It’s impossible to tell that most of what’s inside… is good for you! Since I discovered these, we’ve been eating brownies casually around our house. They never last very long.
The variations on this recipe make it seem like ten recipes in one! Gluten free? Sure! Sugar? Yeah! Some other sweetness? Of course! Add nuts, chocolate chips, blackberries….WHATEVER! All you need is a blender.
Black Bean Brownies
Preheat oven to 350
Grease a 8×8 pie pan
In a blender, blend together:
1 can of rinsed black beans (15 oz)
1/2 cup of flour (wheat, oat, whatev)
4 tablespoons of coconut oil (or butter)
1/2 cup of cocoa powder
1/2 cup or less of sweet (sugar, maple syrup, honey, agave, whatev)
1 teaspoon of vanilla
3 eggs
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/4 cup of water (or milk)
Once it’s all blended well, do you want to stir in a bunch of chocolate chips? Or blackberries? Or chopped cherries? Or peanuts? Just use a spoon to stir it in.
Pour into pan
Top with crushed nuts if you want (tap them down into the batter)
Bake it for 40 minutes at 350. Let cool in pan for 15 minutes before you remove it. Cut up – and enjoy!
Bucky always starts with Universe. This is his definition of it: “Universe is the aggregate of all humanity’s all time consciously apprehended and communicated experiences.”
Concept Two: Humanity
The human is not an accidental onlooker “who happened in on the ‘Play of Life,’ but an essential syntropic function of Universe.”
Concept Three: Children
“Focus on new life. Since children are the hope of the future and 98% of the environment’s positive or negative effects upon new life are wrought by age thirteen, it is obvious that effective work in advantaging life through environment can mainly be realized within the first thirteen years.”
Concept Four: Teleology
Teleology by Bucky’s definition means “the intuitive conversion by brain and mind of special case, subjective experiences into generalized principles…which permit the individual to reform the environment…so as to provide ultimately higher advantages for men” and to inspire others to do likewise.
Concept Five: Reform the Environment,
Not Man.
Bucky’s philosophy and strategy confine design initiative to reforming only the environment and never to emulate the almost universal attempts of humans to reform and restrain other humans by political actions, laws, and codes.
Concept Six: General Systems Theory
Using the generalized principles he has discovered, Bucky says “I always start all problem-solving with Universe, and thereafter subdivide progressively to identify a special local problem within the total of problems.” He thus attacks it comprehensively and anticipatorily.
Concept Seven: Industrialization.
“Industrialization consists of tools”. It involves “all experiences of all men everywhere in history.” Bucky sees it as inherently comprehensive and omni-interrelated in respect to all humanity. And he believes that, though subsystems of it are run shortsightedly by selfishly motivated people, the whole works inadvertently towards ultimately providing all men with higher standards of living….Because energy plus know-how is wealth, “the integrating world industrial networks mean ultimate access of all humanity to the total operative commonwealth of Earth.”
Concept Eight: Design Science
Design Science is concerned “with the scheduling of the complex interaction of the general systems events of industrialization.” The rapid advance of technology in one field- air transportation, for example – must be “comprehensively integrated with all other vastly accelerating environment relationship transformations.”
Concept Nine: The Service Industry
“Humanity is gradually trending towards becoming Worldians.” Therefore, the static appurtenances of life – houses, automobiles, even typewriters – will all be rented like telephones because of man’s increasing mobility. Amplifying this thought in another article, Bucky foresees man’s ability to deploy at will all over the earth and the solar system by means of autonomous structures made livable by our astronauts life-support ‘black box’. And he adds, “Quite clearly, man, free to enjoy all of his planets…will also be swiftly outward bound to occupy even greater ranges of the universe.”
Concept Ten: Ephemeralization
“The acceleration of doing more with less…will complete the task of providing enough for all humanity within another thirty-four years…despite political systems that deliberately divide society and set one group against another.” Bucky believes that without the interference of political systems it could be done in twenty years.
Concept Eleven: Prime Design Initiative
Bucky believes that it is essential for the individual, invention-developing pioneer to maintain his economic initiative and not get tied up with the massive capital-cum-bureaucracy of large corporations, despite the leverage of their wealth.
Concept Twelve: Self-Discipline
Instead of the obligation to make a living, Bucky substitutes the higher obligation of the individual’s syntropic responsibility in Universe.
Concept Thirteen: Comprehensive Coordination
Comprehensivity instead of specialization is Bucky’s key to successful design competence. His foremost self-discipline is never to try to sell one of his ideas to others. He will just design and test it, and wait for others, who need it, to come to him. He only goes where he is asked to speak because, if you force your ideas on people they listen unwillingly, but if they ask you to speak to them – especially if they pay a high fee -“they are very receptive.”
Bucky incessantly engages in trying to make all his previous inventions obsolete by designing better ones.
Concept Fourteen: World Community and its Subcommunities
Bucky believes that Chapter Three of World History is just beginning, in which world man will realize his potential for success as a function of Universe through his accelerating mastery of “vast inanimate, inexhaustible energy sources combined with doing more with less.”
Here is the link to all of my photo albums. I’ve just gotten around to adding the January album, and I’ve added literally hundreds of pictures into the February album – even though it’s not even half-way done!
January was a month in which we left our Christmas tree up all month. Xavier visited from Calgary and so did X-tine. Our house was always full of playing children! So wonderful.
For the first 2 weeks of February we went to Mexico for a visit with Fox’s Grandma and Grandpa. We had such a great time at the beaches, visiting with friends, and going out on the town, etc.
I saw an incredible piece of finery at the toronto airport a few weeks ago. A vast fur blanket with the Hudsons Bay Company stripes in thick solid wool on the underside. It was so beautiful! So well made and magnificent. I felt deep within my own DNA a whiff of the life my bodies before me knew. Of course I checked the price tag to see if maybe it was around twenty bucks, and would it fit carry on? Oh behold! The worn and weakened price tag said $2695.00
I just looked it up online here and then it got me thinking.
Thinking about those colours, and the story of what happened like, not too long ago. Smallpox.
Have you heard that story? It’s frickin horrible. The white man gave Hbc woolen point blankets intentionally infected with small pox to try to wipe out that population of indigenous families. Families who just happened to be happily living there for ten thousand years. HOLY SHIT, right?
What does HBC have to say to the smallpox story? Here’s a reply from them. They say
“There is evidence from a letter of General Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander of the British forces in North America in 1763. The surviving letters between Amherst and a subordinate discuss trying this method of germ warfare against the aboriginals. However, there is no hard evidence that blah blah blah blah blah”
Basically that “No. Wasn’t us! Hbc didn’t do that. But there’s evidence of white generals planning that shit.” and if indigenous people say it happened, that’s enough for me to pretty much COMPLETELY believe what happened there. Germ warfare. DEVISTATION
There’s no controversy there. It happened. But apparently there’s just enough “controversy” to keep The Bay shelves stocked with the iconic Hbc point blanket colours. It seems to me that those colours represent an aspect of unnecessary cruel war tactics, no? The Bay has been selling those colours ever since! Should we really be carrying on traditions that ARE INSANELY CRUEL? Fox was given a gift of a really nice cotton knit sweater flying the unmistakable scheme. It’s a good warm sweater, but every time I look at it I feel shame of my ancestors.
I see these stripes every day. I warm my son with them. My intention for writing this was that maybe since I’m using it, it can start a conversation. The more awareness to that subject I can bring, the better for the general consensus to realize NEVER AGAIN does such cruelty ever have to be endured by anyone. I want it to symbolize instead the honoured memory of the suffering people.
I think we’re looking at an end to all war.
Capitalism is losing.
Logic, reason, and fairness is winning.
I’m going to go read about the history of this now and try to learn more so that I can bring some actual fact to any conversations that come outta this.
Thank you for moving forward with the Green Party. Today when you publicly announced that you seek a nomination at the AGM next Monday, I feel relief and hope. Finally! Someone I can trust in politics! Voting, government, and democracy requires attention being paid by ALL citizens of whichever nation all of these words effect.
This is the key: it’s not about “splitting any votes”…it’s about gathering the REST OF THE VOTERS WHO AREN’T VOTING. Only one third of people give a shit enough to play the funny little game with live CPAC coverage. Two thirds of us know it’s a game, and it is rigged! Paul wants to call-out all the shenanegans.
A healthy “nation”, happy populations, and harmonious relationship to Earth’s nature IS POSSIBLE NOW!!!! It takes EVERYONE CARING, and everyone really DOES care, it’s just that maybe some can’t recognize it yet. Like, two thirds of us “canadians”.
Through his film making, Paul’s already helped people recognize how much they actually do care. You saw what happened during Occupy’s first wave of dissonance! And Idle No More! Paul was right there with us! With Paul’s influence in Parlaiment, he’ll help to reform a system that is so broken.
You guys, I feel like it’s all going to happen, and it will be just as Buckminster Fuller said: everyone on Earth can be happy and healthy. That part is my hope. This is how I feel. And this is where my feeling of obligation motivates me. The benefit to my son and his daughter and hers after that is what motivates me. I’m so glad to sit on the Electoral District Association next month for the new riding of Green Party of Canada – Nanaimo Ladysmith because certainly I can help with SOMETHING so I had better start doing it (you can, too).
December started with a trip to visit Cora and Ian on Cortes Island. We celebrated Samara’s first birthday with a feast and new friends.
Then Fox and I flew to Toronto and visited for 2 weeks with my grandparents at the cottage. We got to see lots of family and even had an early Christmas!
We got home at night on December 23rd where Patrick had a real Christmas tree set up! Complete with decorations! On Christmas eve, we had an open-house party and lots of our friends came over.
Daniel and Ingrid spent the night and we all opened gifts in the morning. I made a breakfast with the bacon Luke left on our porch from a pig he raised, killed, and then butchered himself! After breakfast we watched the Trailer Park Boys Xmas special then played disc golf at Bowen Park. After that, we all went over to Kris and Nate’s for an amazing meal.
We spent Boxing day at Astrid and Kurt’s house and many of them went to the polar bear swim in Departure Bay.
After that we went to Amber’s house to celebrate her 25th birthday with the kids (and a million snacks!)
Today is New Years Eve and we began the day with an all-request and dedication radio show. Since then we’ve been lying around, and making apple sauce.
