Thankful Sunday--July 15, 2012

I am thankful that Uncle Billy has a 

bountiful garden that he shares.

The Wisdom of a Book Club...

Or eleven heads make good decisions. That is how it seems in my book club. I have been in this book club for several years now and I am always pleased with the group of books we select each year to read. This is mostly because I get exposed to a wide variety of books that I wouldn't necessarily pick on my own (or finish if I didn't have to discuss them). Upon looking at the last few years of what we have been reading, I found that my perceptions were right about our selections and variety. Every year our list includes memoirs/biographies, nonfiction, and fiction including mysteries, science fiction, and classics.

You may wonder how we come up with our reading lists. It's really quite simple. Once a year, every member nominates two books and then we vote on them. The only restrictions are based on availability and we sometimes bend those rules. That is how we get our diverse and well rounded lists. There is no plan, just the wisdom of the crowd.

The wisdom of the crowd has actually been explored extensively in a book that Wally introduced to me several years ago, The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. Basically, the book examines the premise that a group can make better decisions than an individual even if that individual is an expert. A prime example of that (although not mentioned in the book) is my book club.

Maybe I'll nominate The Wisdom of Crowds for next year's reading list. We'll see if the wisdom of my group thinks that it is a good idea to read The Wisdom of Crowds.

Food Waste Friday, July 13, 2012 and True Confessions

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money. 

Here it goes for this week.   

Wasted potatoes

This week I had to throw out some mashed potatoes. They may have been okay except that they were stored with meat, so didn't want to chance it. We probably made too many in the first place, so we'll try to cut back next time.






Now onto true confessions. We don't waste much food anymore with the help of our public accountability, but we have another area that we struggle with. We eat out way too much and that's not good for us nutritionally or financially. We have never been able to sustain the habit of menu planning and cooking at home for any length of time.

There are several factors contributing to this:

• Everyone has a job or school that keeps them busy.
• No one in the family likes to cook.
• Everyone in the family likes takeout food. 
• No one likes to plan menus. 
• Everyone in the family can drive. 
• No one likes to shop. 
• Everyone has money to spend.

We have tried a lot of different ideas to get us to eat at home more often realizing that planning is the key to success. We have had family meetings to plan menus. We have assigned menu planning on a rotating basis to everyone. We have subscribed to menu planning and cooking sites. We have had serious talks about the health consequences of most take out food. We have had a theme to our menu plans like Mondays are pasta days, Tuesdays are chicken days, etc. And the list goes on with Wally's planning being my favorite. He randomly opens the cookbook and then we get to choose from between the two recipes he has opened to. 

A few of our past menus.

I am going to take another stab at this and use public accountability as the new tool in my belt. So each week along with food waste, I am going to report on how we did with our menus and cooking. Maybe I'll try posting menus or describing a new recipe we tried. We'll see. Does anyone have suggestions?

Crisscrossing Sprials

Sometimes Ward and I have a "discussion" during which we are irritated with each other. We're annoyed because we can't seem to get the other one to agree with what we think is a very good point.  We "discuss" for a while until we have a light bulb moment and realize that we haven't really understood what the other is saying. It often turns out that we agree on the issue, but haven't been communicating very well. This usually happens when we bring different perspectives to the situation, but we don't realize it. It doesn't occur to us that there is any other way to look at things other than our way because it seems so obvious.

I was reminded of this recently when I was showing Ward pictures of flowers that I had taken for a Second Look. He seemed to be staring at them for a long time and I finally asked him what he was doing. He said that he was looking at the Fibonacci crisscrossing spirals in the middle of the flowers. Translated, that meant that he was seeing spirals in flowers and thinking math.  I, on the other hand, was seeing petals, leaves, and colors and thinking plants. We were looking at the exact same things, but we were seeing different things.

I hope that I remember this example the next time that Ward and I have a "discussion", and we can get to our light bulb moment sooner rather than later.

What do you see?

Note: Ward plans to do a post on just the middles of these flowers and the Fibonacci series.

A Second Look--July 11, 2012

This week there were a couple of new things blooming including tiger lilies and black-eyed susan. It seems that our black-eyed susan are never very robust, but we enjoy them all the same. Also, you may remember last week when I showed the bar soap that was supposed to deter deer that wasn't working. This week, I found a piece of it far from any flower bed and it had been partially eaten. I don't know what took the bites, but I'm guessing a fox or raccoon.

Here's what I saw this week during a Second Look.

Tiger lily

Colelus

Black-eyed susan

Day lilies

Queen anne's lace. Notice the "deer repellant" soap below it.

This piece of soap had been drug far from the flower bed and chomped on. I'm not sure by what.

Bunny enjoying some clover. We mostly see the rabbits in the early morning.