Charitable Gift Giving

We surf the Web to find good products that help out a great cause.

Charitable Gift Giving header image 1

Help Charity By Watching TV with Viggle

May 14th, 2012 · Breast Cancer, Children's Charities

viggle screenHave you heard of Viggle yet? If you own an iPhone and watch TV, you’re going to want it.

The best way to describe Viggle is that it’s like Foursquare for your TV. Every time you sit down to watch a TV show, you “check in”. The Viggle app will actually listen to your TV, identify the show you’re watching, and then give you points. You’ll get points for any show you watch (as long as it’s on the list they maintain of the most popular channels…you may not get points for watching your buddy juggling on public access TV), and they have promotions with media companies where you can get extra points for watching certain shows or participating in “second screen” events (during the last Academy Awards they had a fun trivia contest where you could earn points just by answering questions).

Here’s the coolest thing about it–after a certain number of points you can trade them in. At 7500 points (about 30-40 shows) you can start trading in for $5 gift certificates to places like Starbucks, CVS, and Burger King. Or if you’re on the more philanthropic side (and if you’re on this site, I’m assuming you are!) you can turn those points into donations for charity. Currently, the featured charities are The National Breast Cancer Foundation, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, and Covenant House.

You can sign up here for a Viggle account and then download the app from the iTunes store (they’re in the process of testing it for Android)

 

→ No CommentsTags:

Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Bar that Helps Provide Bikes to Needy Areas

May 8th, 2012 · Bike Advocacy, Developing Areas

On Sunday, I had the pleasure (and the pain) of riding on the annual Five Boro Bike Tour in New York, a 40-mile bike ride that goes through all five boroughs of New York, from Manhattan to the Bronx to Queens to Brooklyn to Staten Island. It’s probably one of the coolest ways to see the City, as the City will close off a lot of New York’s major roads to make room for the 30,000 bikers (to the ire of some motorists who didn’t get the memo). Moreover, a lot of riders raise money for charity as well.

It was a spectacular day for a ride (although some parts of me would beg to differ). Here’s what it feels like to ride the last three miles, from the Verrazano Narrows Bridge into the finish line on Staten Island!

Overall, a great ride once again pulled off flawlessly by the good folks at Bike New York, who have been doing this since 1977.

Switching gears for a moment (no pun intended), the ride got me to thinking how much we in the United States take something like bicycling for granted. Most of us have bikes from the time we’re kids. By the time we get our learner’s permits for driving when we’re teenagers, often our bikes end up in the back of a garage somewhere growing rusty and collecting dust. Most of us who ride in our adult years do it for recreation and exercise.

On the other hand, it’s sometimes hard to imagine that something as simple as a bicycle, in certain parts of the world, can change lives and communities for the better. Which is why, as a bike enthusiast, I was thrilled to learn about a product that Theo Chocolate is selling on behalf of World Bike Relief.

World Bike Relief is a charity that was founded in 2005 after the Indian Ocean Tsunami. As the shattered nation of Sri Lanka struggled to rebuild itself, something as fundamental as bicycles became critical to helping rebuild lives. In total, they provided over 24,000 bicycles to disaster victims, health care workers, and field staff, helping them travel four time the distance they could travel if they were just walking to rebuild communities.

World Bicycle Relief has expanded its work to Africa. To date, they’ve provided over 100,000 bicycles to help students, entrepreneurs, and health care workers in Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Southern Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. They have a unique design for bicycles which can withstand weather, rugged terrain, heavy loads, and long distances, and they even assemble them locally, providing even more stimulus for the neediest areas.

Speaking of noteworthy organizations, Theo Chocolate is one of those great companies that not only donates proceeds of many of their products to charity, they also adhere to some noteworthy principles in the way they do business. Their ingredients are all organic, free from pesticides and chemicals. They all grown sustainably in a way that protects the environment. They buy their cacao directly from growers under the “Fair Trade” principle, meaning that the ingredients aren’t just picked by the lowest bidder, but by companies that treat their employees in an ethical and respectful way.

Theo Chocolate uses the term “bean to bar”, meaning that the chocolate you eat is among the finest, more natural chocolate you’ll have.

They sell many products, but the one that supports World Bicycle Relief is this Dark Chocolate bar with a hint of sea salt. If you’re a fan of dark chocolate, this bar does not disappoint–it has an amazingly rich cocoa flavor that simply blows away any other I’ve had..and yes, that includes the one that starts with “G”, the one that starts with “H”, the one that starts with “L” and the other one that starts with “G”! The addition of sea salt is a relatively new gourmet trend–your chocolate is accentuated with little crystals of sea salt which adds a surprising tanginess to the flavor (I’ve heard people say that it pairs well with red wine).

chocolate bars for charity

One thing I really, really love about these chocolate bars is that they’re, well, the size that chocolate bars used to be before they started shrinking and shrinking. We’re talking Willy Wonka-esque chocolate bars that you loved as a kid, complete with the inner foil wrapper. On the outer wrapper are photos of Cynthia (age 18) and Beene (age 17) from Zambia, two recipients of World Bicycle Relief bikes, and printed on the inside are even more facts about the power of bicycles to the regions of the world that the organization serves.

I’m actually hoping to visit the Theo Factory the next time I’m in Seattle to hear more about the “inside story” of chocolate. And of course, please check out the charities and organizations mentioned in this post, especially if you are or know a biking enthusiast!

→ No CommentsTags:

I Support Chen Guangcheng. Do you?

May 2nd, 2012 · Uncategorized

This week’s post isn’t about a product to buy nor a gift to give. But I felt compelled to write about something that’s been in the news lately.

For the last few days, we’ve been hearing about Chen Guangcheng. All the major news outlets here in the United States refer to him as the “The Blind Activist”, as if he’s some kind of odd character in a book or curiosity to entertain us for 5 minutes on the evening news before we watch our reality TV shows.

Chen Guangcheng is a very real person. Perhaps his story strikes home with me because he’s about my age and he and I share a common ancestry (both my parents were born in China but they both escaped before Mao closed the borders in 1949 and emigrated to the United States).

My parents raised me in a very comfortable upper-middle class home growing up. I grew up enjoying Sesame Street, Sugar Corn Pops, a Buick Station Wagon, the finest medical treatment when I got very sick, a wonderful education, a brother and sister that loved me, two parents that loved me, a church that taught me the love of Christ, and so many other freedoms we enjoy in the United States. I grew up to be an expert at Web development and search engines, and today work for a advertising agency. I have lived the American dream, and not a day goes by that I’m not thankful for it.

Guangcheng? He was born in Eastern China. He went to college in the same town that my mom grew up in. He developed an interest in the law. In 2000, he organized a petition against a paper mill that was dumping toxic chemicals into a river, poisoning his city’s food and wildlife. In 2005, he railed against the brutality of China’s one-child policy, which was being enforced through forced sterilizations and abortions. That drew the ire of the local officials in his town, who arrested him and convicted him in a kangaroo court. He and his wife were subjected to repeated harassment and beatings. He was separated from his family. The Chinese government has tried its best to silence him, even going so far as to censor words like “blind man” from the Internet.

Even though the same blood courses through our veins, he and I have led very different lives. And one word separates him and me: freedom.

A few days ago, Guangcheng escaped from his house arrest and made his way all the way to Beijing where he sought asylum in the US Embassy. What happened next was absolutely unbelievable. The US Embassy, having been “assured” that Chen would be allowed to live a free life by the Chinese government, turned him back to China.

I don’t like to get into politics, especially not on this blog. But I cannot believe how incredibly bone-headed a move this was on our diplomats’ part. It reminds me of the old Native American story of the boy who saw a talking snake who asked him to pick him up and carry him to his home. When the boy did it, he was immediately bitten by the snake. When the dying boy asked why the snake did it, the snack said “You knew what I was when you picked me up”.

The moment I heard that the State Department had “struck a deal”, I wanted to shout at them. What the heck do you think you’re doing?

It’s the same with China. My mother told me stories of how brutal the Mao regime was during the cultural revolution of the 1960s, when anyone who had a university education or was religious was persecuted and in many cases executed. I heard accounts from members of my church of being singled out, beaten, and even having their eyes burned out because they refused to give up their Bibles.

When my sister and I went to China in 1999, one incident will forever live in my memory. We were in Tiananmen Square, when all of a sudden we saw a bunch of old woman assemble and start unfurling a Falun Gong banner. Within seconds, a police truck drove by, several uniformed men got out and led the women into the truck and they whisked away, probably never to be seen by anyone again. There are reports that these people end up imprisoned, and after they die their organs are harvested and used to transplant into others.

What shocked me that day the most were the faces of the people in the square. Not one person blinked. They just went about doing their business. Entire generations have been lulled into believing that mindless adherence to the government is the norm, and that any kind of free thought is to be marginalized and seen as an anomaly. I’m reading a book called In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, which I think should be required reading of all young people in the United States. It describes how “local officials” in Hitler’s Germany controlled their local areas through intimidation, marginalization of “troublemakers”, and brutality, and how local citizens grew oblivious to it–even to the point where ovens stood only blocks away from where they lived and worked and played and they looked the other way.

The United States used to stand for freedom, and liberty, and justice. But today, as long as we can get cheap iPads and cheap Polo shirts that are made in China, well, we’ll be quiet. Plus, China holds $1.1 trillion of our debt, and since our government needs more money to keep spending, we’d best not tick our creditors off.

After all, it can’t really be all as bad as they say, right? Those 2008 Olympics looked pretty nice. If it were that bad, we’d hear something about it, right?

Voices like Mr. Chen’s are crying out. Most have been silenced. Who knows how long Mr. Chen’s will go on before it too is silenced.

What can you and I do? Well, the first thing is to get educated about the real nature of the Chinese government. This is something I wish the State Department had read before they so foolishly cast Mr. Chen back to the wolves.

Second, check your labels. If it says “Made in China” (which seems to be about 99% of the stuff these days), see if you can find an alternative. Until China really is free.

Third, call your Senators and Congresspersons. They have plenty of lobbyists and corporations knocking on their door because they want “in” on China’s “market” of 1.3 billion people. What these companies don’t realize is that the free market of China is not free.

Fourth, consider supporting organizations like China Aid which provides a voice for the persecuted.

Fifth, if you are a praying person, pray for the safety of Mr. Chen and so many others who are being persecuted for standing up for what’s right. And give thanks that you live in a country where you’re allowed to say–and read–things like this.

In my next post, I’ll go back to writing about gifts and cool stuff. But for now, I hope you’ll pardon me while I let this off my chest. Thanks for reading.

→ No CommentsTags:

Cheese of the Month Club that Helps an Amazing Cause

April 25th, 2012 · Birth Defects

Since around the time the movie “Sideways” came out in 2004, it seems that wine tasting has been all the rage. The “cool” thing to do is to build yourself a wine cellar, buy a couple bottles of expensive wine, and show off your knowledge of the subtleties of a pinot vs. a merlot (or whatever).

Funny thing is, while everyone has been paying so much attention to the wine, cheese has almost become a second banana. People enjoy and pontificate their fine wines, and then obligingly pop in the cheddar or Monterey Jack cubes that are sitting next to the wine on crackers.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that cheese tasting can be just as amazing as wine tasting. In fact, while it sounds like sacrilege, the cheese world is arguably a lot more complex and fascinating than the wine world. With wine, you choose from red, rose, white, sparkling, and fortified wines and can enjoy the subtleties across the flavors of different grape varieties in different years. With cheese, you can enjoy different textures, colors, shapes, aromas, consistencies, and exquisite flavors across a variety of animals, from goat to cow to sheep, and a variety of countries around the world.

Of course, I’m not here to pit one world again the other. But if you consider yourself a wine aficionado, take a look at cheese. Both the wine world and the cheese world have artisans who are literally artists–using the palette of nature to craft amazing varieties for us to enjoy.

By far, the finest artisanal cheese company I know of is Artisinal Premium Cheese at www.artisanalcheese.com. Specifically, they have a monthly cheese club called the Artisanal Premium Cheese Club where they will send you, either by hand delivery or by FedEx, a unique and different selection of cheeses each month. Whether you have friends over informally from time to time, or you host formal parties, these cheeses will make your gathering one to remember for a long time. While other people are serving crackers with Cheese Whiz and Velveeta, you can be serving your guests varieties from around the world.

I’d known about them before, but Artisanal recently reached out to me a few weeks ago and told me something I wasn’t aware of that is amazing. For everyone who joins the Artisanal Premium Cheese Club, Artisanal will provide a generous donation to SmileTrain.

SmileTrain is an amazing organization that helps children who are born with a cleft lip and/or palate–a condition where a child’s face around their nose and lips aren’t completely formed when they come out of the womb. While the image of these infants and children can be off-putting to people who are not used to seeing them, the first thing to remember about these kids is that they’re just normal kids whose hearts are innocent and who want to be able to laugh, cry, love, and grow just like any other kids. The condition is much more common than more people thing: this year, over 165,000 children will be born with this condition. Just a few years ago, a co-worker of mine had a daughter with a cleft lip which was when I first heard about it (happily, her daughter had surgery which went well and today she’s a happy and healthy child).

But sadly, in some parts of the world the medical infrastructure doesn’t exist to do the fairly basic surgery to repair clefts when kids are still infants. These children grow up to be shunned by society and in many cases are unable to breathe, eat, or speak normally. In some cases, they are abandoned or even killed. This is all the more a tragedy when you think that a surgery only costs about $250, the difference between a child living a happy and ordinary life and one filled with sorrow and condemnation that is not their fault.

The New York Times has called SmileTrain “One of the most productive charities–dollar for deed–in the world”. They don’t have a big staff, but they have big, big hearts. Visit their Web site and view the smiles of the children they’ve helped and consider a donation. It gives the phrase “say cheese” a whole new meaning.

Of course, another way you can help is to join the Artisanal Cheese of the Month Club. I was fortunate enough to receive a sample for March 2012 that illustrates what you’d be getting every month. Here’s what you can expect for the ridiculously low price of $55 a month (at the end of the year, $250 of your purchase will go to SmileTrain, allowing them to pay for one child’s complete surgery).

The cheese I received arrived via FedEx via overnight delivery. The cheese arrived in a climate-controlled box.

premium cheese club packaging

The first thing I noticed is how much pride this company takes in its product. Included in the box were very nice letters from SmileTrain and Artisanal Cheese, as well as detailed tasting notes that explain in amazing detail everything you need to know about that month’s cheese. In this particular month’s delivery were cheeses from Italy, Spain, France, and the Netherlands, made from goat milk, sheep’s milk, and cow’s milk, and spanning a variety of flavors.

Also included was a fascinating chart called the CheeseClock, which is an ingenious way that can make anyone (even me and you) into a cheese tasting expert immediately. They tell you how to arrange cheese on a plate from the mildest flavors to the boldest flavors. There are even little cardboard markers that you can put in the cheese that tells your guests the name of the cheese and whether it’s cow, sheep, or goat cheese.

best cheese club

So, we got the cheese tasting started. It just happened that the day after I received the cheese Lisa and I had our good friends Ken and Satoko over (the latter who is a bit of a cheese connoisseur herself already).

The first cheese was a mild cheese called Formaggio Capra, a goat cheese from Italy.

formaggio capra goat cheese

We followed the instructions of the “cheese clock”, which told us to start with the mildest cheese and work our way up to bolder tastes. This one was the mildest. It had an almost creamy consistency and was flaky when you cut into it. The taste was mild and slightly buttery. Overall, a very approachable cheese–everyone loved it, as I could tell as the “mmmmm”s filled the room.

Next up was a medium cheese called Royale, a pressed sheep milk cheese from northwest Spain.

royale sheep cheese from spain

This was a harder cheese that put me in the mind of a parmagiano reggiano, only a little softer. It had a sharper taste than the first cheese and had a touch of a salty, nutty flavor.

The third cheese was a firm, washed-ring cow’s milk cheese made in the Alsace region of France, called Tomme Fermier D’Alsace:

Tomme Fermier D'Alsace cow mile from France

Here, we were getting into the stronger flavors. This cheese had a more waxy consistency. It was creamy with an almost gummy, buttery texture (sorry, I don’t know the fancy cheese-expert words :P). The taste here was phenomenal. It’s hard to describe, but as you chewed the cheese, it had a hint of fruitiness, with a burst of flavor that came after you finished chewing. Turns out this is a “washed rind” cheese, which we learned meant that it was cheese washed with wine. Overall, another spectacular and unique experience.

Finally, the strongest cheese was the Gouda, a cow’s milk cheese aged 4 years from the Netherlands.

gouda cheese aged 4 years from netherlands

This was a hard cheese which was also amazing. A beautiful deep caramel in color, it had a strong and lingering flavor with complex tastes including a hint of butterscotch.

The one thing that struck me about all these cheeses was that they all had vastly different “personalities”, from their looks to their textures to their taste. And by following the “cheese clock” the overall experience was amazing.

Overall, our little cheese tasting party was a ton of fun and to boot, it expanded our horizons by introducing us to delicious cheese from around the world we would never otherwise have tried. Each had a unique history and personality of its own. Unlike with wine tastings, we had all our facilities with us after the tasting, and we could really appreciate the subtleties of each of the cheeses, from the surprising hint of butterscotch in the Gouda to the subtle tones of mushrooms, grass, and butter in the Tomme Fermier d’Alsace. The fact that there were so many cheese from around the world made it all the more amazing–it was like travelling the world right in our own living room!

Sure, everyone and his brother can say he’s a wine expert. But you can be the star of every one of your home and office gatherings, both formal and informal, with these amazing cheeses. And the fact that you’ll be changing a child’s life will make you smile as well!

→ No CommentsTags:

Download Jim Gaffigan's Latest Album, Help a Great Cause, Screw the Middleman #hotpockets

April 19th, 2012 · Veterans and Military

I’ve been a huge fan of Jim Gaffigan since before the days he was fighting crime with Conan O’Brien and his freakish pale-white skin. Since then, I’ve seen him in concert in 2008 and 2010 and even saw him on Broadway last year. While my friend Jack and I used to attend a lot of comedy shows in 80s and 90s, lately it seems that most stand-up has gotten either too political or too raunchy for my tastes. But Gaffigan bucks the trend. He’s just about the only stand-up act these days that can make me guffaw till tears come out of my eyes, and he does it all without resorting to insults or potty mouth.

Admittedly, I miss the days when he was still relatively unknown and his shows weren’t littered with neo-hipsters shouting inanities like “do bacon! do bacon!” to the poor guy. On the other hand, I suspect that he’s raking in a lot of scratch from the influx of these bandwagon fans, and it literally could not happen to a nicer guy.

If you haven’t heard any of Gaffigan’s routines, I’d definitely recommend you get on over to Amazon and download an album or two.

What? You say there’s no way you’re paying the $9.99? You say you’re one of these young punks who downloads all your material illegally on P2P sharing sites? Well, before you go do that, check out something Gaffigan has done that is very, very cool.

On his Web site, Jim is letting you download his newest 75-minute stand up special, Mr. Universe, directly from him for $5. In other words, he’s effectively cut out the lawyers, and the album cover designers, and the raw material costs, and the distribution costs, and the marketing costs, and the production costs, and rebroadcast rights, and every single other bit of overhead. He hasn’t even bothered to put DRM on the digital files, meaning that unlike the big music companies he trusts you (and at a cost of $5, someone who pirates this file out to be ashamed of themselves and publicly humiliated and pilloried).

What’s more, $1 of the $5 you spend will be donated to the Bob Woodruff Foundation, an amazing charity that helps injured service members, veterans, and their families.

Aside from being a really cool thing to do for his fans, something tells me this is another in the step of evolution for content distribution: putting distribution in the hands of the artists themselves and treating fans like humans rather than impersonal masses.

Not convinced? Check out this clip that has Jim doing his famous whale impersonation and I challenge you to not want more afterwards!

→ 1 CommentTags:

Stand Up to Cancer Necklace

April 15th, 2012 · Amazon, Cancer

You’ve probably seen celebrities and sports stars talking about Stand Up To Cancer, a new initiative created to accelerate groundbreaking cancer research that will get new therapies to patients quickly and save lives.

Now, you can show your support with this “Stand up to Cancer” Silver Arrow Charm Necklace. It’s a beautiful necklace with a solid arrow pointing up, and comes on a card with a note that reads: “Stand up. Stand up and join an unstoppable movement Wear this necklace as a reminder that we must rise together as one Wear it for your family, for your friends, and for everyone in the fight.”

The necklaces is from Dogeared Jewelry and portions of the profits support Stand Up To Cancer’s efforts to find a cure for cancer. It’s adjustable from 16″-18″ and made in the USA.

→ No CommentsTags:

More Great Gifts for Book Lovers from GoneReading (including the cutest bookmarks on the planet)

April 8th, 2012 · Literacy

Since our last post about the great organization GoneReading International, they’ve added a whole new set of products for book lovers.

When we last posted about them, they had mostly T-Shirts and mugs. But since then they’ve added a whole bunch of other great gifts that are perfect for the reader (or the person you’re encouraging to be a reader) in your life.

Know someone who’s fanatical about the Twilight Series, the Vampire Diaries, or one of those other popular vampire books which I just don’t get? 🙂 This bookmark is perfect for them, especially if they happen to have an older sibling or friends who are always arguing with them about how Harry Potter is better.

vampire wizard bookmark

By the way, in the interest of equal time, there’s also a My Wizard can Beat Up Your Vampire version.

Looking to decorate a reading room or library in your house? Their fine art prints are the perfect decoration. Here’s a print of Van Gogh’s “Oleander and Books”.

oleanders and books van gogh

Not to be confused with Ollivander, the guy who runs the wand shop (and no, I’m not sure why I’m obsessed with Harry Potter today).

Do you know a REAL bookworm? Here’s the ultimate game for them. It was a Dark and Stormy Night is a board game where each player picks a card and reads the first line of a book, and the other player needs to say what book it is. It’s not exactly a game for everyone–but those for whom it is for will LOVE it.

board game for book lovers

By the way, the writer of “It was a Dark and Stormy Night” was 19th century Victorian author Edward Bulwer-Lytton who used it for his 1830 novel Paul Clifford (who, incidentally, also coined the phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword”. So if your answer was “Snoopy”, you’re about a later albeit granted a more memorable version (suddenly, a shot rang out! the maid screamed!)

There are too many great new gifts to list here, but I can’t stop without listing out my absolute favorite. GoneReading has a new set of metal bookmarks with oh-so-cute charms on them. I got a chance to take a look at one bookmark charm featuring a donut with sprinkles and another featuring an oh-so-cute little hot dog.

hot dog bookmark and chocolate donut bookmark

Next time you have to buy a present for someone, why not buy a copy of a great book, and include one of these incredibly cute bookmarks? They’re not expensive, but they’ll be gifts they treasure for a long, long time.

It’s wonderful to see Brad and the team at GoneReading continue to build their online store to have such creative gifts for readers. And their cause is a vital one.

A few weeks ago, I got a chance to visit the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit in New York’s Times Square. There was something about it that was just amazing. There were fragments parchment from 2000 years ago. Each one contained meticulously written hand-written words.

The people who lived back then knew what a literal treasure the written word was. While today we have copiers that churn out hundreds of pages a second, then for a scribe to copy an entire book took years of laborious work. Even as they saw their own civilization threatened with extinction, they hid their writings in jars and regarded them above any other early possession they had. Because from age to age, the way to destroy a movement or a people was to destroy their books.

Today, like so many of the other luxuries this society takes for granted, we take writing for granted. A lot of us probably haven’t stepped into a public library for years. Whatever writing we consume is off the Web, usually in bite-sized pieces. Our attention spans last about one or two paragraphs before we click off to the next Web site. Our lives become so busy that we hardly have time to watch 30 minutes of TV anymore, much less curl up with a good book.

And yet if you look at all the great minds who have changed the history of the world for the better, they all have one thing in common. They read. They read all kinds of books, from all kinds of people, from all periods of history. They read things they agree with and things they don’t agree with. They challenge their deep-seated ideas and concepts. They learn about new worlds and new ways of thinking.

I often like to say we live in a world where everyone is so busy making a living they forget how to live. In the same way, we live in a world where there are so many words that people forget how to read.

And worse, believe it or not there are still areas of the world that live not too differently than they did 2000 years ago. In many areas of the world literacy is low or non-existent. This fuels the cycle of poverty.

Gone Reading International has an amazing mission where they donate 100% of the after-tax profits of all their gifts for book lovers to fund great non-profits around the world like READ Global and Ethiopia reads, as well as raising money for public libraries here in the United States, at a time when they need help more than ever.

Be sure to visit their Web site and pick up some great gifts. The bookworm in your life will love it!

→ No CommentsTags:

Loukoumi's Celebrity Cookbook with Great Kid's Recipes

April 5th, 2012 · Amazon

Loukoumi was a little lamb who was supposed to go to America with her family but ends up on the wrong plane, the wrong train, and the wrong boat (I feel for you, Loukoumi). As as result, she ends up having all kinds of adventures in Greece, France, Italy and Morocco.

So starts a children’s book series by Nick Katsoris that have become a favorite among preschool kids and celebrities alike.

There have been three Loukoumi books since that first one, where Loukoumi tries to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up, learns the value of doing good deeds, and learns that great gifts don’t necessarily have to cost a lot of money.

With her fifth book, Loukoumi’s Celebrity Cookbook, a ton of A-list and B-list celebrities contribute their favorite recipes from food they ate in their childhood. Just a sample of the foods and celebrities included:

Rachael Ray’s French Toast Cups with Fresh Fruit, Oprah Winfrey’s Corn Fritters, Ellen DeGeneres’ Vegan Sliders, Beyonce’s Easy Guacamole with Corn Chip Scoops, Betty White s Chicken Wings, Miranda Cosgrove’s Spaghetti Tacos, Matt Lauer’s Beanie Weenie Stew, Mario Lopez’s Chicken Enchiladas, Marlo Thomas’ Corn Pudding, and Eli Manning’s Lace Cookies plus recipes from Ernie Anastos, Jennifer Aniston, John Aniston, Alexis Christoforous, Katie Couric, Marcia Cross, Paula Deen, Frank Dicopoulos, Celine Dion, Olympia Dukakis, Mike Emanuel, Gloria Gaynor, Neil Patrick Harris, Florence Henderson, David Henrie, Faith Hill, Carrie Ann Inaba, Melina Kanakaredes, Nicole Kidman, Miranda Lambert, Christian Jules Le Blanc, Jay Leno, Susan Lucci, Evan Lysacek, Bailee Madison, Gilles Marini, Constantine Maroulis, Bridgit Mendler, Nancy O’Dell, Amy Poehler, Al Roker, Hillary Scott, The Scotto Family, Doc Shaw, Sherri Shepherd, Brenda Song, Dylan & Cole Sprouse, George Stephanopoulos, Taylor Swift, Tiffany Thornton, Justin Timberlake, Mark Wahlberg, Reese Witherspoon.

Loukoumi s Celebrity Cookbook also invites children ages 4 to 12 to submit their favorite childhood recipe to Loukoumi’s Secret Ingredient Recipe Contest from November 1, 2011, through March 1, 2012, to win a chance to cook that recipe with celebrity chef Cat Cora. The children will be asked to complete the statement: (Recipe Name) is my favorite childhood recipe because… (in 10 words or less).

→ No CommentsTags:

$5 for $10 Starbucks card at Google Offers on April 4, 2012 #starbucks #halfprice

April 3rd, 2012 · Poverty

Heads up! Starting on the morning of 4/4/12, Google Offers will be selling a $10 Starbucks Card for only $5. If you haven’t signed up for Google Offers alerts, be sure to do it now as the offer is only going to be good for Google Offers subscribers (don’t worry, it’s free and you can unsubscribe right after!)

For those of you who haven’t heard about Google Offers, it’s basically Google’s shameless rip-off of Groupon 🙂 But I gotta say that a lot of Google’s offers are pretty good from time to time, and this one is no exception.  Not only do you get a $10 Starbucks card for your $5, but Google Offers will also be donating $3 to the Opportunity Finance Network for the “Create Jobs for USA Fund”. This is an organization that provides loans to community businesses to help create and sustain jobs right here in the US.

What makes organizations like Opportunity Finance Network so special is that it’s not like the government bureaucracy where they take tax money and dole it out to people living in poverty. In some cases, this is a wonderful thing, especially when the recipients are elderly or disabled and truly have difficulty making ends meet. But in some cases this is a terrible thing, when people in poor communities who otherwise are strong and able to work don’t have any opportunities and end up getting dependent on government handouts, which causes a cycle that crushes their self-esteem and motivation (as someone who spent a good 8 months collecting unemployment, believe me when I say I know what I’m talking about).

This organization does something different, they loan money to community development financial institutions with a very strict rule about how the money is spent: it will go to small businesses in poor areas that create new jobs. This starts a cycle of an altogether different kind. It helps people who can work get back to work, producing new goods and services that create new value in the economy and help their local communities. For the workers themselves, being productive and working helps create in them new feelings of self-worth, self-esteem, and motivation. The money they earn is used to support their families. In most cases, this means they in turn spend in the community, helping other businesses thrive. So instead of taking money from a shrinking pool of government handouts, they’re bringing in new tax revenue for our friends in Washington to spend.

So keep an eye on this great deal. It’s not often that the $3 from your $5 goes so long a way. And of course, consider donating directly to the OFN to break the cycle of government dependence and help those in our neediest communities grow and become self-sufficient.

→ 3 CommentsTags:

Help provide stoves for the world's neediest

March 24th, 2012 · Developing Areas

Recently I’ve started shopping for appliances. My refrigerator is on the blink, one of my gas burners on my stove is not working, and my dryer motor is on the fritz. Poor me, right?

Well, before I feel too sorry for myself, I received an email from The Paradigm Project talking about families around the world in the areas they serve, from Kenya to Guatemala to Haiti. In many of these places, families don’t even have a simple stove on which to cook. And so what ends up happening is that they end up chopping down wood with which to cook on an open fire. While most of us love a good campfire from time to time, relying on this ancient method of cooking for daily food can be devastating. It ends up in deforestation, where entire forests are cut down and families may have to walk over 10 miles to find wood.

woman in kenya using a stove from the paradigm project

And worse, something we’ve taken for granted in our world of clean burning fuels and microwave ovens is that families cooking the meals end up breathing in enormous amounts of fumes–according to the World Health Organization it can do the equivalent damage to their lungs as smoking 40 cigarettes a day. At least 1.6 million people die from this. All to feed their families. And tragically, indoor cooking is the number 1 killer of children under the age of 5; more children die from smoke inhalation than from AIDS, malaria, poor water, and malnutrition.

And of course, clear cutting of trees damages the environment in these areas as well. Watersheds are wiped away, erosion ends up washing way critical topsoil, and it becomes impossible to grow crops. And ironically, with fewer trees, the CO2 emissions from the burning fires don’t get converted to oxygen, leading to toxic air.

It all seems like a helpless situation, but The Paradigm Project has a truly innovative idea. It designed a stove that is safe and clean to use indoors. It still uses wood fire, but it makes the wood burn many, many times more efficiently and cleaner.

The cost to help a family in the poorest areas of the world afford this stove? Only $40. A tiny, tiny fraction of the price of a new stove at Best Buy, but one that unlike the stove at Best Buy will save and change lives.

One of the things I find most impressive about this charity is that they don’t just give the stoves away for free–they understand that if you just give someone a handout, they really don’t value it (a lesson I wish more charities and even our government would learn). Instead, your $40 goes towards a package for the family to purchase a stove. The package includes training on how to use the stove, marketing, transportation and distribution of the stove, the subsidy to make the stove affordable and the monitoring to ensure the stove is working properly.

Here is a great video, recently released by The Paradigm Project during the Sundance Film Festival, that tells an amazing story.

As you buy the latest gadgets and appliances for your kitchen, do consider spending just a fraction more to pay for a gift that will change and save lives.

→ No CommentsTags: