French_Peasant Member

I’m a big fan of cappuccinos, to which I may add a little cream (to cool it down) and sugar in the raw (sprinkled on top of the foam). When I’m in a cut, I mostly just make a 10 oz. LaVazza coffee in my Keurig and add two tablespoons of half and half.

I have been completely entranced by it too--and they are just scratching the very tip of the iceberg with research. My daughter wants to major in a science, and she keeps having to listen to me raving about gut bacteria. "We're just giant meat puppets for them, maaaan!!" :D

I have tried it in a bed; I didn't see any compelling results one way or the other. For me, its biggest utility was in 1) adding some bulk to the bed so I didn't have to fill it with too much soil, and 2) getting rid of some big chonks that I had kicking around the yard. It was a little annoying because it was in a shallow…

Current microbial research is testing the hypothesis that our microbiome has a significant impact on our cravings. If you are transitioning your diet away from sugar, you are cutting off the supply of food to a large swathe of the flora and fauna you have been cultivating in your gut (and theoretically feeding--and hence…

It's recommended to have the lights on 12 to 16 hours; it can cause too much stress for seedlings to be exposed to light 24 hours a day. We just use a simple timer.

@gracegettingittogether Here are a few recommendations. Garden books, just for the pleasure of reading: - Anything by Beverley Nichols, a hilarious and snarky, Oxford-educated, literary Brit who was writing in the '60s; Timber Press had reissued some of his books but it looks like they are currently out of print but…

Well, I think she should listen to us both! :D I just happened to have some insights on it because I've been following a bunch of flower farmers on youtube and instagram and learning all kinds of fancy new things!

I, too, will be winter sowing for the first time ever this year. Normally I start everything under lights/on heat mats, but I helped my teenage daughter start a mini flower farm while her little 8th grade life was destroyed under Covid quarantine last year, so this year seed starting space is at a premium. (She's now…

@kshama2001 I am envious of your clear sweeps of lawn and your beautiful fence; I have trellises on the back side of my fence, and then things climbing on both the front and the back; it is quite the wonderful mess!

As Kshama notes below, don't blame yourself for the cilantro. Once it bolts and sets seed, it's going, going, gone. You can save the seedpods for next year, or just don't cultivate the "cilantro patch" too heavily and they might come back; they always do in my garden. Same scenario with dill. The annoying part with both…

Hey everyone! How have your gardens been doing after a pretty weird year, for those of us in the US, anyway? We've had a very wet, cool spring and early summer, and then a lot of drought that just broke with some recent rainfall here in northern Indiana. September has been very warm and sunny. Mine is cranking out tomatoes…

@kshama2001 your peonies and irises are gorgeous! @lemurcat2 I have been waiting VERY patiently to see pics of your new raised bed, and hear how it's going! If the bed's too tall, it sounds like a good opportunity to plant some ornamentals that will cascade down the sides--black or chartreuse sweet potato vine really pops…

I use fine dark hardwood mulch in my "fancy" garden areas (the perennial beds closer to the street or that we are close to daily) but I primarily use grass on my vegetable beds, unless I am organized enough to leave a bale or two of straw out over the winter so the wetness kills any seeds that might sprout. The grass works…

Wow, what a gorgeous plot, @carakirkey! How big is your plot, and how is your community garden organized? It looks like it's a pretty big operation.

@kshama2001 That chard is gorgeous! I just got my chard seeds planted a couple of days ago, and still have a lot of plants in flats, looking somewhat disgruntled. Ugh! We just hosted an overnight with 8 13-year-old girls at my MIL's lake cottage, which was a blast, BUT--I was not in my garden while preparing for and…

She is saying, if you aim for 140, get between 84g to 112g. 140g is overkill and likely unnecessary, but probably won't hurt if you like that much protein. (the .8 to 1 g applies to lean body mass, ie, without fat).

Bananas, apples and grapes; or 100ish-calorie snack bags of chips, Chex Mix and such. A little chunk of cheese and some fruit is a very nice snack; the more calories you have, the bigger the chunk of cheese can be. :) I also like lowfat Greek yogurt with a light drizzle of honey.

For a cappuccino, you should be able to approximate it by finding a Starbucks skim cappuccino entry, and then just logging it as the particular size you drank (16 oz or whatnot). Basically it's just the skim milk that has the calories, so that could be logged as well if you know the quantity. Add the sugar as a separate…

That's a good point...what are the actual activities that they are doing? Are they chasing down large game with a spear? Or are they sitting and weaving a basket to set up in a stream to trap fish? When I am hunter-gathering, I am walking slowly through the woods looking for morels, or going to a black raspberry patch and…

If it's the same study that @psychod787 linked to, it seems like we discussed this study at some point last year; I remember it because @AnnPT77 took me to task for expressing how disgusting the ultraprocessed dinners were. :D They don't demand a lot of chewing and probably go down really easily. Although I infinitely…

I was just thinking about this late last night, that the hunter-gatherers probably had a decent bed time and weren't staying up till midnight running heavy baskets of laundry up and down the stairs. :D

I didn't mean for this to sound like I thought you were taking this as gospel, rather it's the way the media takes a study and runs with it (the PlosOne article has a much of media links) and the general public is taking it as gospel. Basically, I'm just baffled because I can't correlate the seemingly-careful study and his…

The study itself appears to be solid, but it's not covering all the crazy-talk in Pontzer's interview--inflammation, Michael Phelps and all. Or are you saying that Pontzer has a paper out there demonstrating that inflammation is a luxury and leads to the diseases of aging? I would really like to read that one. Based on how…

Thanks for posting that link....agree that the AARP is a hot stinkin' mess. Here is a key graf in the paper that the AARP "writer" must have missed: "It is important to note that this was not an intervention study; we examined habitual TEE, PAL, and body composition in hunter-gatherers and Westerners, but did not examine…

I am nothing if not the Queen of Inefficiency, considering that if I need a new scarf, step 1 is: 1) Buy a large, demanding, and high-maintenance rabbit. Or if I want a beer: 1) Procure a hops vine. :D

I use an arc trainer from time to time; not so much lately, but my ideal would be 3 times a week, for 35-40 minutes, with a resistance level of 25 to 35 and an incline of 8 or 9. For me it's more comfortable than an elliptical and just naturally better suited for my body mechanics. I don't think it has much impact on…

I am in Indiana, and the Amish are a perfect example of people who, while not running per se, are most certainly out-pitchforking the fork. Most of them, men and women, are thin and muscular, and while you will see one or two occasionally who are pleasantly plump, they are nowhere near the grotesque levels of obesity one…

@lemurcat2 IK thought of you this weekend, as I was taking stock of what lived and died over the hard winter. My losses included my beloved peach tree, most of my sage and thyme plants, and possibly a couple of fig trees. But guess what survived, an herb I planted for the first time last year, French Tarragon! I haven't…

Well, I spent 12 hours in the garden over the weekend, and I can't exactly remember what I accomplished, other than digging up a patch of sunchokes (jerusalem artichokes) (fartichokes) that was getting onto my neighbor's side of the fence. I roasted a couple and had them along with parsnips, but I can't say they are my…