My my, what I wouldn't give to be Batgirl + Recipe# 2

Yes Batgirl. Not Supergirl. I don't want to be some goddess-like super hero who has decided to 'humble' myself and do good for an indecisive society.

But Batgirl, hell yeah.

Intelligent, fit, mysterious but approachable - Batgirl kicks butt.

I would give anything to be Batgirl-like. Can't you just imagine it - getting all my readings done for all my classes *even the ones I despise*; being able to do good without drawing so much attention; coming up with brilliant stories and articles in the time it takes me to mentally prepare for them now; so, so much more.

Amazing.

If I could be Batgirl, like I said before, I would kick butt.

But alas, here I am, regular Sobia. Dumbfounded that the day has passed on so quickly, and I've done so little in the time that passed. Crazy.

There is definitely something simple I am excited about though, and as silly as it sounds, I'm going to share it here:

I made my own trail mix.

That's right, my own trail mix. And I am very proud and excited.

It sounds like a small accomplishment, and it is. But I feel like we take time out to acknowledge useless things all the time, so now I'm taking time out to acknowledge one of those little things that just makes me plain happy =)

Anyhow, so I read a blog in the summer about people making their own trail mixes and I thought to myself 'Boy, I'd really like to try making a trail mix of my own tonight!'

But I just never got around to it for so many various reasons, as usual.

But today, I looked into our pantry, and the light bulb above my head went 'Bing!'

So I sat down and compiled all this together (Recipe# 2):

A handful of dried papaya chunks

A handful of sweet dates, not too sticky

2 Chips Ahoy chocolate chunk and white chocolate cookies

A bit more than a handful of namak para *brown people snack - it's basically lightly salted dough, thinly rolled out, cut into diamond shapes and fried*

A decent sprinkling of coconut flakes

4 dried figs

I cut up the fruits into smaller pieces, broke the namak para and cookies in to pieces, and the coconut flakes and tossed it all into a bowl.

It's sweet and salty, and slightly chocolaty, and not bad at all!

Of course, even when I resisted I couldn't help but add at least a little of my brownness to the mix with the dates and namak para. But it all makes for an interesting taste.

Try this mix, or make your own trail mix. It's definitely a lot of fun.

Funny, now that I think about it, but if I was Batgirl, I probably wouldn't have had time to make this awesome trail mix.

Good to have little moments that help you appreciate what you have =)

Recipe Discover #1

Ok so this isn't the first recipe we discovered in our kitchen, but it's definitely one of our most successful ones, so I thought I should share it =)

Caramelized Carrots and Onions:

This little recipe came from one of our improv dinners, and it's very versatile because you add everything to the amount of your liking.

Which means, the awesome thing about this recipe is that it's always a little different =)

Ingredients: 3 or more Carrots, 1 Onion, Brown Sugar, Honey, Red Pepper Flakes.

Steps:

1.Warm up small frying pan -medium heat-

2.Chop up the carrots -round or long, it doesnt matter as long as theyre not too thick- and toss in heated frying pan

3.Slice the onion round and thin, toss in frying pan with carrots

4.Squeeze the honey to the amount of your liking -as long as there's a nice coat on most of the onions and carrots-

5.Add brown sugar, amount to your liking -as long as there's a nice coat on most of the onions and carrots-

6.Just 2 shakes of red pepper flakes, unless you like it really spicy!

7.Stir occasionally to avoid sticking, turn heat off when carrots seem soft and wilted

From our experience this dish goes really well with fried rice:

Take the white rice from your rice cooker, toss it in a frying pan, add soy sauce to your liking -careful not to add too much!-

Stir it around, let it smell delicious, and your done!

Enjoy =)

What makes a Law Unjust? *part 2*

You know now that I think about it, I don't know why I linked this blog entry with my previous one - they don't have much in common at all. Truth be told, I wrote this bit in my journal quite some time ago and I only remembered that I wrote something about laws. Now that I've re-read what I wrote I see that I actually wrote about rights and linked laws and rights in my head as a natural order. Anyhow, my bad for the random part 2, enjoy the food for thought!

I have a friend who once wrote a very interesting essay about rights. She felt that there really was no such thing as rights. That it was a man made idea to control and conform. And I feel like I may agree with her to a certain extent.

You see I understand that rights are necessary; without structure there is chaos. And everything has a structure. Plants, animals, weather, and of course, humans (although humans are by far the most rebellious to that structure). Yet our definition of structure is a completely different term than that of the universe's definition of structure.

We may automatically think of school, or government, or even parents and religion as structure - and they are, no doubt. But they are each a different kind of structure. School and government are absolutely man-made - and for good reason (though that can become skewed sometimes...often). And I feel like parents are a biological structure that are questioned and changed as the relationship progresses. I think religion is a structure that is God-made and tampered with by humans.

Sometimes I feel like God may just be sitting in heaven and smirking at us, lolling (that's right, I said it) in his head at how ridiculously we mess up over the simplest things. And then he lets out a sigh of 'when will they ever learn' and sends us something to grab onto before we completely lose our balance and fall into the vast abyss of silly questions.

Anyhow, the topic at hand was about rights. I feel like natural rights are too tampered with, and that's when they become man-made. Take, for instance, our country. I personally believe that state and church (religious structure) are meant to work together. The fact that we have severed them has caused us to sever our natural rights (and it seems it's been way too long, and would be way too opposed, to go back and fix it now - for this nation anyways).

So i suppose what I'm getting at is that there are a set of natural rights and a set of man-made rights. the man-made rights began with good intentions (i hope) but they get more and more liquefied as our generations pass...our moral convictions are melting. and thus, due to this state of matter change, our natural rights are being tampered with, ignored, and questions by no one other than ourselves.

My thoughts on this are still not completely molded, they are molding. But I do know that, so far, this world has avoided complete chaos - so there must be a set of structures that we have been abiding by correctly so far. However, somewhere along the time line we stopped doing most of what we were doing right, to such an extent that we have far passed the line of minimal safety.

Humanity is hanging by a single thread that itself is tearing. We think we are living the life. We think we have every thing we could have possibly ever asked for. I don't think anyone realizes just how close to chaos we really are. Our natural structure of rights have been severed, and we don't have a big enough band-aid to fix so many generations of boo-boos. Thus, Chaos is in her crypt, sneering and snickering, sensing her time come closer, and she's clicking her finger nails against each other.

I can't remember what mood I was in when I wrote this last year, but I assume it wasn't horribly bright...

Thoughts?