My fig crop, episode V

Our fig tree is outdoing itself this year. We are picking pounds of figs every day, many of them right from the deck because the tree has grown so tall.

Which leads to the inevitable issue of what to do with all of these figs, other than just eating them by the bowlful. 

 

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Pizza math

Do you want the best deal when you're buying pizza? Simple math says always get the biggest pie. Dr. Ho's Humble Pie is the best pizza in the C-ville area (unless you want real Neapolitan style from Lampo, but Lampo's pies are one size fits all, so they won't work for this exercise anyway), so we'll use Dr. Ho's to do the math.

 

The formula for calculating the area of a circle is, fittingly, 𝜋r². Setting aside the 10-inch "gluten friendly" pies, Dr. Ho's offers its specialty pizzas in two sizes: 14 inches for $22.75, and 16 inches for $24.75. The area of a 14-inch pizza is about 154 square inches. The area of a 16-inch pizza is about 201 square inches. That's about 30% more pizza for 8.8% more money.* Just those two extra inches get you way more cheesy delicious goodness for your buck. If you don't want to eat it all, split it with a friend; who doesn't love pizza?

 

And what about the gluten friendly pies? The area of a 10-inch pizza is about 79 square inches. A 10-inch specialty pizza goes for $17.50. So even compared to a lower value 14-inch pie, you're getting about half the pizza for about three-quarters of the price. Compared to a 16-inch pie, you're getting about 39% of the pizza for about 71% of the price! The GF penalty rears its ugly head.

 

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*Feel free to check my math. I never would have made it through my intro stats class at Hopkins without your mother.

 

Photo by Chad Montano on Unsplash

  

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What you probably have backwards about romantic relationships

Photo by Everton Vila on Unsplash

The title of this 2024 paper by Iris Wahring and colleagues says it all: "Romantic Relationships Matter More to Men than to Women." I bet you had that one backwards.

 

The authors start with the widespread view that women are "more romantic than men, and romantic relationships are assumed to be more central to the lives of women than to those of men." But based on recent research painting a different picture, they propose that, relative to women, men actually (1) "expect to obtain greater benefits from relationship formation and thus strive more strongly for a romantic partner"; (2) "benefit more from romantic relationship involvement in terms of their mental and physical health"; (3) "are less likely to initiate breakups"; and (4) "suffer more from relationship dissolution." 

 

Why should romantic relationships be more consequential to men than to women? It's simple, really: "The basic mechanism [is] that men perceive less intimacy and less emotional support from their social ties beyond romantic partners." In other words, everyone needs intimacy and emotional support, but women can get that from their women friends and family members* while the vast majority of men are not getting enough of that while hanging out with their bros watching sports. So men have to turn to their female romantic partners to get the same kind of emotional support that women are getting from their other social relationships. Men, remember that when you're looking to make some new male friends.

 

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*One theory is that "women (relative to men) are more inclined to turn to others when distressed in a tending and befriending manner – that is, banding together with others for mutual support, resources, and protection," which causes "the release of oxytocin known to facilitate affiliation and emotional bonding with other people."

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Fast food, episode XV

It's been too long since my last installment in the "fast food" franchise, even though I have posted other under-30-minute recipes since then. As quick and easy go, they don't get much quicker and easier than this, an Indian-style variation on a rice-and-beans dish using only pantry staples (if you go with canned over fresh tomatoes). This one is definitely worth keeping in mind for when you're home late from work and don't know what to make but don't want to order in or go out. We all thought it was really tasty, especially given the small amount of time and work involved. Stock up on black-eyed peas next time you're at the grocery — they're delicious and have a great texture compared to some other beans. (They're great in the Four "Pea" Usal, too.)

 

Your parents' meet cute

In a recent episode, I mentioned in passing having "had the perfect meet cute with my dream woman 40+ years ago in the Hopkins cafeteria." I was surprised when Moriah texted me to get the scoop on the meet cute because I thought Dylan would have known the story, but he didn't, and apparently neither did the rest of you. So here it is.

The Gray Lady goes rogue

Everyone knows how Brad and I love to do the Thursday through Saturday crosswords (the rest are too easy) from both the New York Times and Newsday, with Newsday's Saturday Stumper taking the prize as the best and most diabolical of them all. Dylan often complains about all of the "old people" clues and answers in crosswords. But more and more the New York Times is trying to prove a degree of coolness through some of the clues and answers in its crosswords. Last Friday's puzzle was about as far out on a limb as I've seen the Gray Lady, so nicknamed in part for its sober style, go:

 

Maybe the Times should change its famous slogan to "all the nudes that's fit to print." (And no, we did not need The Closer's help to finish this puzzle.)

 

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The 5-3-1 rule of social connection

My social science reading for this year (which, as usual, is most of my reading) has included two excellent books about social connection: Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends (2022) by Marisa Franco; and The Art and Science of Connection: Why Social Health Is the Missing Key to Living Longer, Healthier, and Happier (2024) by Kasley Killam. They're both available through Libby.

 

There is so much good information in both books about the how, what, and why of social connection, or "social health" to use Killam's term, which she defines as the aspect of well-being and overall health, which also includes physical health and mental health, that comes from connection. It's hard to know exactly how much social connection you need, and that differs from person to person anyway, but Killam came up with a useful 5–3–1 rule of thumb, based on two "evidence briefs" published in 2022 by the Canadian Alliance for Social Connection and Health.*

First, connect with five different people each week. This can include family members, friends, or coworkers, and the way you connect with them could include meeting in person, catching up over the phone or FaceTime, or some other way. This can also include "weak ties" such as (every social scientist's favorite!) the barista who serves you your morning coffee (or Saturday morning taco in my case). 

 

Second, maintain at least three close relationships in general. These are the folks in your innermost circle. Killam suggests that you might identify your close relationships by thinking about who you use as an emergency contact on forms or by opening the Messages app on your iPhone and seeing whose conversations you have pinned to the top.

 

And third, dedicate at least one hour each day to quality social interaction. Ideally, the minimum of one hour per day would be "engaging rather than rote."

Some of us are already putting into practice several of Killam's suggestions for ways to get all of this social connection in. For example, Killam suggests having a regular time to meet up with friends, which I do on Saturday mornings with my running buddies and Mom does once a week walking with her friends and once a month with her book group. Killam also suggests combining things you're already doing with social connection, which Cassie does when she calls home every Sunday morning on the way to work and Mom does when she calls friends and family members while walking around our neighborhood. As for quality social interaction, skip social media and have deeper conversations by asking more and better questions and, especially, follow-up questions, which shows you are listening to your conversation partner and curious about them. Sound familiar?

If you're looking to broaden your social circles, Franco has my favorite piece of advice, which is based on closing the "liking gap." That is a phenomenon shown in many social science studies in which people consistently underestimate how much their interaction partner will like them (before the fact) or did like them (after the interaction). The easy way to correct for this systematic bias is to assume people like you. Franco explains that "[w]hen we assume others will like us, we not only display behaviors that foreshadow our acceptance, we also become more accurate in our predictions of reality." Assuming people will like you helps you take the initiative in friendship, which someone has to do if you're going to make, and keep, friends.

 

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* See Kiffer Card, Cindy Yu, Adam Frost, Jocelle Refol, Pete Bombaci (2022) “Evidence Brief – How many friends do you need?” Canadian Alliance for Social Connection and Health; Kiffer Card, Cindy Yu, Adam Frost, Jocelle Refol, Pete Bombaci (2022) “Evidence Brief – How much social time do we need?” Canadian Alliance for Social Connection and Health.

 

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Outsourcing my blog, episode V: Moriah's back

When Dylan and I were staying in Charlottesville this spring, I made this every night for Jeopardy!. It comes together quick, and it’s just the right amount for one or two people to have a tasty few bites! 

Pesto update

Mom has been using all the summer basil to make pesto left and right so I thought I should get this one posted sooner rather than later. This is just a minor tweak to the original pesto, from a post in which I lauded the virtues of making pesto in a mortar and pestle. It's still great that way, but this one is quick and easy and a little more flexible, providing for the use of just about any kind of nuts (pecans were surprisingly good!). If you want to make this pesto but serve it in the traditional Genovese way with some potato and beans, you can still follow the instructions for the rest of the recipe for Pasta al Pesto Ricco.

Cooking for one

I'm in the second of my multiple stints home alone this summer, so I had a chance to cook again this new recipe I found that makes one small portion of noodles right in your dinner bowl. Not to bury the lede, these may be the best noodles I've had. It's insane how good and easy these are, mixing the sauce right in the bowl you're going to eat out of and ready in under 15 minutes. They're good enough to make you look forward to being alone and cooking for yourself. This one goes straight to bold in the index of "Recipes."

The beauty of boredom

Some people dislike being bored so much that they'd rather give themselves an electric shock than be bored. At least that's what UVA psychologist Timothy Wilson and his colleagues found in a series of experiments they did about a decade ago ("Just Think: The Challenges of the Disengaged Mind" (2014)). During the experiments, participants were asked to sit alone in a plain room with no cell phone, reading materials, or writing implements and entertain themselves for 15 minutes with nothing but their thoughts. But in one of the studies the participants had the option of giving themselves an electric shock during the thinking period by pressing a button. Of the 18 men in that study, 12 gave themselves at least one shock, while 6 of the 24 women did. (Which is why women should be running the world, though that wasn't part of the study.) Professor Wilson and his colleagues wrote that it was striking that "simply being alone with their own thoughts for 15 minutes was apparently so aversive that it drove many participants to self-administer an electric shock that they had earlier [told investigators] they would pay to avoid." The authors thus concluded that "[m]ost people seem to prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, even if that something is negative." 

 

Of course, nowadays no one ever has to be doing nothing because everyone constantly has a smartphone at hand to ward off boredom by doomscrolling, watching videos, playing video games, listening to podcasts, etc. But is that a good thing? Other books (e.g., The Upside of Downtime: Why Boredom Is Good (2017) by Sandi Mann) and studies (e.g., "Why Being Bored Might Not Be a Bad Thing After All" (2019)) say definitely not. The benefits of boredom including sparking creativity and the mental respite just from stepping away from stressful work emails and social media long enough to get bored. The former is particularly interesting, as Mann explains that boredom is actually "a search for neural stimulation that isn't satisfied. If we can't find that, our mind will create it," which could lead to creative ideas you wouldn't get if you reached for your phone instead of letting yourself get bored for a few minutes. So go ahead and be bored once in a while and see what happens.

 

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VEGAN & GLUTEN-FREE snack bites

Every week I read Meera Sodha's column in the Guardian online. It's called "The New Vegan." You'd think that would be enough to tip readers off that the recipes are all vegan. But every week, the column is titled "Meera Sodha's vegan recipe for ..." Why? Clickbait. If you want more clicks, and therefore more ad revenue, you stick "vegan" and/or "gluten-free" at the top of your entry and your number of hits skyrockets. So it's time for me to get with the program (not that I'm making any money off this blog, despite my apparently impressive following in Hong Kong).

 

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The big day

As you all know, we recently had a very big day here in Central Virginia. Yes, it was time again for the Friends of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library spring book sale. Wait, did something else important happen recently? 🤯 We'll cover that too, but I need some more time to process everything. In the meantime, here are the 22 books that $31 bought me at the book sale the week before last. "The Vulture" (aka Brad) has really turned the corner, as he ended up being the big winner this year, with lots of recent books that he put off buying new and ended up finding for $3 and $4 at the book sale. Go Brad!

 

From the Friday night members' pre-sale

Saturday afternoon's tally

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24 percent less sad

Anthony Lane has been a film critic for the New Yorker for almost 30 years. His film reviews are invariably funny and well written. But for me, the defining characteristic of his reviews is that I can almost never tell if he’s recommending that I see the movie or not. No stars, no thumbs up or down, nothing to definitively point the way, not even the general tenor of the review.

No such problem, though, with his recent review of Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier, a new book by Arthur C. Brooks, who teaches a class on happiness at Harvard and writes a happiness column for the Atlantic, and Oprah Winfrey, who needs no introduction. Well, nominally by both of them anyway, as Oprah is apparently responsible for only about 14 pages of a 240-page book. One of Oprah’s contributions: “I was curious about so many things [on the Oprah Winfrey Show], from the intricacies of the digestive system to the meaning of life, to which Lane responds that “[h]ad she been French, of course, those two items would have been the same.”

Oprah says she appreciates Brooks’s “science-y” approach to the subject matter. As, for example, when Brooks cites a study finding, I kid you not, that “among great composers like Beethoven, a 37 percent increase in sadness led to, on average, one extra major composition.” Lane, bless his heart, says “[t]hat sentence makes be 24 percent less sad, and 81 percent more inclined to giggle, than anything I have read this year.” (Seriously, how the fuck could they possibly measure that with so much accuracy?)

Lane also takes issue with Brooks’s imperatives. In addition to the title “Build the Life You Want," there are, among others, “Start by working on your toughness,” “Rebel against your shame,” “Treat your walks, prayer time, and gym sessions as if they were meetings with the president” (“Which President?” Lane asks), and, my favorite, “Remember: You are your own CEO,” which leads Lane to question “Do I have to wear a suit to brush my teeth? Is my dog a shareholder?”

For once, Lane’s thoughts on the subject matter being reviewed are readily apparent. This is one happiness book I’ll skip.

 

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The good life, part I: date night

One of my top candidates for best read of the year is The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness (2023) by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz. The book is a summary of all the lessons that the authors have drawn from the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which started in 1939. Incredibly, the lessons all boil down to one overarching principle, well summarized in this passage from the book:

[I]f we had to take all eighty-four years of the Harvard Study and boil it down to a single principle for living, one life investment that is supported by similar findings across a wide variety of other studies, it would be this: Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period. So if you’re going to make that one choice, that single decision that could best ensure your own health and happiness, science tells us that your choice should be to cultivate warm relationships. Of all kinds.

The book goes through the evidence and suggests some ways to foster your relationships "of all kinds," including intimate partnerships, family, and friendships.

 

With regard to the first category, it's easy to get into a rut, so I loved their idea to "[p]lan a weekly date night and take turns choosing what you will do (and maybe surprise your partner with a new activity if a surprise would be welcome)."* Mom and I implemented that suggestion last month, and it's been really fun planning things to do with each other. This morning, we got out for a long walk around downtown and then down Main Street to UVA and back to take in all of the Fall colors.

 

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*Research from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia shows that "couples who devote time specifically to one another at least once a week are markedly more likely to enjoy high-quality relationships and lower divorce rates, compared to couples who do not devote much couple time to one another." W. Bradford Wilcox & Jeffrey Dew, "The Date Night Opportunity: What Does Couple Time Tell Us About the Potential Value of Date Nights?" (2012).

 

 

 

 

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It’s here!

There's nothing like waiting all summer for the figs on your tree to finally ripen, and then one day they are busting out all over. Fig season is better than Christmas! We have hundreds on the tree this year, and it looks like we'll be picking and eating them for a few weeks, hopefully. I know this is less exciting for most of you, but I read this passage recently in Ross Gay's Inciting Joy (2022), and it's describes my feelings perfectly:

And though it is the same sort of ridiculing joke I make to other fignoramuses, I myself was one and thought figs were more or less what was inside a newton. So, if you’re reading this book, probably you know that when I bit into the first one, it was soft, deep purple, and probably had the slightest tear at its eye, as, after turning the fruit in my mouth, did I. A ripe fig—this cultivar we speculate is either Brown Turkey or Chicago Hardy—is like that. It will make you cry. It will change your life.

It will change your life indeed.

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A flophouse in Duluth

When someone in our family catastrophizes (which is not all that infrequently), Brad thinks of Dan Harris in 10% Happier, whose catastrophizing always ended up with him in a "flophouse in Duluth." For example, if someone scored an assignment that Harris wanted while he was still working at ABC News, he would think the executive who made the assignments "dislikes me → My career is doomed → I'm going to end up in a flophouse in a Duluth." Or he noticed some thinning in the back of his basically full head of hair (Hello!) and imagined a future that looked like this: "Baldness → Unemployment → Flophouse in Duluth." I think this is a funny image to keep in mind when your catastrophizing gets out of hand to calm things down.

 

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Forty years too late

I recently received the latest issue of Johns Hopkins Magazine (Spring 2023), which is billed as “The Food Issue.” One of the stories is about Dharshan Munidasa, who got an engineering degree from Hopkins in 1994 but is now a chef and restaurateur best known for his Ministry of Crab restaurants (great name!). Munidasa’s recollection of the food offered at Hopkins’ Homewood campus in the early ’90s is that “You could eat it, but it was never interesting. It was mass-produced. Boring.” That’s actually a slight step up from what I’d say about the food we were served at Homewood a decade earlier. His reaction was similar to mine though, that is, “to eat well [given the crappy Hopkins dining hall food] he needed to teach himself to cook well.” Which is how I started making spaghetti alla carbonara for your Mom on a regular basis after we began dating.

 

Gilman Hall (Daderot, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Hopkins is apparently now seeking to change the food culture on campus. In his opening letter in the Food Issue, Hopkins president Ronald Daniels says that food “brings people together, expanding our tastes and inspiring us to greater creativity. It truly binds a community.” To that end, Hopkins has “spent the last year bringing all our dining operations in-house instead of contracting with an external partner,” like they did in my day. Now, Daniels writes, the improved “Hopkins dining experience should be a source of joy, comfort, and the feeling of home.” New offerings on campus will include Puerto Rican pernil, barbeque jackfruit, the new Director of Culinary Innovation’s favorite tandoori-style chicken, and even—oh, the irony—“house-made gelato.”

Fast food, episode XIV

On the list of fast foods, I don't think there's anything faster than couscous. You really can pull together an entire meal (or prep lunch for most of the week) in about 15 minutes. And a tasty and healthy meal at that (if you don't fear the gluten). 

 

Note: recipe authors love to put raisins in their couscous dishes, maybe because they plump up so invitingly when exposed to the moist heat. But if raisins remind you more of small turds than an edible substance, don't let that stop you from making this delicious couscous salad; just substitute another dried fruit, like chopped dates or sweetened cranberries, or leave it out entirely.

Fast food, episode XIII

My most revisited UaKS story arc over the years has consisted of the "fast food" episodes, which have met with varying degrees of success and interest. The most viewed "fast food" recipes have been for Black Bean Tacos, followed closely by the Quick Tomato Sauce I use to make Baked Ziti and Quick Vodka Pasta, among other things. Some of the other favorites, personal or otherwise, have been Overnight Muesli (manna from heaven), Quick Vegetarian Bean Chili, and Smoky Red Salsa. The latest entry was Quickest Scrambled Eggs, which has hardly been viewed at all but only because Brad and I both quickly memorized how to scramble eggs this way, which we now do 7 or 8 times a week between us, making this easily the most used fast food recipe ever.

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