5 pounds of green walnuts which they sent by priority mail and before I could so much as blink the nuts were here. (I did in fact blink during the day and a half it took to receive the nuts but I'm just trying to convey the feeling of speed with which they arrived)
Green walnuts are a perishable thing so we had to work fast. Literally 3 days after discovering the existence of Vin de Noix we were whipping up our very own batch of it.
A frenzy of shopping ensued during those days, we needed jars, wine, grain alcohol, maple syrup, cinnamon sticks and oranges. We already had the vanilla bean and cloves and peppercorns. Mmmmm are we drooling yet?
The vin de Noix is made by cutting up the green walnuts, they're huge. Like big fat green golf balls, and when I sliced them open I could see the faint beginnings of the walnut meat and shell.

You have to wear gloves while handling the green walnuts because their juices will stain everything it touches black. You throw the entire thing into the jars. Husk, shell and walnut itself. SEE!!!! How can you not want to make anything that has an entire green walnut??????

The walnut shell has not hardened yet inside the husk so they were fairly easy to chop up. All the yummy spices and flavorings are added in with the green walnuts and the entire thing is drenched in wine.
We couldn't decide which way to go with our Vin De Noix making process. There are many variations on the internet and we settled on 3. One of the bottles got filled with extra sugar and grain alcohol and extra green walnuts to make a liqueur instead of a wine. The rest of the bottles we filled with either white or red wine.

(Don't the bottles look like something out of a mad scientist's laboratory?)

Then you let the entire thing sit for 2 months...I know..I know...I have never had any Vin de Noix and am basing this entire experiment on the glowing descriptions and reviews of homemade Vin De Noix we read on the internet. And now I am telling you we have to wait 2 whole months......take a breath people. I know you're on the edge of your seats BUT.....it's not ready in 2 months either. In 2 months we are supposed to strain it and pour the Vin de Noix into bottles we can stop up with corks. Then we are supposed to wait 2 more months before it's *ready*.
AGGGGGGGGGHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. The torture, the torture. I am not a patient person. I don't chew my nails or anything like that but I have half a mind to start just so I can make it through these 4 months total. It's like making a cake and being told it would be best if you waited 4 months before trying it. The horror...though come to think of it fruitcake is like that. And I can personally vouch for the fact that fruitcake kicks ass if you give it time to mellow in all it's rum soaked glory for a few months before eating it up in a fruitcake inspired madness..........
So now here I sit, shooting quick glances at the innocent cupboard door behind which, sitting quietly in the dark, is the most delicious thing I have ever smelled. Well ok I dunno there's some pretty damn good smellin stuff out there but this is right up there with it.
The *raw* Vin de Noix as I like to think of it right now is slowly metamorphosing in to a thing of gastronomic delight. Not only am I witnessing this through the sweet nutty scent every time I peek but in the colour. The nuts are turning the wines black.
HOW CAN YOU NOT WANT TO DRINK SOMETHING THAT'S PITCH BLACK AND NOT THROUGH ARTIFICIAL MEANS PEOPLE???? You can't not try something like that!
We couldn't help but notice that the Vin de Noix is supposed to be ready around the same time as Alan's birthday. Ohhhhhh, I know what we'll be having for a treat on his special day this year!
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
For now we satisfy ourselves by continuously opening that particular cupboard door....what? I'm telling you I HAVE to get the olive oil out of there at least 5 times a day. And Alan needs to get the coconut cream and cans of tuna and take them for little walks around the kitchen so he can have the pleasure of putting them back.
Oh yeah, it smells that good. Don't you wish you had my nose right now?