In part one, we discussed how social media can be used to build community. These subsequent posts will take you through three tutorials to help you get started. I think perhaps the easiest tool to use to get your group connected and plan events is a free website called Evite. It is free because it is ad driven, so like Facebook, you will have to put up with advertisements. Evite features included:

• Organizing your contacts into groups
• Create and send invitations to meetings
• Built in map features
• RSVP section that lets you know who is coming.
• Menu planning that allows people to select what items they will bring.
• A forum where members can communicate about the event or anything else.

Click on images to enlarge.

To get started, navigate to www.evite.com and click Register on the right.  Fill in the the necessary information and submit it.

That is it. Keeping your group informed and planning events is easy with Evite. You can also use evite to let members know what you will discussing and links to any supplemental material you might want to add.

→ Read Part One

My husband and I are close, and neither of us are very social people, but with our busy schedules we sometimes notice that we went through an entire week without really connecting to each other except to communicate logistics. It is difficult to build a group with significant social connections without finding other ways to build relationships outside of the designated meeting times. Social media doesn’t solve all of the problems of establishing strong units that can function as a family, but it can encourage people to connect, however briefly, outside of scheduled times. Social media is an enabling tool to help communities grow, but real depth in relationships occurs when real people authentically communicate in real time.

Social Media Can:

Facilitate Meetings
Social media can be used to invite people to events, plan dinners, advertise locations, and almost anything else short of actually taxiing people to events.

Serve as a Connecting Point
It can help members find each other’s contact information or make contact through the application and help new people find your group.

Keep People Informed
Certain applications allow users to plan and create events with a calendar and allow quick regular posts.

Be A Teaching Aid
As a leader you can ask people to respond to discussion topics, post videos or add supplemental information that will allow members to engage what you are studying at a deeper level.

Gauge Receptivity
Many social applications have built-in polling components that allow leaders to make more informed decisions.

Social Media Can’t:

Substitute for Real Face-To-Face Contact
I spend hours in front of my computer every day connecting with clients, designing and programming. I try to keep my social media updated, but all of that updating does not take the place of the real contact I have everyday with my friends and family. That is what I look forward to most. This is when I feel best about myself. Social media can’t take the place of a real hug, a real shared laugh, or a real shared tear. XOXO just isn’t the same.

Cook and Eat Dinner
It can help you plan it, but it can’t take the place of preparing and sharing a meal together.

Hide Who You Really Are
For a while you can pretend to be somebody else, but sooner or later you meet face to face and who you are comes out bit by bit. Being in community is about sharing who you are feeling safe to be who you were made to be.

Make A Dysfunctional Group Functional
Unless the dysfunction is simply the result of poor planning, social media can’t make the awkward person disappear, can’t stop the busybody from being busy, and can’t solve conflict.

Be A Substitute For Social Skills

Using social media for your small group is a great way to keep members updated on what the group is studying, plan dinners, and keep people connected throughout the week. This is the first of a four-part tutorial on how to use what the Internet has to offer to get people communicating. The remaining three parts cover three applications that can help your group connect; Evite, Facebook and WordPress.

Social Media: Building Community Part Two

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs Chicken Legs – Skinned
• 1 Lemon – Juiced
• 2 tsp Salt
• 2 Onions
• 4 Garlic Cloves
• 1 Tbs Ginger
• ¼ C Niter Kebbeh
• 1 T Paprika
• ¼ C Berbere Paste
• ½ C Chicken Stock
• ½ C Red Wine
• ¼ tsp Fenugreek
• ½ tsp Cardamom
• ½ tsp Nutmeg
• 1 Small Tomato
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 4 Hard boiled eggs

Directions:

1. Mix the chicken legs, lemon juice and salt and in a large bowl. Marinate for about 30 minutes.
2. Puree the onions, garlic and ginger in a food processor or blender. Cook in dry skillet until tender but do not burn.
3. Add the fenugreek, cardamom, paprika and nutmeg. Cook 1 minute.
4. Add niter kibbeh and berberé and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes.
5. Add diced tomato to onion mixture.
6. Pour in the stock and wine and add the chicken legs. Add salt to taste. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer over medium heat for 45 minutes. Add chicken stock if necessary to maintain the sauce.
7. Add the whole hard boiled eggs and continue to cook for another 10 to 15 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through and very tender.
8. Serve hot with injera bread.

Ethiopian food requires some special ingredients.  If you live in Houston, you can find most of those at Maru Grocery on Bissonnet.  It isn’t a large grocery but you can get injera, berbere paste and powder, ethiopian flags, and tourist t-shirts.  If you just need to pick up some injera or large serving platters, head to Jerusalem Halal on Hillcroft.  If you keep driving South past Westpark Tollway, you will find a stretch of Indian grocers with an excellent selection of spices at a much more reasonable price than large grocery stores like HEB or Kroger.

Now for the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs  Beef Cubes (I prefer to get a round roast rather than stew meat.)
• 1  Onion, Thinly Sliced
• 4-6 T  Niter Kebbeh
• 2 tsp  Berbere
• ½ tsp  Cardamon
• ½ tsp  Ginger
• ¼ tsp  Black cumin
• ¼ tsp  Cloves
• ¼ tsp  Black Pepper
• ½ C  Red Wine
• 1 ½ C  Beef Stock
• 1 14oz.  Can of Diced Tomatoes

Directions:

1. Cook the onions in dry pan until golden. Add niter kebbeh. Cook a couple of minutes.
2. Add the berbere, wine, and tomatoes.  Cook a couple of more minutes.  The berbere is what gives it heat,  so test it as you add each tablespoon to make sure you aren’t overdoing it.
3. While you are working on the onion mixture, brown beef in separate pan on very high heat until any liquid evaporates.
4. Add beef to onion mixture and stir. Add beef stock, spices and salt.
5. Simmer on low for about 30-40 minutes. Sauce should thicken up a little.
6. Allow to cool for about 7 minutes before serving.  As it cools, the sauce will thicken more.
7. Place one piece of injera on a platter and put tibbs on top.  Serve with more rolled injera.

Hint: It is much easier to remove an individual piece of injera from its stack by rolling it starting from one edge.

Have fun and enjoy.  If you have questions, feel free to respond.

1. On the top of mind right now is Sudan.   We don’t hear much about what is going on there now because the news has been dominated by Libya, but things are bad, real bad.  My two year old was watching Dora the other day and said simply “Mama, I’m hungry.” I said “Sure, what would you like to eat?”  It then hit me like a fist in the stomach that so many mothers hear their children’s cries for food and have nothing to offer.  The can’t make them full or safe.  They live with the fear that they could, at any minute, watch their child die violently or that they will have to watch their child starve to death with no recourse. My heart is broken.  There really isn’t anything I can do and giving thanks that my child is fortunate enough to live a boring suburban life seems inadequate. If you don’t know what is going on in Sudan right now, here are a few resources:
1. Blue Nile: Sudan’s New War Zone (BBC)
2. South Sudan clashes kill 600, U.N. calls for talk (CNN)
3. September 2nd (Friends from Sudan)
2. The dearth of good barbeque in Katy needs to be remedied so I will be writing reviews of bbq places in Katy while campaigning to get a Rudy’s here.  Stay tuned for the campaign to get Rudy’s to Katy.
3. I am in the process of testing a new recipe format for my blog and will soon be uploading many more of my favorites.
4. My grandma died this summer.  I’ve never lost anyone I was particularly close to and so I am new to grief.  Perhaps sharing some of my thoughts will help me process what her life meant to me and the lingering sadness I am left with.

I have noble ambitions of being a much more frequent blogger now that my child is in preschool two days a week but we will have to see if my ambitions turn into action.

The atmosphere was delightful. Despite the small space, the seating was private and the restaurant was clean. The blue colors were soothing and the background ambience of water flowing over a statue of a Thai woman added to good conversation. We started with the standard Thai appetizer, a skewered sliver of chicken with peanut sauce called Sa’Te.  I ordered Panang Curry and my husband ordered a spicy beef salad called Yum Nuah.  Both were perfect.

All in all, I would highly recommend Thai Cottage to a friend.  On a scale of one to five (one being Burger King and five being the perfect combination of delectable food and intriguing ambience), I would rate this a four.

Location:

10001 Westheimer Road Suite 2124
Houston, TX 77042
Tel: 713.266.0701

We had planned on moving on Monday.  I took a look at our stuff, told my husband to go get the truck, and fully expected to be loaded and on the road two hours later.  Eight hours later we were still loading the cars and cleaning the house.  We decided to spend the night with my in-laws and head out in the morning, and after a few hiccups with the car trailer, we were off.  On a side note, I highly recommend using moving trucks for moving even if  you are from a small town and have cattle trailers readily available.  This was my first time to use anything but a cattle trailer and it sure beats the pants off of having to go to the car wash to rinse of the cow patties before you can load up your stuff. Also, if it rains, you don’t have to find another car wash to park under until it quits.

My husbands company offered to pay for the move or just give us cash.  Since we are very economical people we opted for the cash and while I still think it was a good decision, I’ll definitely consider it next time.  Most of our stuff is still sitting in the garage three stories below because we are too sore from the first day to carry it up.

After six hours of sweating buckets and cursing silently in my head we managed to muscle the furniture up the stairs with relatively little damage. The very last thing on the truck was the mattress and consistent with our luck, it started raining cats and dogs just as we we were preparing to haul up the mattress.

The Budget Truck Rental office happened to be next to a recent favorite restaurant of mine called Chuy’s.  The Austin original serves up an absolutely beautiful fried avocado and I wanted my husband to experience what he has been missing out on.  It turns out that not all Chuy’s make the fried and stuffed avocado so we were disappointed but too exhausted to complain.  Our very generous waiter heard we had just moved that day and surprised us with a complementary “welcome to Houston dessert” after dinner.

Thanks to him, we feel welcome.

1. The hills. I grew up in West Texas and always wanted to live in a place with some variance in elevation.
2. The trees.  Houston has trees too but they’re different and can be somewhat overwhelming.  I like wide open spaces too.
3. The vistas.  This is becoming less of a draw as cookie cutter McMansions are cluttering the view.
4. The trails.  They combine my top three favorite things.
5. Swimming holes. There is just something about swimming in cold spring fed water that revives the spirit.
6. Men in spandex.  Just kidding.  I don’t know of any other city where so many men feel comfortable going about in stretchy pants.
7. Weirdos.  Austin has more than their fair share but since Houston’s bigger, there’s probably actually more there.
8. KUT Radio.  The best NPR station ever.
9. Music. Music. Music.  Need I say more?
10. The cool casual country culture.  Austin has the coolness factor that most other cities in the country lack.  It’s casual. It’s still country, though that aspect is slowly being eroded away by the influx of foreigners from other states, especially California.