Cooking for Camp

Heather and Megan are going to church girls camp in June.  To help each girl raise money their youth group hosted a spaghetti dinner and dessert auction.  The money raised by the spaghetti dinner was divided evenly between all the girls; however, the money from the dessert auction was applied to whichever girl brought the item.

My girls spent the morning at Grandma's house baking.  Then we came home and did some more baking at our house.  It was SO MUCH FUN!  Their dad loves pecan pie but Grandma only makes it at Thanksgiving and Christmas.  The girls wanted to learn how to make it for dad and practiced by making two for the dessert auction.  Grandma was kind enough to have them make a third one for Dad.  He was appropriately excited!

We also made triple chocolate brownies, no bake cookies (Papa's favorite!), lemony lemon brownies (Heather wanted to try this new recipe), and Cookie Monster cupcakes.  Everyone was very generous and the girls earned all the money they needed for camp.  Megan was excited because the highest selling item was her Cookie Monster cupcakes.  She said next year she will make a whole bunch!

Megan made chocolate cupcakes.  The eyes are white chocolate melts and chocolate chips glued on with white frosting.  We bought a small bag of mini chocolate chip cookies and made blue frosting.  I piped the frosting onto the cupcakes and Megan added the cookies and eyes.  We used a special frosting tip -- Wilton 233.  The frosting took a while, but Megan was patient and SO excited about how cute they turned out. 

Making Eggrolls

Every January, the youth in our stake participate in a Youth Olympics.  They compete in various sporting events, both individual and team sports.  They can participate in scholastic event, performing arts, photography, sewing and cooking, as well. 

Emily enjys cooking and took 3rd place in the dessert category last year with Mississippi Mud Cake.  She wants to try the main dish and bread categories, as well, this year.  Part of the judging is based on the recipe submitted, which demonstrates the difficulty level of the preparation.  Emily is considering Grandma Libby's eggroll recipe as her main dish entry.  Naturally, we had to practice to see if she could do it.  For Youth Olympics, the youth must do the meal 100% by themselves.  This time, however, Grandma Libby and Papa helped. 

This is the meat and vegetable filling.  Yum!

Heather doesn't like hamburger or sausage, so they made some meatless eggrolls for her.  That sounds boring to me!

Grandma showed Emily how to spoon filling onto the eggroll wrappers.

That looks SO good!! 

Emily's first "roll" was more flat than round.

Grandma demonstrated how to get a tighter roll.

Papa did the cooking in hot oil.

As you can see, the recipe made enough eggrolls for Emily to get plenty of practice rolling eggrolls!

Heather's favorite part is making "Chinese fries" out of the leftover eggroll wrappers.  We just slice them into strips....

and drop them into the hot oil.

Looking good!

Heather likes them sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Grandma, Papa, and I like them with cinnamon and sugar, but Heather was cooking so her preferences won.

Emily decided she was a pretty good cook!

Megan agreed.  She loves Grandma's eggrolls.

Heather wasn't too excited about the meatless eggrolls.  LOL

She was MUCH happier with the Chinese fries!

Since Emily has to be able to make the eggrolls on her own, she will have to practice a few more times before January.  That means we will have to EAT eggrolls AT LEAST 2 or 3 times.  We are willing to sacrifice for her success, though!  LOL

Traditions

I apologize for not posting my July 4th comments sooner. I spent 3 out of 4 days in bed sick since then so I wasn't feeling much like writing. However, I am feeling better now and I'm ready to "publish" again.

Several years ago my in-laws moved to a new house. That summer we realized that they had a perfect view of the fireworks at an arena near their home. Now it is a solid July 4th tradition: BBQ with Papa and Grandma Libby then fireworks. Each year we sit in their driveway and watch the fireworks while munching on snacks, waving glow sticks, and cheering for the prettiest fireworks.

One year my friend asked if they could join us. This event is now one that all of our children anticipate all year long. In fact, Megan and Heather packed their camp chairs in the van several days early! They also tried to convince me to take enough snacks to feed an army. They asked me 800 questions that day: Can we leave for Papa and Grandma's house now? (as soon as they woke up!) When do the fireworks start? When will our friends get here? When?!? It reminded me of Christmas when they were little.

I love traditions that the girls can look forward to with this level of anticipation. And I love that this particular tradition involves family and friends and the country that we all love.