How Nuts Can Save the World

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”  

―  Chinese proverb

Above: Filbert trees in the park

I like nuts! Nuts like me! Nuts like you! Nuts can save the world. 

We know that food sourcing is at least as responsible for global warming as transportation and energy use. Yet it need not be.

A satisfying meal of vegan food can be many times better for our shared environment than a meat or dairy plate. But some of your satisfaction comes from the concentrated protein and fat that animal body derived food offers. The animal eats a whole bunch of grass, and concentrates it into a liquid food that is whole, complete, and rich in everything a little mammal requires.

Nature is abundant, usually providing extra, so humans soon found they could share some of that milk. Fair enough. I know a fellow who was brought up in India and he tells me that as a child, he remembers the loving eyes of those holy cows. He would literally nap in the fields, cuddled up with the mama cows, who would let him nurse alongside the baby cows.

Diversified small organic farms are in fact the ONLY way to feed all the population of the world, according to a UN study.

But that is a far cry from the horrors of the meat and dairy industry factory farm model that most people use as the main source of their food. We don’t need this. We can have really yummy food without the meat and dairy industry.

Nuts like us can save the world! We need to fix global warming as well as feeding the people, and nuts are the answer. Some say we must design “plants”, factory style plants, to pull carbon out of the air. I do not think we need to build more factories for that! Planting trees locks up carbon. Some say all those trees would take up living space we need to grow food. What if they were nut trees!? 

Money may not always grow on trees, but I assure you, food most certainly does grow on trees. 

Different kinds of nuts grow well all over the world, even without extra water or care. Obviously the factory farm model can be applied to the production of nut crops, in some cases to the detriment of the environment, but you can also grow nuts in backyards, and use native compatible varieties and organic methods that not only do not harm the environment, but actually improve it!

I recently saw an analysis of the global warming/carbon values of different food sources. Meat and dairy were off the charts. Other foods were smaller contributors to the problem. Only nuts, done right of course, actually reversed global warming causes.

Conventional row crops can deplete soils and contaminate the air and water with poison, and even factory farm style organic row crops can cause erosion and other problems. Trees for nuts can be dramatically different from row crops for food. Instead of depleting the soil, trees enrich the soil by sending roots deep, breaking up compacted soil, and bringing up minerals that then end up at the surface.

While row crops of say, soybeans, require clearing forest, exposing soils to drying, increasing the heat on the surface of the land, trees provide shade, cooling the land, helping retain moisture. There is evidence that forests and trees actually “make“ rain by releasing tiny droplets into the air when they need some water!

While row crops raze the land for monocroping, destroying the micro environment that preceded them, trees actually provide habitat for a myriad of creatures, large and small.

Trees clean the air and make oxygen for us to breathe. And we would all rather look at trees we plant, than a factory “plant” with noisy fans sucking in millions of pounds of air to chemically remove carbon, (even if it did actually work).

Above: walnut tree in the park

Best of all, switching to nuts for food gets us out of the ugly business of the enslavement, torture, and murder of our fellow beings, which is harmful not only to them, but is also a moral hazard to any conscientious person.

Let’s all go nuts for nuts!

"Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”   

―   Warren Buffett

Previous posts with recipes for nut milk and other great nutty menu ideas:

How to make nut milk at home:

http://omnimountainskyrainbow.blogspot.com/2014/12/nutmilk.html

Smoothie with time release recipe:

http://omnimountainskyrainbow.blogspot.com/2016/12/planet-earth-mothers-milk-smoothie.html

Converting your favorite recipes:

http://omnimountainskyrainbow.blogspot.com/2015/05/vegan-cuisine-meat-eaters-love.html

Spiced nuts:

http://omnimountainskyrainbow.blogspot.com/2014/12/party-nuts.html

All Tree Pudding: 

http://omnimountainskyrainbow.blogspot.com/2015/04/rich-rawsome-puddin-downloaded-from.html

"Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky. ”   

―   Kahlil Gibran 

Dark Colors

Darkness is to space what silence is to sound; i.e., the interval. – Marshall McLuhan

Bizarrely enough, the smart monkeys of Earth are obsessed with wrapping colorful and non colorful cloth around their bodies and striding around in display rituals. We just love designing and acquiring new pieces of said cloth, taking pictures of it, and us in it, and endlessly parading our clinging cloth pieces.

I write about colors and dyeing in the spring. I am in a soft but clear pastel and cheery mood then, full of hope for harmony and gentleness.

I have experienced a backlash.

I had boxed up my murky colored clothes; now I crack them open again. 

I can’t seem to get enough mucky drabs; I pull out black, dull green, navy and browns. Why, what?

Change of season? Do we really reflect nature by liking flower colors in spring, and preferring dry leaf colors in fall? Do we dance out the colors around us wrapped in flags of the seasons’ colors?

Or is something darker at play? 

Am I depressed about the times we live in, the trends, retrenchments, the dark feelings suddenly coming out from under the rocks?

Like the phenomenon of long skirts in hard times and short skirts in good times, I think we fly happy colorful flags when we feel safe to do so. Am I diving under cover of camo in these times of backlash?

Just wondering.

“Flowers grow out of dark moments.” – Corita Kent

“I used to be afraid until I learned that I am a light and the dark is afraid of me.” -Eph 5:8

Toward Unitics Consciousness

“We are in this lifeboat together and the fiercest thing we can do is to say, I’m living in a new republic of the heart. I’m a revolutionary. You are not going to separate yourself from me. I refuse to be in separation from you. That’s the fierceness. That’s the voice of love.” -Terry Patton 

(From the book, Unitics:)

Politics will always be with us, as long as we have egos. We will struggle, contend, and so, need to compromise as long as we are separate beings. But what if we realize that we are not all that separate? What if we regard our individual selves as also part of a larger whole? What if we regarded others the way parents think of their own children, putting them first, making sure they had everything they need? The saints speak of all people as their children.

Both our sense of individuality and our awareness of the whole are evolving together now, at the same time. The process is mutually reinforcing, with the strong ego longing to become part of something greater, while each member of the greater whole stretches to grow out and beyond the perceived constraints of conventional group mind, thus expanding it.

If your imprisonment to the group consciousness seems to inhibit your freedom, so also can your illusion of an isolated self, you against the world. The feeling of membership to the group may bring feelings of security and belonging, but if you don’t value your own self you may not feel deserving of that love. That is just a different flavor of lonesome.

The paradox of individual self and the All continues all the way up and down. As above, so below. Turtles, all the way down. So politics forever, right?

Not so much. Eventually politics, the struggle between separate entities for power, should mature into a cooperation model that seeks the well being and success of all. Unitics.

Unitics addresses the same needs at a higher level. Individuality is not lost, but it is employed in more interesting and meaningful ways. Nor is connectedness lost, but enhanced, by a feeling of self that expands to the whole group, the whole planet, indeed, to all life everywhere forever.

It is a shift of perspective. Seeing everyone else as your sibling, all creatures as your responsibility, the planet as your community garden, the universe as one with your own body, causes you to feel and act differently.

Just as the political arena is fear filled, so the realm of unitics is love filled. Indeed the thought of oneself as separate and alone in the world is fearful! But so is the way individuals have often been controlled and oppressed by the the group. This is a kind of scary security gained at the price of being subsumed by the majority.

Unitics, by contrast, arises from an inner identification, an new and greater awareness, sparking a spontaneous and natural impulse to contribute. The feeling of security caused by the consciousness of unitics is authentic and loving.

Children live in this paradox. They accept their complete dependence on their parents and tribe as obvious. At the same time they strive and drive themselves toward competence and self sufficiency constantly and unrelentingly. Can we grownups hold this paradox with that much freshness, and never stop developing both a sense of connection as well as individuality?

“Remember, the entrance to the sanctuary is within you” -Rumi

Regardening The Earth

“I pledge allegiance to the world; to care for earth and sea and air; to cherish every living thing; with peace and justice everywhere.”-L.G. (This was officially read out at the United Nations)

How to Regarden the Earth

(from The Flower Child’s Garden Planet)

First, each of us awakens to the holographic two way nature of our connection to the greater Whole.

Next, we reorient and align with loving cooperation and healing.

Regarding the garden, our body and our environment are connected. We are creating one planet Earth garden, even as we each are an individual raised bed. We are each a walking talking universe in a pot, or maybe a doughnut shape.

We consume. We whirl and spew, affecting everything and everyone else. All together we roar, we are a big force on Earth, for good or ill. 

We are starting to awaken and get a clue. We have choices. To make, now. Real, physical, down to earth choices, choices about how to think creatively, and choices about our attitude. Attitude is altitude.

Think of a neighborhood. Each house is a unique space reflecting its dwellers, and together the feeling of the neighborhood as a whole emerges. We are landscaping a whole planet now!

Think of a flock of birds standing together. When do they all take off together, leaping as one into the sky, who decides the moment, and how? The alpha leader birds? No, it happens when enough of them are aligned with one another, each choosing, one by one, to turn to face in the same direction, conveying their shared intent. Each of us birds really, intrinsically, matters. It is time to take a new direction.

Time to replace economy of money as guiding metaphor for societal organization, with planet garden. It’s time to see the living regenerating systems of planet Earth as a guide to the garden we must now to create to survive and thrive.

The big changes we need actually come from gazillions of tiny turnings. You need not make drastic and dramatic gestures. To just go along with your awareness activated, and to do what you can do, with what you have, as you go along, is enough. Reorient and align.

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” 

― Albert Einstein

Eye Catching Art

Never mind the eye of the beholder. The eye of the art will capture you!

It starts as a fiber doodle. With no particular plan, I knit a tubular shape with colorful handspun yarn from the basket of my art yarn. And another. And a third one. Now, maybe they could join and merge into a larger tube. This bears some resemblance to a torso with three legs, so I go with that. It can sit upright on those legs now. I add furry hair on top, but now, I long to add one more thing. 

An eye. I resist this impulse. A button eye is not fiber. But I decide to just try it, to um, see.

Wow! Suddenly my sculpture has come alive! It seems to be a .....being. I name it It. Suddenly everyone wants to look at It. All the babies around want to pull on It’s body parts. The cat is transfixed. Wilbur takes It’s measure, decides It is not a threat, and takes a swipe at It.

Just one little button eye and the thing is a who! Now I *see* why many vegetarians say they won’t anything (anyone) with an eye. The artist Alex Grey paints scenes in which eyes are everywhere, in everything. This makes me uncomfortable. Nor am I alone in this. Putting pictures of eyes in stores reduces theft.

The eye is said to be a window to the soul. Behind that eye, we assume someone is there with us. Gazing into someone’s eyes is a very intense meditation. When I do it, the individual before me morphs into a cascade of identities, reaching back through lifetimes, through the evolution of creatures, all the way back past infinity, back to the One.

The Eyes

If you have eyes to see

You see the eyes are everywhere 

Spying eyes, satellites in skies

Who is watching who?

(Eyes in the deep

 Everything can see

There’s even eyes in places 

where the sun will never be)

Aye, yye, yye, yye,

Eyes are everywhere

Everywhere you go 

they follow you around 

Light up the night

The eyes never sleep

No place left to hide

There's no darkness anymore

Whose are the eyes

Who are the spies

Who are the Wise

Behind the eyes

Who is watching me (you)

Thru the eyes that never set

Who watches from behind the eye 

Is it you? Is it me? 

Or the eye of we?

The Nest Is Born!

Today is exciting! Phase six, my first animated creation is born.

This is the start of the latest phase, the Dance, of my creation, The Nest.

 

 

The Nest is an ongoing four dimensional fiber art sculpture, unique in all the world.

And an abstract puppet theater with thirteen spheres (moons) and twenty three flexible tubular structures (genes) as puppets.. Knit-mation!

The nest is an interactive posable play structure...inviting exploration of the creative edge of space, furniture, joy, play, color, texture, and sculpture.

And of course, this phase of The Nest is my latest rainbow:) click here to see: the Nest

 

"The universe is squiggly!"- Omni 

Perfect Weight Balance

(From the Flower Child's Garden Planet)

"I'm so rich:

I have enough:

I've never gone hungry."

"...Except on purpose"

 

(Omni reports:)

On creating the all superfood, calorie conscious, intermittent fasting, six hour solar, diversified organic veganish, diet to maintain perfect weight!

The Problem

Over the years, I slowly gain an extra few pounds. Then, last year over the holidays, I put on an extra ten pounds or so. 

Comfort food, I tell myself at the time, it is a stressful time. (In fact, later I hear of the 2016 "trump ten".)  It is just all the heavy winter food, I tell myself, expecting most of it to fall off in the spring as it always does, mostly....But this time it does not.

Now I enjoy looking good as much as anyone, but it is not about that. It is about how I feel. Ok, these are the complaints of a veganish once skinny person who never had to worry about my weight, I admit. 

 

But those extra pounds begin to weigh on me. I feel the stress on my weak spots, such as the joints involved in carrying the extra weight around all day. My metabolism feels like it is messed up. I feel tired. 

But I only eat good organic whole vegan food, I only eat when hungry, and I don't overeat. So what is the matter, I wonder. Perhaps I am supposed to get heavier, and feel worse, as I get older?   Uh,.....No.

So I look things up at the great Shared Library of Humanity, the interweb. I discover that I have a syndrome called ETMF. (Kidding!) The surprise is that I'm actually eating, too, much, food. 

Turns out I am eating a thousand or more calories a day over and above what I need, for a person my age, sex, height and so on. It is amazing I had not yet gained far more weight. 

This surprises me because I was not eating food designed to fool the senses such as artificial flavors, and tricky factory food full of empty calories. I am doing this on all nutrient dense superfoods. That density was to be the key. 

 

This is a puzzle to me. I had learned to trust my body, eating as much as I wanted, on a diet of all natural food, and now, I wonder what I'm doing wrong. Could it really be as simple as eating too much food?

The Cure for ETMF

Ultimately, I make two changes, course corrections, in my daily eating habits. The first one is to not change the "what" of what I am eating at all, just the "when." Calories we eat in the daytime are more likely to be burned right away, I learn, while calories consumed at night are more likely to be stored as fat. So I employ a technique called intermittent fasting. 

We all fast daily, when we sleep at night. That's why we call the first meal of the day 'break'-'fast'. Intermittent fasting, or IF simply extends this. So I attempt to eat all my days' food in a six hour window of time, every single day, starting as early as I can easily manage. At first I can do this only every other day, but now I do it most days.

This is an important aspect of any so called diet. How sustainable is it? Can you do it, day in, day out, forever? This is a diet, as in, the way I always eat. Not as in, what I do for a few weeks to lose weight. The WIAE diet.

There is evidence that this is a very old health practice. The Essene Gospel of Peace, book one, a spiritual health text from the first century, advises that if you can, "it is best to sit down to a meal only once a day." My friends' shaman healer advises her to not eat at night, to give the body a rest. 

I my case I eat two meals usually. All I can eat. But both within six hours. Or eight..

The other thing I change, is to learn to count calories. I do this for several days; looking everything up, adding up the numbers, learning how many are in foods that I eat a lot, acquiring a good working ability to estimate how many calories I am eating. Just tracking, not even trying to eat fewer calories. Just learning, for the first time in my life, to count calories.

(Be aware, as I give to you this sacred algorithm, knowledge is power, and the interweb gives us power; including the power to instantly look up every little thing about your food, and I have heard some people have gotten lost in the Power of the Calorie Counting Game and developed problems that look a lot like "eating disorders"! My advice is, don't try this game without help unless you already eat an all healthy nutrient dense diversified diet or you could get deficient in something eventually)

 

So. I do the math, and subtract five hundred calories from the days' total any day I want to lose weight. As I begin to deliberately eat fewer calories than I usually need, I gradually start to lose weight. Gently, slowly, I drop weight over several months, keeping my habit of only eating during the day, within a six hour window. It is easy. 

Sometimes at night I do feel hungry, so I sip probiotic rich sour kraut water. That makes my tummy happy. And oddly, by morning I am no longer hungry. I have, in my life, on occasion fasted, but other than that, I was not used to being truly hungry very often. 

It is surprising and sad, but most of us who have enough, rarely get truly hungry. Instead, we experience false hunger, the feeling of our gut microbes telegraphing their preferences to us by way of our belly brain. That is probably what I feel at night. But nowadays, I experience true hunger daily, usually after my morning walk. And I REALLY enjoy my food!

When my weight does finally drop below my perfect normal weight, I allow myself to eat longer and later in the day, and quickly catch up within a day or two, and rebalance.

The Result

I feel awesome! People say I look great. All sorts of little complaints that I had, have vanished. My energy levels have returned, my joints are happy, and I feel like I have new superpowers. 

Instead of feeling like a victim of some mysterious malady causing me to feel out of balance, helplessly growing fatter and fatter, I now realize that eating too much (even of a good thing!) made me too fat, and so was causing those symptoms. 

 

I wonder what my rekindled appetite will inspire me to try out next. Soon I might share fun new recipes. My clothes are a little loose so they me fit better as I dance around through the day with more bounce in my steps...