MERRY!

School vacation has officially begun, so I am unplugging for at least a week too. I cannot wait to experience Christmas through my children's eyes, still so full of wonder. I'll listen to my older child shamelessly belt Christmas carols (when he thinks no one is listening) and I hope to see the sheer joy in my little one's eyes as he takes his first sledding run of the season.

Feel free to subscribe to posts (right there on the right hand column) if you want to be in the loop when I get back to writing. I have fabulous new recipes lined up and am excited to do some reading over break for even more ideas of healthful, quick meals, as well as more balance and happiness in the year ahead, which I'll share.

Before I sign off, I wanted to pass this thoughtful quote along (via my parents' beloved yoga teacher Ryan, and then my mom), which I think will make all of us smile and appreciate our friends and family even more as we enter the Christmas season...

"Satisfaction is less a matter of getting what you want than wanting what you have."

- Tsongkhapa

I hope that all of you have a truly wonderful and relaxing Christmas.

Baking on a Budget: The holiday project I filmed for Walmart

I get these Happiness Project quotes emailed to me each morning, which when combined with the Zen-y thought printed on my morning Yogi tea bag, usually get my day off to a good start. (Liz, maybe these nuggets are why I am able to stay sane this week, ha!) Anyway, today's quote was:

"The man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest."— Henry David Thoreau

which fits nicely with this morning's post. We all know tis better to give than to receive, but what do you do when your list is long and your wallet is thin? Instead of giving less, why not figure out a recipe that will thrill the recipients but is also reasonable. You may remember that last month, I was hired by Walmart* to come up with a homemade holiday gift idea that was under $5. I normally shop for ingredients at my local market, or Trader Joe's and Whole Foods so this was a fun challenge: to peruse their holiday offerings, think about some of my go-to recipes, and meld the two together. I ended up making my wildly popular cinnamon-chocolate brownies with chocolate ganache, which a month later is not what I ended up making for our teachers (since they had already gotten to enjoy a test run on these treats back in November!). But this is a fabulous recipe (no matter what time of year) to whip up if you have a cookie exchange, holiday party, or need for a reasonably priced hostess or holiday gift!! Here's that video, which is currently showing on Yahoo Shine:

*as in paid, which was nice! (But rest assured, I'll only take on paid gigs if they truly fit with what I am sharing with you all, and I'll always tell you.)

Harder-to-read fonts boost student learning

Making learning materials more difficult to read can significantly improve student performance. Yes, you read that correctly. Connor Diemand-Yauman and his colleagues think the effect occurs because fonts that are more awkward to read encourage deeper processing of the to-be-learned material.

Diemand-Yauman first tested this principal in the lab with 28 participants (aged 18 to 40) who spent 90 seconds learning the seven features associated with three alien species. Half the students learned from materials written in clear 16-point Arial font, whereas the other half learned from materials written either in 12-point Comic Sans or 12-point Bodoni. As the researchers explained, these last two fonts are obviously more difficult to read when considered side-by-side with the Arial font, but viewed on their own few people would notice anything amiss. Fifteen minutes later the participants were tested and the key finding was that those who learned from the harder-to-read fonts answered 86.5 per cent of questions correctly, compared with the 72.8 per cent success rate achieved by the participants who learned from the clearer font.

For a follow-up study the researchers collaborated with a high school in Ohio. Teachers sent in their work-sheets and power-point slides and the researchers made them more difficult to read. They did this either by switching the fonts to Comic Sans Italicised, Haettenschweiler or Monotype Corsiva, or, if the materials were hand-written, simply by shaking them about in a photo-copier to make them blurry. The history, English and science teachers used the manipulated materials for one of their classes but not the other, which acted as a control. You guessed it, of the 220 participating pupils, those who learned from the harder-to-read materials subsequently performed better in the relevant class assessments than did the pupils who learned from the unadulterated materials (for more statistically minded readers, the effect size was d=.45).

When people find something easy to read, they take that as a sign that they've mastered it. Conversely, the researchers believe harder-to-read fonts provoke a feeling of lack of mastery and encourage deeper processing. However, there's obviously a balance to be struck. If material becomes too difficult to read, some students may simply give up. Another possible mechanism is that the less legible fonts are somehow more distinctive, rendering them more memorable. Diemand-Yauman's team doubt this explanation because distinctiveness should wear off over time, and anyway they didn't use any fonts that pupils wouldn't have seen before.

The researchers think their finding could be the tip of the ice-berg as regards using cognitive findings to boost educational practice. 'If a simple change of font can significantly increase student performance, one can only imagine the number of beneficial cognitive interventions waiting to be discovered,' they said. 'Fluency demonstrates how small interventions have the potential to make big improvements in the performance of our students and education system as a whole.'
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Diemand-Yauman, C., Oppenheimer, D., and Vaughan, E. (2011). Fortune favors the Bold (and the Italicized): Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes. Cognition, 118 (1), 111-115 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2010.09.012

What I found in the freezer (to save the day)...

We are laying low again today in hopes that staying home will snuff out my little one's sniffle once and for all. Had I known at the beginning of the week that I would not have any "alone" time, and that all pre-holiday errands would be nullified, I might have been a little bit more organized about what I'd tackle around the house. Instead, each day has sort of been a surprise gift of calm. I don't mean for that to sound all tutti fruity, but it really has been a restful week. (I'm trying really hard to be positive folks). The fire is lit, my little one is still in footie jammies, I am making myself "special holiday" coffee by spiking my (not-very-good) homemade brew with a hearty splash of egg nog and dinner is covered. Now that is a beautiful thing. With the exception of lots of cookies, our fridge and pantry are pretty darn bare since I haven't gone to the market all week. However, I came across a perfectly-sized dish of pumpkin cannelloni in the freezer, which we'll have for dinner tonight. And, there were two more family-sized portions I'd tucked away that marathon cannelloni making day before Thanksgiving, and I am pretty sure I just made my neighbors' day handing those off so their Christmas Eve dinners are now covered too.

Here are some of my favorite "freeze some for later" meals. To reheat any of these, simply put the frozen dish into the oven as you are preheating it (to slowly bring it up to the same temp and avoid cracking the dish), then cook the meal for twice as long. So, for example, the cannelloni will now go straight from the freezer into the oven as it's heating up to 350, then I'll leave it in for 1 hour, or until warmed through and top is turning golden.

25 Baht Fish Spa in Hat Yai

The second day in Hat Yai, Wendy and I got out from our hotel around noon.







You know us girls, sleeping in chatting all night, etc.




We stayed in JB hotel. It's a 3-4 star hotel, nothing fancy and it does the trick. Very affordable and clean.

We wanted to get some food and decided to walk around the neighbourhood to scout for potential lunch.

Passed by some stalls and saw more snacks.




Wendy couldn't resist herself...




Not sure what it's called, but it's some Thai chocolate snack that totally rocked our socks. I went back to buy like 5 packs later in the trip.


After what seemed like 20 minutes of walking and talking about boys, something caught my eye in the distance .




A German pub!




With fish spa service!

And only 25 baht for 15 minutes! (That's RM2.50, cheap!!)

Girls do what girls do best, we went ahead.




And I never thought I'd say this, but chilling in a German pub with your bare legs soaked in cool water full of fish nibbling up again you on a sunny afternoon while you have a girl talk was the most relaxing and enjoyable experience I ever had, with a girl I mean, most enjoyable experience I ever had with a girl.
















Even better when it's with a beer.





All this for 25 baht + 70 baht (for beer), that's less than RM10.
Where else can you get an experience like that?

Like in the movie Zombieland where Emma Stone and Jesse Eisenberg (guy who acted as FB creator in The Social Network movie), Rule #32 - Enjoy the Little Things.

This was what described the best little things in life.







We ended our early afternoon over some Thai food at the bar.





My sandwich, rather sad looking but I aint complaining.


I know this is a cliche, but...

Beer = 70 Baht
Lunch = 75 baht
Fish Spa = 75 baht (45 mins)
A relaxing afternoon with best friend in Hat Yai and 25 baht fish spa = priceless.

Have a great weekend, everyone.




Don't forget to enjoy the little things. ;)

Extras

Eye-catching studies that didn't make the final cut:

Don't tell Sarkozy: popular politicians are perceived to be taller.

Can you see OK in there? Analysis of uterine conditions suggests that at least some fetuses have enough light to see by. 'This finding could have intriguing implications for the ontogeny of early visuo-motor abilities in newborns and infants.'

People respond to threat warnings differently depending on whether they refer to natural disasters, terrorism or criminal violence. 'It appears that the mechanisms for perception, decision-making, and action in response to threats cannot be generalized in a straightforward way across these domains of threat.'

Pull the other one - overly short or long legs are perceived as less attractive, according to a poll of people across no fewer than 27 nations.

Despite what you might think, jurors weren't biased by the label 'psychopath'.

English and Mandarin speakers think about time differently.

The dark side of emotional intelligence (EI). 'We suggest that high-EI people ... are likely to benefit from several strategic behaviors in organizations including: focusing emotion detection on important others, disguising and expressing emotions for personal gain, using misattribution to stir and shape emotions, and controlling the flow of emotion-laden communication.'

Smoking affects language lateralisation in the brain, and does so differently for men and women.

Distracting the mind improves performance.

Review of when people get violent during sleep.

It's a bird, it's a plane...it's SUPERMOM (armed with a variety of sprinkles)

I am done baking. For the year. Seriously. For those of you who might still be whipping up some holiday treats, don't forget to read last year's post on letting the little ones help, but keeping it sane. Then put on your Supermom cape and have fun!