Is it the Future Yet? / The Yummiest Way to Squish Healthy Food Together and Live Until I'm 100.

OK, so lately I'm thinking the whole future thing must be a scam. I feel personally affronted that they haven't invented flying cars yet. There's no time travel or Esperanto-speaking futurist Utopia. There isn't even a green energy monorail mass transit system in our neighborhood and I can't say "Earl Grey...Hot" to the wall in a British accent and get tea (shout out to my nerd peeps). Sometime though I think of little things I can do that would have seemed completely exotic to me growing up in the 70s:

I can go onto Skype and talk to my cousin in Africa or my sister in Seattle. That's kind of how I envisioned all our phones to be and I'm grateful to be able to do it. Although when I was little I didn't imagine that if you push the wrong button, it makes lots of foreign men text dirty things to you.

They do have robots, but I just stopped wanting one and also none of them nurture a deep desire to become human.

They have really future-ie conveyer belts in the Amsterdam airport and there's a cool robot sounding lady who keeps intoning, "Mind your step!"

Instead of a plastic phonograph that you have to balance a toy chicken on the needle of so your K-Tel Dy-no-mite and Joni Mitchell records wouldn't skip, we now have access to any music we fancy at the click of a mouse thanks to the wonders of iTunes.

My kids make beeping noises instead of stamping stuff when they play library.

I don't have to memorize anything anymore. I make myself commit some poetry to memory because it's a gift to put lovely things in there if you have to wait in line at the bank for an hour (because they haven't invented robot bank tellers yet), but usually I can just look stuff up online. If you haven't met me yet please try to meet me when I'm near a computer because you'll think I'm smarter. If I'm far away from the computer I feel as sad as Napoleon must have felt after losing to the Prussians in the Battle of Wavre on Jone 18th and 19th, 1815. 

I guess we'll just have to keep waiting for more cool stuff to happen. We can either cryogenically freeze our heads and reemerge in a post-apocalyptic utopia, or we can be really really healthy and live a great long life. Here's the yummyiest way to squish healthy stuff together that I've found in a long while. It's fun to play with the proportions on this one according to your tastes and what you have in the house:

Middle Eastern Spinach Lentil Dish (yummy with aforementioned  homemade yogurt)

This is modified from this great recipe I found.

Ingredients: * Basil, 1 cup leaves  * Parsley, 1 cup leaves * Peppermint, 0.5 cup leaves  * Pepper, black, 0.5 tbsp * Salt, 1 dash * Ginger Root, grated or finely chopped, 3 tsp * Lentils, or about a third of a package depending on the proportions you like * Vegetable Broth, 1 cup * Garlic, 1 clove, minced * Chili powder, 0.5 tsp * Turmeric, ground, 0.5 tsp * Cumin powder, 0.5 tsp * Onions, 2 small, chopped * Olive Oil, 3 tbsp * Spinach, frozen, 2 package (10 oz) * Lime Juice, 0.5 lime yields * Raisins, 0.75 cup (not packed)

Directions

Wash and chop the herbs, save a few mint leaves. Thaw the spinach. Bring the lentils to a boil in the vegetable broth with the ginger. Cook just a little until they're al dente and save the liquid Mince the garlic and mix with chili powder, turmeric, cumin and remaining pepper and salt. Chop the onions and fry them in the oil together with the spice and garlic mixture. Add the lentils with the broth and continue to cook until they are soft.  Add the thawed spinach and bring back to a boil.  Toss in the chopped herbs, the lime juice and the raisins. Decorate with a few mint leaves.