Stress & Brain Scarcity

NPR has been having a good series the last couple weeks on stress, and I particularly liked a story a couple days ago (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/07/14/330434597/this-is-your-stressed-out-brain-on-scarcity)

"When you're very lonely, or when you're hungry, or when you're poor, a large portion of the day is spent entertaining thoughts related to the source of your scarcity. If you're lonely, you spend a big part of the day worrying about how to make social connections, which is actually distracting you from other things." And if you're poor, you worry about money. Constantly.

And they referenced this older story (http://www.npr.org/2014/01/02/259082836/how-scarcity-mentaly-affects-our-thinking-behavior)

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Let's hear now about a new book that explores a major source of stress. The book is called "Scarcity," and it's a look at what happens to us when we're pressured with too little time or too little money. The authors say scarcity actually changes how we think. NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam explains.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Each September, the state of Massachusetts asks one thing from "Scarcity" author and Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan: to renew his car inspection sticker. And each year, this recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award does the same thing. He's really busy so on each day leading up to the expiration of the sticker, he tells himself he'll attend to it the next day.

SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN: One more day of delay - I mean, what's the big deal?

VEDANTAM: Pretty soon, Mullainathan finds himself driving around Boston with an expired sticker.

MULLAINATHAN: The sticker is three months expired and now, you're doing all sorts of stuff; like, you're driving down the street - oh, look, there's a cop. I'd better make a right turn so he doesn't see my expired sticker.

VEDANTAM: Turning the wrong way makes Mullainathan late for a meeting, or late for class. Now, he has to spend time fixing the mistake, rescheduling meetings with students, playing catch-up. His next day gets even busier. Now, he definitely doesn't have time to fix that sticker.

MULLAINATHAN: I do this constantly. Right now, I've got a meeting to get to. I don't have the time to replace the sticker whereas the truth is, the enormous amount of distortions I've now made for the last three months because of the stupid sticker, add up to five times as much time as I would've spent just going and having it fixed.

Perfect Man...

They forgot to include if he can cook :D

Yukon Golds, carrots, and Red Onion with olive oil and basil, oregano, and thyme put in for 25 minutes @ 450.
Then added the summer squash and sweet pepper in oil with salt and pepper, along with the chicken thighs with oil, same seasonings as above, plus salt and paprika, for another 30 minutes.
All veggies and herbs except the carrots and paprika were from the garden.
They forgot to add, "If he gardens" too.

Garden Updates

Maybe photos if I get around to it...

I am still (barely) picking "Summer Bib" lettuce. Definitely need at least two six packs of that next year! I have enough for tomorrow's lunch, we'll see how it's doing after a weekend to recover from picking. All the other varieties have bolted, though the Red Romaine just yesterday so that's another excellent variety!

Picked two small strawberries today (first I've had in years, snuck a six pack of an everbearing in), and had the first red cherry & early girl toms but slugs or something had already sampled them.

Been picking small summer squash since Monday.

Not bad at all for July 10th!

Daylillies and Garden and Stuff

Daylilllies seem a few days late this year, which doesn't surprise me with the late spring and cool June. July 5th for the first Daylilly! (I didn't even put in the A/C until July 1st).





Two bins of grass clippings from the dump this weekend:

Dug them into the east pea bed that didn't really do well this spring.
This is about as close to a "show garden" as I get :)




Had poison ivy getting into a few of the red cabbages, better safe than sorry so I tore them out when I weeded:

Work continues on building rows:

I will be harvesting zukes & yellow squash this week.

Photo Dump from last week...
One nice lunch:

Tiger lillies by the driveway!

And grilled chicken salad for lunch...


July 4th morning harvest...before the rain moved in! 1/10th of an inch over the previous three weeks, 1/4" the night before, smidge over 1.5" on the 4th!

Breakfast:

Then I hung up herbs before going to Nadine's party:

And made a potato pizza that night:

Garden & Food Updates

Between the dump and my secret source, got the Asparagus well mulched. The guy who had been bringing me clippings hasn't dropped off any in a couple weeks, but that doesn't surprise me -- this is the time of year many folks stop bagging and just clip their lawns.




Surprises me the peppers droop in the heat.


Put up a single string to keep the tater vines in line so I could mow without whacking them too:




Mulched the Arugula, Sweet Potatoes, and I think it's Bok Choi along the fence?




Started harvesting my broccoli


Celery got mulched:


Beans are starting to run:


Saturday's Dinner featured peas, onions, and broccoli from the garden...despite a botched transfer to the stone :) :






Sunday featured the first taters of the year, and the first oregano and basil of the year, with peas done up in foil on the grill with the steak:

Peas...and Shepherd's Pie

Picked peas tonight, and into the Shepherd's Pie they went. Lamb for the meat -- haven't used ground lamb before.

Places for the travel bucket list..

If I ever go on the castles of Europe trip...two non castles:

Kew Gardens
and the
Imperial War Museum

Fort Ticonderoga

Saturday, the summer solstice, I decided to cross something off my list I had wanted to do since last year -- see Fort Ticonderoga, which is 5-6 hours away depending just how scenic I make the drive. So after a haircut appointment and dump run, I was on the road about 9am.

Some wooden pallisades being erected -- certainly in it's day wooden pallisades would have surrounded the fort, probably with other impediments to slow down a large attacking force while the cannons did their work.

The sally port to enter the fort (looking outwards)


Mount Defiance, the Achille's heel of Ticonderoga.






Oh! A clay camp oven! I've read of these before :)






The barracks inside the fort were designed to garrison 400 soldiers for the winter. Encamped outside the walls at times the French had another 3,000 men. That's a lot of labor to clear the land and build the fort!

Food Pics!

I'm eating pretty much daily out of my garden now :)

Sunday brunch featured garden lettuce, with grapes, cucumber, cottage cheese, and strawberries. A few raisins would have made this perfect!


Monday night I culled some onions that were sending up seed heads, plus one that a bird had knocked sideways, along with some young peas -- this fried up RIDICULOUSLY good!

Garden Updates...

I built/extended some new beds inside the fence -- partly because I'm getting more soil in good shape that I can work with to make them :) I planted Sweet Potatoes (in front of the Onion bed), Arugula, Chinese Cabbage, and Kholrabi.


Bib and Red Romaine Lettuce -- I'm really liking both of these!


Look at those onions!
I've been eating snap peas for about a week, I should be able to harvest some to shell tomorrow -- too few were ready tonight.


Beans are coming along.


The cauliflower never did much of anything -- the two plants that survived were still little bigger than when planted. I dug up that bed, extended it, and planted Kholrabi here. I have two more bed extensions I'm in the process of building to the right.




I hilled the celery this week for the first time. It seems to have liked it.