Green Tips And Two Green Earth Day Recipes

As people gather to collectively celebrate the 47th Earth Day in America and elsewhere, many take time to review their own lifestyle strategies. recycling, reusing, reducing household waste and the use of plastic, chemicals, and ecologically unsustainable products. 

Much has to be done to protect the environment, but instead of waiting for the politicians to change things, each of us can start taking steps in his or her own home, office, school, or town. One of the simplest, but maybe not the easiest, thing we can do is to change the way we eat and obtain food:

• buy organic
• buy locally grown or produced
• buy seasonal
• grow your own
• forage
• make your own food

For many people this might be easier said than done, but lack of time or lack of money are not really good excuses. 

Organic food might be expensive at the first sight, but consider the increased nutrition fresh organic food provides. Less chemicals in your food also means less hazard to your health and possible reduced future health care coasts. Local farmer's markets are full of bargains.

Locally grown, seasonal produce helps reduce your carbon foot print, and once again, provides fruits and vegetable at its peak nutritional value. Many local farmers resorted to organic farming at some point in the past, but cannot afford the incredibly expensive organic certification. Visit such local farm to find out how food is grown or produced. Smaller farmers seem to have a very different set of ethical values than the food industry. Profit, while incredibly important, is not necessarily on top of the list. 

Grow your own! In 2017 a perfectly manicured 1950s American Dream style lawn looks a bit outdated to me. Some communities or residents' associations may not permit you to have a vegetable garden on your property, but you can still grow herbs and vegetables in decorative pots on your porch. Big city dwellers can easily create a container garden on their balconies or terraces. Those who only have a windowsill can at least grow fresh kitchen herbs. If you have never done this before you can take gardening courses. Many master gardeners offer gardening classes for beginners. Once you've got your fingers dirty, you will never want to buy another carrot or tomato. There is nothing more comforting than to see your food grow. 

Foraging is becoming more and more popular. If you do not have much experience with wild herbs, berries or mushrooms, you may have to take a class or attend a foraging workshop. The abundance of wild food is unimaginable, but you have to be very careful as there are herbs, berries and mushrooms that look like the good thing, but are often extremely poisonous. 

Last but not least, make your own food! If you are a working adult with kids and family on your head, this can be difficult. You may not be able to do it during the week, but you can certainly make a ritual out of family cooking on weekends. Weekend is also a good time to prepare some healthy food for the coming week:

• salads in jars, that you can make ahead
• smoothies or smoothie combos that can be made ahead - simply chop the ingredients and freeze them in small portions so that they are ready for blending during the week
• soups can be cooked ahead and frozen, or fresh soup ingredients can be chopped, portioned out and frozen for later use
• stews can be made ahead and frozen
• bread baking on weekend can be a real fun

I hope that these few suggestions will help you get better organized. If you have tomatoes, peppers or herbs growing in your backyard you do not even have to drive to a store to get the salad ingredients.

 ~ Green Sauce Recipe ~

This is a variation of the famous Frankfurt Green Sauce. It can be used as a condiment for roasted meats, cold cuts, steamed, stewed or roasted vegetable, baked potatoes, and egg dishes; as a deep or a salad dressing; and in soups. It has a very green, almost grassy taste and may remind you a bit of the Argentinian chimichurri.

Ingredients:

• 2-3 cups of mixed garden and wild herbs, roughly chopped (parsley, chives, arugula, sorrel, dandelion greens, ground elder, chervil, Sanguisorba minor or salad burnet, borage, ramsons)
• 2-3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• 1 medium large purple onion, peeled and roughly chopped
• juice of 1 lime
• 1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tsp grated horse radish root (optional)
• 1/2 cup virgin olive oil 
• 1 cup natural probiotic yogurt
• 1 tsp Celtic sea salt
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Method: 

• In a food processor pulse blend herbs, garlic, onion, and lime juice until they turn into a green coarse paste. Do not over process.
• Add all the remaining ingredients and blend until all is well combined. The sauce should not be too thick. Add more lemon juice or a bit more yogurt to achieve a nice consistency. 
• Adjust the taste to your personal liking and serve with your favorite dish. The stores well in the fridge for two to three days, so it it quickly. It can also be frozen and used in soups.

~ Ground Elder Pesto ~

Ground elder, also known as bishop's weed, is a rather underestimated herb. When it shows up in your garden you will treat it as an unwanted weed, but the more you learn about it, the more you will come to love it. It also grows in the wild and can be foraged, but you must be careful as it resembles the highly poisonous hemlock. Both plants look almost the same when flowering. A simple test will help you distinguish ground elder form other plants: simply take a single leaf and rub it between you fingers. The aroma will remind you of carrots. Best time to forage for leaves is from May till July. This herb has many health benefits. It has a very high content of vitamin C and is good for gout, scurvy, digestion, and piles.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup ground elder leaves, packed
• 1/4 cup pistachio nuts, raw or roasted 
• 2 large garlic cloves
• juice of medium large lemon
• grated peel of 1/2 organic, untreated lemon
• 1/4 cup virgin olive oil
• Celtic sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Method:

• In a food processor pulse blend ground elder, garlic, pistachios, lemon peel, and lemon juice. Do not over process. The mixture should be nicely coarse.
• Add olive oil, salt and pepper and whiz again. Serve with pasta dishes, as a dip, soup or salad garnish. If you like cheese you can add crumbled Pecorino  or Parmigiano reggiano cheese, as you normally would if you made a classic basil pesto. 

Both recipes may sound slightly unusual, but if you can get the ingredients, give them a try.

This year Earth Day falls on weekend. Take advantage of it and go on a hiking trip, ride your bike, start a garden, or meet friends and family over a healthy, home made meal. Reach out to your community and see if there is anything you could do collectively to reduce your carbon foot print. The climate change may be real or perceived, but the environmental pollution is not. Many things must be done so that the generations to come can enjoy the beauty of our planet.

~ Happy Earth Day 2017 ~

By Dominique Allmon

 
Dominique Allmon©2017

128,000 ft Jump!

Everyone has limits. Not every one accepts them. - Felix Baumgartner

Austrian extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner, aka Fearless Felix, jumped from the altitude of 128,097 feet around noon this Sunday, October 14, just outside of Roswell, NM, breaking several world records: highest free-fall, fastest free-fall, and highest manned balloon flight.

The free-fall lasted 4 minutes 22 seconds.

Although Baumgartner broke several world records today, he was unable to break Kittinger's free-fall record.

The Red Bull Stratos mission to the Edge of Space attempted to transcend human limits that had been set by Joseph W. Kittinger some 50 years ago. 

The Red Bull Stratos team brought together the world's leading minds in aerospace medicine, engineering, pressure suit development, capsule creation and balloon fabrication. It included retired United States Air Force Colonel Joseph Kittinger, who holds three of the records Felix wanted to break.

Joe's record jump from 102,800 ft in 1960 was during a time when no one knew if a human could survive a jump from the edge of space. Joe was a Captain in the U.S. Air Force and had already taken a balloon to 97,000 feet in Project ManHigh and survived a drogue mishap during a jump from 76,400 feet in Excelsior I. The Excelsior III mission was his 33rd parachute jump. This was the time he established a world record that remains unbroken to this day. Kittinger's free-fall lasted 4 minutes 36 seconds - 14 seconds longer than Baumgartner's. 

 Felix Baumgartner in free-fall

Although researching extremes was part of the program's goals, setting records wasn't the mission's purpose. Joe ascended in helium balloon launched from the back of a truck. He wore a pressurized suit on the way up in an open, unpressurized gondola. Scientific data captured from Joe's jump was shared with U.S. research personnel for development of the space program. Today Felix and his specialized team hoped to take what was learned from Joe's jumps more than 50 years ago and press forward to test the limits of the human capacity.

 

Landed safely east of Roswell

 

Baumgartenr ascended to the low stratosphere in a capsule that was carried by a balloon which itself was a technological marvel.

The balloon was constructed of strips of high-performance polyethylene (plastic) film that was only 0.0008 inches thick or 10 times thinner than a lunch bag. In total, these strips would cover 40 acres if they were laid flat. Polyester-fibre reinforced load tapes were incorporated to do the weight bearing.

The Stratos balloon was filled with 30 million cubic feet of helium which10 times larger than Joe Kittinger's balloon in 1960.

The Roswell-jump not only terminated Baumgartner's skydiving career, but it also marked the 65th anniversary of US test pilot Chuck Yeager successful attempt to become the first man ever to officially break the sound barrier aboard an airplane.

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The "Hindenburg" Mystery

75 years ago, on May 6, 1937 an unimaginable tragedy occurred at Lakehurst, NJ - the German airship "Hindenburg," the pride of the Third Reich, caught fire and crashed killing thirty six people. It took only thirty seven seconds for the "Hindenburg" to completely burn down. This tragedy was witnessed by hundreds of people who gathered at Lakehurst to watch "Hindenburg's" arrival.

The "Hindenburg" was built in Germany in 1935. This 800-foot long airship, named after the last president of the Weimar Republic Paul von Hindenburg, was considered a marvel of sophisticated air travel. By 1937 it had already made dozens of Transatlantic flights.

The "Hindenburg" was equipped with sixteen gas cells that had a total gas capacity of 7,062,100 cubic feet and was powered by four 1,100-horsepower diesel engines. Originally  this airship was constructed for a less flammable helium gas, but the United States had refused to export helium to Germany. Thus, the "Hindenburg" was filled with the less expensive but extremely flammable hydrogen. 

The "Hindenburg" had departed from Frankfurt, Germany, on May 3, 1937, and was scheduled to land at Lakehurst on the morning of May 6. However, bad weather conditions delayed the landing and the blimp kept flying over New York City until it could land in New Jersey.

 

There is much speculation about the origins of this tragedy. Many people believe that the "Hindenburg" was a victim of sabotage perpetrated by Germans who opposed the Nazi regime. This is the romantic version of the tragedy. Another version has it that the giant blimp was ignited by a lightning. More recently, however, some scientists theorized that a build-up of static electricity was responsible for the disaster, although Horst Schirmer, whose father was the "Hindenburg's" aeronautical designer, believes that the airship most probably suffered a leak to its hydrogen gas cells while performing the docking maneuver. 

We may never know what really happened.

The tragedy of "Hindenburg" set an end to the Transatlantic blimp travel. And if it hadn't, the looming war would have made such travel impossible anyway.

By Dominique Allmon

Charles Yeager - First Man to Break the Sound Barrier

 

 Charles Yeager with his Bell X-1

It didn't make any difference to me whether I thought the airplane would go faster than sound. I was assigned as a test pilot on it, and it was my duty to fly it." - Charles Yeager

Sixty three years ago, on October 14, 1947, Charles Yeager was the first man to break the sound barrier. After launch from a B-29 he accelerated to a speed of Mach 1.06 at 42,000 feet and shattered the myth of the once-dreaded "sound barrier" forever. 

Charles "Chuck" Yeager is unquestionably the most famous test pilot of all time. He won a permanent place in the history of aviation as the first pilot ever to fly faster than the speed of sound, but that is only one of the remarkable feats this pilot performed in service to his country.

Charles Elwood Yeager was born in 1923 in Myra, West Virginia and grew up in the nearby village of Hamlin. Immediately upon graduation from High School he enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps to serve in World War II.

Shot down over enemy territory only one day after his first kill in 1943, Yeager evaded capture and, with the aid of the French resistance, made his way across the Pyrenees to neutral Spain. Although army policy prohibited his return to combat flight, Yeager personally appealed to General Dwight D. Eisenhower and was allowed to fly combat missions again.

He flew 64 combat missions in World War II. On one occasion he shot down a German jet from a prop plane. By war's end he had downed 13 enemy aircraft, five in a single day.

After the war, Yeager continued to serve the newly constituted United States Air Force as a flight instructor and test pilot. In 1947, he was assigned to test the rocket-powered X-1 fighter plane. At the time, no one knew if a fixed-wing aircraft could fly faster than sound, or if a human pilot could survive the experience. Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, only days after cracking several ribs in a horseback riding accident.

In 1952, he set a new air speed record of 1650 mph, more than twice the speed of sound. He flew test flights in Korea, and commanded a fighter squadron in Europe.

After the onset of the space race in 1956, Yeager commanded the Air Force Aerospace Research Pilots School to train pilots for the space program. In this capacity, Yeager supervised development of the space simulator and the introduction of advanced computers to Air force pilots. Although Yeager himself was passed over for service in space, nearly half of the astronauts who served in the Gemini, Mercury and Apollo programs were graduates of Yeager's school.

In 1963, Yeager was flying the experimental Lockheed Starfighter at over twice the speed of sound when the engine shut off and he was forced to abandon the spinning aircraft. Yeager's compression suit was set on fire by the burning debris from the ejector seat, which became entangled in his parachute. He survived the fall, but required extensive skin grafts for his burns.

The Air Force space school was closed in 1966, as NASA took over the training of astronauts. During the Vietnam War, Yeager -- now a full colonel -- commanded the 405th fighter wing out of the Philippines, flying 127 air-support missions, and training bomber pilots.

In 1968, Yeager was promoted to brigadier general. He is one of a very few who have risen from enlisted man to general in the Air Force. In 1970, General Yeager served as U.S Defense Representative to Pakistan and supervised Pakistan's air defense in its war with India. He retired from the Air Force in 1975, but continued to serve as a consulting test pilot for many years.

In 1976, Chuck Yeager was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery. He is the only American to be awarded the Medal for service in peacetime. His other decorations include the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star with V device, the Air Force Commendation medal, the Silver Star with oak leaf cluster, the Legion of Merit with oak leaf cluster, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Distinguished Flying Cross with two clusters, and the Air Medal with ten clusters. His civilian awards include the Harmon International Trophy (1954) and the Collier and Mackay trophies (1948). He was the first and the youngest military pilot to be inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame (1973).

A bestselling nonfiction book The Right Stuff (1979) by Tom Wolfe, and the popular film of the same title (1983) made Yeager's name a household word among Americans too young to remember Yeager's exploits of the 1950s. Yeager's autobiography enjoyed phenomenal success and he remains much in demand on the lecture circuit and as a corporate spokesman. 

After a 34-year military career, he retired on March 1, 1975. At the time of his retirement, he had flown more than 10,000 hours in more than 330 different types and models of aircraft.

Chuck Yeager made his last flight as a military consultant on October 14, 1997, the 50th anniversary of his history-making flight in the X-1. He observed the occasion by once again breaking the sound barrier, this time in an F-15 fighter. 

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Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Saint-Ex, 29 June 1900—31 July 1944

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a French writer and aviator. He is best remembered for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince), and for his books about aviation adventures, including Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars. He was a successful commercial pilot before World War II, joining the Armée de l'Air (French Air Force) on the outbreak of war, flying reconnaissance missions until the armistice with Germany. Following a spell of writing in the United States, he joined the Free French Forces. He disappeared on a reconnaissance flight over the Mediterranean in July 1944. 

“The friend within the man is that part of him which belongs to you and opens to you a door which never, perhaps, is opened to another. Such a friend is true, and all he says is true; and he loves you even if he hates you in other mansions of his heart.” -  Antoine de Saint-Exupéry from "The Wisdom of the Sands" translated from French by Stuart Gilbert