school lunch

School lunch has been my obsession of late. I've been reading over the last year the very sad state of the US school cafeteria (check her out Fed Up With Lunch: The School Lunch Project) and the idea of @ going from eating a healthy balanced lunch to hamburger, grapes and ketchup (no kidding that was today's lunch) was just depressing. So I decided straight away that lunch was going to continue to be healthy and balanced and that didn't allow for a steady daily routine of PB&J and chips. So I started surfing around online. I discovered Lunch in a box and her efforts with bento lunches for her pre-k kid. I started surfing through her FAQs and site links, many of which seem to be only marginally maintained, and then started doing some brainstorming. What did I really want to see @ eating at lunch everyday? Healthy and Balanced but what would that look like when I made it in the morning and it sat around till noon-ish? I'm fortunate in that @ has NEVER been a picky eater, we just really never thought of it as a choice in our family and he isn't strong willed. I made a list of ideas. Here is a partial of that list:

- Chicken and rice (rice packs nicely on top of the thermos)
- Curries and rice in general seemed like good options - he always been ok with them
- Quessadillas- refried beans store well in the fridge and putting them together is as easy as a sandwich.
- Muffins- store up in the freezer and thaw by lunch, made at home means whole wheat
- yogurt, granola and fruit- really its one of his favorite things

So with that in mind, my thoughts turned to how to package the stuff. A good quality lunch box was a must and I was pleased to find those on sale at the wal-mart with back to school stuff. His has a swift "garage" compartment where a ice pack or frozen bottle of water can chill the stuff up top. Its roomy enough to hold a lunch size thermos and a baggie or two of other stuff. The thought of baggies became depressing though. I've gotten a little crunchy green since living outside the US and my concious is bothered by sustainability and responsibility. I have a lot, a lot should be expected of mem, but that is a blog for another day. So I started surfing around and found reuseable bags. A huge market of reuseable bags. I started to see some agreement and a post from Simple Mom sealed the deal. So I started looking at reviews and different places to buy reuseable bags and prices. The prices were a little spendy, admittedly. $8.95 for a reuseable velcro sandwich bag gave me pause and I had to slow down on my ideas. I'm still a pretty frugal girl even when my concious bothers me. So I surfed some more and I found a 25% off coupon from Oprah, apparently she had done a special about back to school. So I went ahead and took the plunge. I choose the Lunchskins Sandwich bag and Snack bag. @ came in to choose the colors and designs he wanted and we talked about how these would not be thrown away. These could come home every night and be washed. I read about how sometimes they develop a chemically smell but the reports weren't consistent. We've been using them for 3 weeks solid, with daily use, and no smell. And they have come home in his box everyday. Nothing in @ lunch is disposable so we don't have to worry about him taking anything to the trash. We're thrilled. I just ordered another set of Lunchskins Sandwich bags and Snack bags, one for me for my purse (pregnant girls get the munchies sometimes at the most inconvienent times). I've been packing strawberries, grapes, apple slices, blueberries, trail mix in the snack bag size. No problem so far with them leaking or staining. I was really surprised about the staining thing too.

Go ahead and begin to rethink lunch boxes. They really can rise above PB&J and chips and not take anymore time to prepare. And you'll feel good about it to.

So Proud

Rent out tigers in order to save them? - World environment- msnbc.com

Called Out: Belgian Milk Farmers!

I know, could I be more obscure. Because when you woke up this morning you were thinking "Blast those flipping Belgian Milk Farmers!" But we have a problem here people! I was just going to go and shut down the computer and make my family a healthy breakfast but I have a nasty habit of checking the newswire and this is what I see.

These farmers are DUMPING a DAY'S worth of milk production on the field's of Belgium to protest low milk prices. The prices, they say, don't cover production costs. Now, people, we here at Curious Aside feel for the farmer. Really, we do. We grew up with farmers always wondering how to make ends meet. Sweating planting season, praying for weather and against weeds and bugs. We like to think we begin to see the plight of the farmer. BUT THIS IS MILK!!! Babies need it to survive. Mother's need it to support babies and children. Do we have to remind you, in the most trite way "THERE ARE PEOPLE DYING IN AFRICA!" and other parts of the world. And you're throwing MILK on the ground in a sign of protest. Sigh... obviously someone isn't getting the message that we're all human together. Heck, babies in China didn't get the milk they thought they were getting. They got plastic instead. Could we protest in some other way. Maybe you could throw sugar on the ground, the world would be ok with a little less sugar. But Milk. Couldn't they put in a thermos and send it somewhere instead? I'm trying to stop my mind from thinking of all the different NGO's that would gladly come to them and pick up the milk they want to throw on the ground.

I frankly, have no solution to for the farmers, nor how to stop this madness. But I have my little humble soapbox to yell from...sigh...

suffering the effects

You can call it global warming. You can call it climate change. I don't really care what you call but don't tell me it isn't happening.

We live on an island about a mile from the sea. Our rainy season is supposed to be tapering off. In fact it had for about 2 weeks. Then she came back. Last evening we had another 2 feet of water in our street. See the problem is the rains came during high tide. And apparently the geologic survey would tell you we are in a season of cyclical high tide, when the tide (because of some lunar pattern) comes in higher than normal. But the problem that scientist agree on is that the ocean level is rising. With the increasing in the ocean level, scientists agree that regardless of a cyclical season of high tide, coastal cities are going to face increasing flooding problems. So what we should do is make sure we have a cleared canal system. Problem here is most definitely man made. Our canal are FULL of trash. FULL! Water doesn't actually flow through the canal because it has become so polluted.

I spent the night at a friend's house. She had 3 inches of water in her house from the rains. Her husband was out of town so I kept her company while waiting for the water to recede so we could start squeeging. Its too discouraging to face on your own. There aren't a lot of solutions to the problem of house flooding in our neighborhood. The neighborhood was built on reclaimed land and by everyone's agreement is way too low (we suspect we are technically below sea level after the years of settling). The picture above is the canal 3 blocks from our house. The good news for me is that 1) my house has been raised and 2) if I don't like the problem I can afford to move. And this is where the arguement switches from "Liberal Mother Earth Loving" to think of humanity. I can afford to move but I'm in the minority. There are 4 million people in my city and I'm guessing 2 million would find my house to be a good choice. But if they take my house, they'll be exposed to disease and chronic illness from polluted water and mosquitos, things I can afford to remedy by buying drinking water and screening my house.

Where the light poles are, that was open sea a year ago. Our city is STILL trying to reclaim land.

This is our compost pile. Its where all of the food scraps, yard waste and anything organic goes. Presently its full of banana tree. But under that you'll find what is becoming a good rich black dirt with all the goodness from coffee grounds, potato peels and egg shells. Later on in a few weeks we'll give a flip/ stir. And, maybe, if we're lucky, we'll find a free will plant. The boys rescued a pepper plant the other day that came from the scraps of a bell pepper. All cardboard, cans, and plastic bags get recycled which helps to provide a little extra income to the collector. We're trying to reduce what goes to "the dump", which we've come to learn is really the canal.

So I don't have a great solution to the problems I'm talking about. I don't know that there is one. But I can do my little compost pile to create good dirt that grows things. I take a second and break down and separate my recycleables. My guess is you can too.

the guy hasn't even started work yet

Poor Mr. Obama won the election and we all expected him to get to work at midnight. My good buddies at Oxfam certainly did. I get alerts from Oxfam from time to time on humanitarian concerns and climate change. For humanitarian responses, I fly with Compassion or World Vision. When it comes to climate change, Oxfam seems to have a nice response without chaining themselves to trees. Today I got my letter to send to Obama to encourage him to attend the Climate Change Conference in December. This I think is important and so I sent along the letter that Oxfam had written. I always make some editorial revision to my Oxfam letter. They do a good job but I don't think their reasoning goes far enough. Climate change is of concern to the US but not just because we want clean air for our kids. We want clean air for all of the kids all over the world because if they don't get it they will come for the people who have denied them. Poor kids go into gangs because of the promise of something better. Kids become warlords and terrorists because they want something better and they will take it by force if someone doesn't offer them a hand.

I take a bit of circular view on many issues. Our sick economy, the world's sick economy, world hunger, HIV/AIDS crisis, climate change, government stability, global security/ terrorism... add whatever else you can think of. All of that is connected. We feed kids in the third world and we provide them a stable home, those kids have a chance to grow up, think, make good choices and they'll live free in more ways than one. But they can't do that if they are worried about food, health care, or a job. I think being from the US is a terrific privilege but its a tremendous responsibility also.

Sites I'm checking out

Catching up with blogs today and following links (rabbit trails really) but I've found some fun stuff and maybe something you'll enjoy playing with too.

New American Dream- came from Ali Edward's blog. Loads of stuff too look at and help you think about greening your life while saving money. That's nice, right?

Meals Matter- This is great because you've been following my meal plans each week and putting your own together. Meals Matter does that same thing for you in a really high tech super swank kind of way. Meal planning + nutritional guides + recipes links= saving big, healthy diets. This is the place you need to be if you have a computer near your kitchen. I'm going to keep using my notebook but I'll be here to check out recipes.

Lunch in a Box- Everyday you are putting together a lunch for someone to take somewhere. This lady has apparently only thought about that lunch that someone takes somewhere. No kidding. She has the sweetest little box system of lunches you have seen anywhere and she wants to teach you how to do it. And its SO DO-ABLE. Get yourself over to Lunch in a Box before you torture yourself or your loved one with another pbj on soggy white bread. Put down the soggy white bread!

Lock & Lock boxes- chances are you have plenty of plastics in your life- a drawer full of them with miss matched lids and you can't figure it out because you haven't had it that long. Anyway once you get started with your lunch in a box, you may realize you need a box (probably not though, you have that drawer full of plastic). If you need a box, look around for these Lock & Lock boxes. A friend of mine here turned me on to them and they have been perfect for @- he can open them on his own for snack time at school. I bought him Tupperware but he couldn't get it open and his teacher wasn't so good at getting it closed (tupperware has wonderfully tight seals). But the lock & lock box he can do on his own and its seal is tight. I throw the stuff around just for the fun of watching the seal hold.

Sidewalks and obesity

I've written a few times about my passion for a nice sidewalk and today I saw this article over at MSNBC. The article "Heavy? Your Neighborhood May be to Blame" caught my eye because it sounded like a cop out to blame something else but it seems research agrees: live in sprawling suburbia= driving everywhere= people who don't walk. Suburbia has sidewalks but they don't go to the drugstore, they don't get you to the bank and they don't get you to work or school (normally, some suburbs are better than others). Live in town, in an old neighborhood, you probably have walking access to the bank, school, work etc, if some city planner didn't give up the sidewalk to widen the road.

So go to your city planner and demand sidewalks that go places. Sidewalks in good repair. Sidewalks that are uncluttered.

This fellow is selling licence plates on the sidewalk. Yeah, its illegal to drive with fake plates but apparently not illegal to sell them. That is how my sidewalk is being used.

Composting and attempts at recycling

So far as I know there is no true recycling system in the country. I think there are a few places that will take some trash, namely cans or newspaper, in the capital but as far as I can tell that hasn't gotten out here. Our trash goes to the street in plastic bags, the satpam is very particular, no bag, no pickup. He takes it to a larger dumpster which the city collects every so often (fairly regularly, I just don't know the schedule). We've long separated our "wet" trash from our "dry" trash. The wet trash goes out at the end of the day because bugs and vermin are ever present and the dry goes out as needed. When we moved here the construction wasn't entirely finished and so we had women coming by every day to see what the workers had thrown aside. They'd take pretty much anything. One day when they stopped I asked what they wanted. Newspapers, cans, plastics, old electrics whatever. She was happy to take my recycleables and I felt good about it. I suspect that there are some places that they probably sell the recycleables to but I'm guessing it takes a lot to make any real money. Although the re-sale of plastic bottles here is very big.

That took care of that but my bigger problem is goats and others going through the trash. People don't separate out recycleable generally so people will go through the trash bags to get them, normally tearing up my trash bag and leaving a pile of trash everywhere but the can. Very frustrating. Well this week after cleaning up a huge mess on the street and rebagging it I decided to limit the frustration a little more. We started the compost pile! The guy who helps with our yard and the houseworker are on board and the wet garbage can is put away. So I've been reading about composting. It seems I could go devote my life to composting or I could just let the pile be. I'm going the let it be route. Its on the far side of the yard under the banana trees and I don't mind that it probably gets picked through by the cats and rats. I'm fine with that. The cats and rats go through the trash anyway, they are everywhere. Whoever or whatever wants the scraps can have them but it'll be less to end up on the street and maybe one day I'll have some compost for the plants and bushes. Maybe too we'll get more worm activity in the ground. I've thought of buying worms but its too weird for me at the moment.

gas, gas, gas

The increasing price of gas and oil is finally beginning to effect our locale. That sounds surprising certainly because for the rest of the world this is really an old problem, prices have been on a steady increase for 2 years. Well here we subsidize gas. Yeah, and we're not a major oil producing country, but we subsidize gas. The country's budget includes it but over the first quarter of the year it became evident to even lawmakers that if they held the line on the subsidy they were facing a major budget shortfall. So in the spirit of good governance, they did what all governments do, they started going through the budget looking for things to cut. One of the departments being investigated was education. Now this caused immediate concern because by constitutional order 20% of the country's budget is to go toward education. Of course this has always been an ideal and has never happened. Presently if they add the civil service salary for educators to the education budget they get up to maybe 17%. So when they looked at making deeper cuts, people started to talk. At the same time, the government starts recieving pressure from foriegn owned business that something was going to be done to stabilize the gas subsidy deficit. End of March, first of April it really looks to be an issue and the country starts talking about the potential that sometime this summer something will have to be done, ie raising the price of gas. They don't even have a number on the table and people start talking protests. At the same time of talking raising the price, they say that they're working on a direct cash payback to the poor who will feel the sting the most. No good. Groups head to the local copy shop to prepare fliers and start protesting. Hoarding begins. Presently they have what sounds like for this gov't a good plan, a workable one anyway, and no one is happy. The gas stations are imposing buying limits.

We've lived through gas hoarding and gas rationing when we were in Africa. We've found that it is nearly impossible to control very well. Letting supply and demand take hold is really the best bet as far as we've seen because a person's wallet is the best rationer. Problem is that public transport is the most integral thing. People have to be able to get to work. So I have no idea what's coming next. Judging from the protests that have already started, its going to be a long, hot tempered summer. My recycle bin is going to fill with fliers.

biopores & composting

Tell me everything you know about composting and/ or biopores. If we decide on the house that we think is it, we'll have some green space so I'm thinking on composting. I know its easy and I don't want garbage pickers in my trash (people do that here). But if you read the wikipedia on composting, its full of anerobic this and thermophilic that. I don't want to get into all of that, I'm just thinking I can put my coffee grounds and cheese rinds to good use.

Coming up a review of Mondo Beyondo 2007 and maybe sometime later in the month Mondo Beyondo 2008.

I had meant to get this up during the 15th here but we got busy painting and by time the end of the day rolled around (little painting humor) my hands weren't working so well. But I wanted to do my little bit for the environment on Blog Action Day.

We live on a hot tropical island that is beginning to see the effects of global warming. Its nice. The rains are going to come but surely they get later every year. The dry season stretches a little longer and the heat is a little more intense. But what I want to take issue with is city structure.

Urbanites here are getting more and more into cars. Public transport is incredibly slow and tiresome. Unreliable is the action word. To make matters worse its also just plain overcrowded. Nice urbanites looking to get to their job on time and wanting to look professional once they get there are not going to be taking existing public transport. Our city has no taxis, no idea why, only minivans. Minivans with 20 people on them. Still we take the minivans because we don't have a car and it can be quite a distance to the shopping areas. Normally we take @'s stroller if he is coming with us which I'm sure adds to the congested bus problem. Second mode of transport that everyone and there aunt uses: motorbikes. Everyone has one and rarely are they "green" but they get people around faster and cleaner. Safely is a question for another day.

We walk alot. We don't have a motorbike and between bus stops can be a long wait so we walk when possible. The last week its been nearly impossible. The traffic has been through the roof with the holiday on and that means more people driving badly. Sadly what it also means is more street sellers on the sidewalks. The sidewalks are ample, they're huge until you have grannie looking to set up a food stall next to young man setting up a fireworks stall next to Auntie selling homemade sweets in yet another stall. The food vendors also set up a table and chairs for their customers and a tarp lean-to so you don't get too much sun. You have to walk down the sidewalk single file! Ridiculous. So @'s stroller doesn't fit either which means a lot of walking in the very unsafe street. The only place that there are no sidewalk stalls are on the very broken uneven spots of the sidewalk where you could very easily break a leg in the holes and cracks.

Here's where the environmental issue comes in: if I can't walk safely down the sidewalk in a less crowded manner, I want to buy a vehicle and shop at SuperCenter X that probably doesn't support the local farmer by buying locally grown veggies. SuperCenter X is shipping my veggies to be using lots of fuels to get the product to market. So a note to city planners and city leaders that want to do their part: SIDEWALKS!! People won't walk if they can't physically do it. Ban sellers on the sidewalk or make an ordinance. Fix the sidewalks, keep them in good repair. And to the US city planners: BUILD SIDEWALKS! When we lived in the states, our neighborhood didn't have a sidewalk. We could have walked to the library but without a sidewalk that puts us in the street with traffic.

Help the Earth Breathe, Walk on a sidewalk.

That is what we have for you today.