Great weekend!

This weekend was very needed after last week, which was filled with a larger-than-normal load of readings, writing assignments and even a test. Some friends and I went to the Kalona Fall Festival on Saturday, which I had never been to before. They had a ton of great (and ridiculously unhealthy) food, including fried PB&J (pictured below), and it was fun to see the crafts and the historical side of Kalona as well. Also, Stringtown Grocery is an awesome little grocery store just outside Kalona where you can get things like spices in bulk, freshly made pastries, or other random local items. My partner, Tim, got some sweet habanero pickles from there and they are deliciously sweet and spicy!

I also tried out some new recipes this weekend, including this curried sweet potato and lentil soup (which is one of the best soups I think I've ever made; I doubled the lentils and used low fat coconut milk) and these roasted rosemary tofu cubes (which were pretty good but needed a bit more flavor, so I dipped them in BBQ sauce, which tasted great!).

I hope you had a good weekend too! I'm looking forward to this week - tomorrow is the College of Public Health Student Mentor-Mentee Program kickoff event at The Mill restaurant and then this weekend is Oktoberfest in the Amanas, which is always fun.

Here are some recent articles you might find interesting:

Officials, churches join fight against sexual diseases - Anna Gorman, LA Times
Seems like an innovative idea for an intervention (providing free tests through a computer kiosk and mobile van) and it's awesome that churches are supportive of it as well.

Growth of children's hospitals raises adult-size questions - John Fairhall, NPR
The fact that children's hospitals (like the majority of hospitals in general in the US) are classified private nonprofit, yet often they make a substantial profit and have very high-paid CEOs, is very interesting. It does bring up some ethical questions as to whether or not they should qualify as nonprofit.

The effects of hourly differences in air pollution on the risk of myocardial infarction: case crossover analysis of the MINAP databse - Bhaskara et al.
This study found that for every 10 µg/m³ increase in traffic-related pollutant level, the risk of heart attack increased during the period of 1-6 hours after exposure.