giveaway + the {highly anticipated} chapbook tutorial

If you haven’t checked out my 24^3 Thanksgiving post yet…I’d love for you to click on over. Lots of good food and good times.

[my fantastic sibs: they are way cooler than I am].

I promised a chapbook tutorial, so here you go. In case you were wondering:

chapbook: pocket-sized book filled with poetry, art, recipes, etc.

Supplies:

• blank 4 x 6 notecards (you can also use recycled paper cut to this size)
• brown paper lunch bags
• padding compound
• binder clips
• waxed paper
• heavy books
• scissors, glue, q-tips

Step 1: Make a cover. I used wordle.net and typed in my own content.

Step 2: Print your content onto 4 x 6 notecards or paper. Arrange tightly in a stack, and attach binder clips to the side closest to the spine of the book.

Step 3: Use a q-tip to spread a thin layer of padding compound on the edge of the spine. Be careful not to let it drip down the back or front covers of your book.

Step 4: Let the padding compound dry overnight. In the morning, remove the binder clips, and press the book in waxed paper between a stack of heavy books for a few hours.

Step 5: Cut a strip for the binding from a brown paper lunch bag, and glue it to the book’s spine. Let dry.

Pretty easy! Let me know if you end up making a chapbook of your own. They make pretty fantastic gifts, and they can be green friendly if you use recycled paper.

And on a more food-related note…

One of the appetizers served on Tgiving was Michigan apples + pumpkin dip, which is slightly addicting [recipe here]. I used a homemade version of Greek yogurt instead of cream cheese.

Greek yogurt hit the blogworld about a year or so ago and is basically regular yogurt with the whey strained out, which makes it thicker. You can easily make your own Greek yogurt by draining regular yogurt through a cheesecloth lined strainer overnight.

If I use yogurt in a recipe, I prefer to use organic (free of hormones). Stonyfield is my go-to brand, and they were nice enough to provide this giveaway [lots of coupons for free yogurt!].

:: Two ways to win ::

1. Comment in response to this post. What’s your fave kind of Stonyfield yogurt, or do you have a fave recipe that incorporates yogurt?

2. Earn an extra brownie point by mentioning the giveaway on your blog or tweeting about it and linking back to this post. Let me know you did so when you comment.

Deadline is Friday, December 3rd at midnight (EDT).

After a busy weekend, I’m craving a long run and some good tunes. What was your fave dish this Tgiving?

guest post: coffee revolution + giveaway!

When I heard my friend Patrick was involved in coffee + microfinance, I knew he had to do a guest post. Many of us drink coffee regularly, but do we stop to think where it comes from and who grows it?

{Being an Ohio State alum, I suppose I’ll have to overlook the fact that Patrick is a graduate of the University of Michigan}.

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Hey blog readers, my name is Patrick, and I’m the Director of Operations of Unión MicroFinanza, a non-profit organization that works to provide microfinance to the people of La Unión, Honduras in the most innovative and effective ways possible.

Microfinance provides impoverished people with loans that can be used to purchase seeds or fertilizer for crops, tools for a trade, or anything else which will raise income.

The main crop grown in La Unión is coffee, but farmers receive very small wages because they have no transportation and little bargaining power. By eliminating many middlemen, we’re able to buy coffee from farmers at fair prices, sell it to consumers at low prices, and use the proceeds to fund loans in La Unión.

  

The weather conditions and altitude in La Unión are ideal for coffee growing. Actually, one of the best things about our coffee is that the quality is better than that of a Starbucks grade coffee or something similar that you would find in a supermarket.

Fair trade is by far the most common buzzword used with coffee these days.  Fair Trade coffee must meet specifications for working conditions and prices paid to farmers, as well as other regulations.  Essentially, the goal of Fair Trade is to be sure that producers and harvesters of coffee are treated fairly.

Our coffee is not actually Fair Trade Certified, a classification more relevant to coffee plantations which employ tens to hundreds of employees and can afford the up-front cost. Because our coffee is grown entirely on small, family owned plots of land, the certification process is currently prohibitively expensive.

However, we buy our coffee through a local cooperative which brings together small family farms, and we buy above the Fair Trade regulated price.

Currently, our coffee is not organic because there is no local demand to justify the added costs of organic fertilizers. This is something which we hope to address in the future, if we can create a large enough demand.

Our organization has many goals, but they all come back to improving the lives of the people of La Unión.  We will be working not just with coffee farmers, but with many different types of men and women. 

We aim to:

• provide microfinance: will enable the people of La Unión to increase their income and standard of living. 
• create or expand markets for the sales of products: the coffee is a perfect example of what we hope to do—a farmer can use a loan from us in order to buy fertilizer, which can increase output by as much as 100%, and then sell the coffee in the United States at an elevated price. 

By helping increase supply from farmers and entrepreneurs, as well as creating new demand for their products, we aim to create a cycle of empowerment, as opposed to the cycle of poverty which plagues people in developing countries around the world.

 

Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave any questions or comments for me!

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I’d really encourage you to stop and think about the coffee you buy. Do you know if the farmers who grew the coffee beans were paid a fair wage…and is this something that’s important to you?

Giveaway

Three ways to win:

1. Comment in response to this post. What kind of coffee do you     buy, and are you interested in better than fair trade coffee?

2. Earn an extra brownie point by mentioning the giveaway on your blog or Tweeting about it and linking back to this post. Then, let me know you did so when you comment.

3. Extra, extra brownie point by becoming a fan of the Unión MicroFinanza Facebook page! Again, let me know you did so when you comment.

Deadline is Wednesday, March 31st at midnight (CST). Multiple winners!

If you’re interested in supporting Unión MicroFinanza by purchasing coffee, you can do so here.