Impact Austin Coffee

I hosted a "coffee" to introduce some friends to Impact Austin, a women's philanthropy group in Austin. Impact Austin is a great organization -- every member gives $1000, and then vote on which local nonprofit grant applicants gets our "high impact" $100K+ grants. I love it because I don't have to do any work -- writing a check doesn't take that much time, and even hosting a coffee to help recruit more women wasn't that much work. (And it looks like it recruited 6 women -- with a couple more to come, I hope!)

And since putting together menus is one of my talents and pleasures, I wanted to mention what I served -- not that my guests ate nearly enough! I went with an "Autumn Treats" theme, with apples, pumpkin, and pomegranate as the focus foods. (I was trying to keep it simple -- I think I ended up with too many things, but it was easy.)

Pumpkin Bread (Krusteaz mix from Costco)
Pumpkin Empanadas (from HEB)
Dried Apple Chips
Homemade Rice Bread and Oatmeal Bread (thanks Mom!)
Sliced Honey Crisp Apples
Caramel Sauce (to dip the apples in)
Natural Peanut Butter (to dip the apples in)
Chestnut Butter
Apple Butter
White Cheddar
Colby Jack
Crackers

For drinks:
My "signature" drink was Pomegranate Juice mixed with Champagne
Pomegranate Juice
Coffee
Pumpkin Spice Flavored Creamer
Water
Blood Orange Soda

If you're an Austin woman reading this that I managed not to invite -- apologies! If you're interested in finding out more about Impact Austin let me know and I can tell you about it and take you to another event.

Giving Makes You Rich

Fascinating article in Conde Nast's Portfolio magazine on how people who give more actually make more. (Correlated in that direction, and adjusted for most of the arguments you would make for why this can't be true.) Timely, too, as fall seems to by "charity giving time" in the Brumfield household. (Although it's better than December 30th, when we realize that we haven't met our yearly goals for giving and scatter money around the Internet without much targeted purpose or thought.)

How can this be? Is it a statistical anomaly—or even a metaphysical phenomenon? While the link between giving and prosperity is not as mechanistic as returns on municipal bonds, there are some very earthbound explanations for it. Psychologists and neuroscientists have identified several ways that giving makes us more effective and successful. For example, new research from the University of Oregon finds that charity stimulates parts of the brain called the caudate nucleus and the nucleus accumbens, which are associated with meeting basic needs such as food and shelter—suggesting to the researchers that our brains know that giving is good for us. Experiments have also found that people are elevated by others into positions of leadership after they are witnessed behaving charitably.

I think engendering gratitude makes you a "better" person in a lot of ways (you spend less, you're more gracious, and less competitive), and perhaps that helps your earning potential.

Hat tip to The Happiness Project Blog, one of my favorites.

Junior TSA Screener

IMG_6255
Originally uploaded by saracarl

Wrong in so many ways, but it amused Miss J -- and anything that makes getting through the airport easier is to be appreciated.

This was in the Denver airport -- we've never been offered stickers before, and I don't know if any other airport is doing this.

More laugh out loud (geek) fun than I've had in a long time

From xkcd, which will suck an hours of your day if you let it....

Sleepless in America, continued.

On the feet of my recent research into sleeplessness in children, I ran across this fascinating article in New York Magazine about how lack of sleep affects our children. I know I have a tendency to paranoia, but this is pretty convincing.

Convinced by the mountain of studies, a handful of school districts around the nation are starting school later in the morning. The best known of these is in Edina, Minnesota, an affluent suburb of Minneapolis, where the high school start time was changed from 7:25 a.m. to 8:30. The results were startling. In the year preceding the time change, math and verbal SAT scores for the top 10 percent of Edina’s students averaged 1288. A year later, the top 10 percent averaged 1500, an increase that couldn’t be attributed to any other variable. “Truly flabbergasting,” said Brian O’Reilly, the College Board’s executive director for SAT Program Relations, on hearing the results.

Also a great word for describing that hour between when a kid should be in bed and when they actually are -- "the Slush Hour":

Long before children become overscheduled high schoolers gunning for college, parents start making trade-offs between their kids’ sleep and their other needs. This is especially true in the last hour of a child’s day, a time zone let’s call “the Slush Hour.” The Slush Hour is both a rush to sleep and a slush fund of potential time, sort of a petty-cash drawer from which we withdraw ten-minute increments. During the Slush Hour, children should be in bed, but there are so many competing priorities. As a result, sleep is treated much like the national debt—What’s another half-hour on the bill? We’re surviving; kids can, too.

I went to the market...

My sister created this awesome abecedary for J, entirely of pictures taken in Turkish markets. Check it out!

Turkish Supper Club

Ben and I hosted our supper club yesterday, for a dinner with the intended theme of "Turkish Delight." Since one of the members of the club is actually Turkish, Ben modified the theme to be "Tourist Turkish" -- covering our bases in case we delivered an inauthentic meal. During our preparation, Ben formulated a guideline for ethnic dinners -- when trading off between authentic or yummy, choose yummy. So our borek, mentioned below, had considerably more feta in it than we got in Turkey.

So -- here is the menu and recipes for Turkish night at the Brumfield's:

Mezzes:
cigarette borek(fried pasty with feta cheese in it)
yogurt dip (hidari/haydari) served with olives, cucumber slices and radish flowers
kisir (turkish tabouleh, basically) served with pita wedges
fish sandwiches (one of the istanbul street foods, served on the banks of the Bosphorus. Basically, grilled fish on a roll. Cristi didn't let Ben buy any -- "soviet era heavy metals" -- but it flung such a craving on him that we've had them for dinner many times since we returned.

Soup:
Red Lentil Soup

Salad:
lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers w/pomegranate dressing

Mains:
Kofte (someplace between a meatball and a hamburger, flavored with cumin and other spices)
Rice Pilaf
Manti (really small ravioli like pasta)

Dessert:
Rice Pudding (Sutlac)

Credits: Picture above and many of our recipes came from the fabulous TurkishCookbook.com. Check it out -- lots of wonderful recipes.