Maslow

The original hierarchy of needs five-stage model includes:

1. Biological and Physiological needs - air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep.

2. Safety needs - protection from elements, security, order, law, limits, stability, freedom from fear.

3. Social Needs - belongingness, affection and love, - from work group, family, friends, romantic relationships.

4. Esteem needs - achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, self-respect, respect from others.

5. Self-Actualization needs - realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.

(http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.htm)

If Maslow (1943) were with us today in Middle Georgia, he might argue that most of our basic needs (see Stage 1 above) have aleady been met. 

- air: tick!

- food: do Cheddars, Waffle House, Subway, and Benson's Steak & Sushi count?

- drink: Dunkin' Donuts have the best coffee in town, so you decide! (But the alcohol is cheap!!)

- shelter: technically, yes, but our apartment living isn't sustainable, and there's not much on the horizon

- warmth: it is pretty mild here at this time, so that's something I can't complain about

- sex: no explanation necessary if you read on!

- sleep: not enough, due to children not settling at night until around 9.30pm, and us trawling the web for houses and cars until about 1 am or until we collapse in a coma until the kids wake us up 6 hours later.

P.S. To my chagrin, this week's Epicure had a feature review on a new bakery/cafe that must have opened the day after we left ... 

"The situation was tense. Supplies of certain delicious baked things - ginger and toffee balls, chocolate and berry lamingtons, some of the city's finest doughnuts - were in high demand. The pastry cook - a young English chap by the name of Matt Forbes, who trained under Michelin-starred chefs back home and tested his mettle in Shannon Bennett's kitchen out here - was baking day and night and delivering the goods in person to those little nooks where the bearded, the bespectacled and the sometimes-tattooed have honed the cafe offer to nothing more than the best coffee and a handful of treats.

What's a lad under pressure to do? Scale back? Not likely. In this situation, any young chef worth his salted caramel would find a shopfront in one of Melbourne's suburban villages and, to borrow a phrase from a resource-state premier, redouble his efforts.

Which is what Forbes has done, in that most village-like of suburbs, Yarraville."  

(The Age [online], Dec 17, 2013).

Sevi, Claudia, Louise, et al. I expect you to sample some of these goodies, and report back!!! We'll be eating vicariously through you, I'm afraid, given the culinary Sahara that we've found ourselves in.