Baked & Shipped

Operation Baking GALS round two...

As some of you may have heard a group of women mostly Food Bloggers are baking a little bit of "home" and shipping their goodies to soldiers stationed overseas. The 23rd of August was the start day of shipping to their selected soldiers. This is my first month participating and feel this is a very worthy cause. I won't go into the whys of it as I'm certain you don't need me to step up onto my soapbox. If you are interested in learning more about the GALS, please, click here. A few of the hostesses have been interviewed by their local papers and if you click here you can get to the various links.

The soldier I chose is named Joe and is stationed in Afghanistan, with the Air Guard. He is the nephew of Jayne at The Barefoot Kitchen Witch. The group of women baking for soldier Joe is called Team Barefoot and is headed up by Jayne.

This is past Sunday Babygirl and I read through several interesting recipes I printed out during the month and chose two we thought would not be a repeat for Joe. All of recipes were for bars as I figured Joe would get plenty of cookies. The two recipes Babygirl and I settled on were Brown & White Walnut Bars and Chocolate Caramel Brownies. The Brown & White Walnut Bars were my favorite out of the two and the Chocolate Caramel Brownies were Babygirl's. I'll be honest while both were good I'm not certain I would make either one again. I think they need some tweaking ( my new favorite word). Maybe one of you guys will give them a try, work your magic, post the improved recipe and THEN I can give them a second try. Please?! Ha-ha- ha! I will say this both recipes are very easy and use ingredients most already have in their pantry. Don't get me wrong they were good. The kids would have willingly eaten more had I let them but for me I knew I could find better.

Besides baking the two bars Babygirl and I each wrote Joe a letter. Babygirl drew some illustrations on hers. I also included in the box a three pack of gum and individual packets of Gatorade mix. At lunch time on Monday I made my way up to a UPS store and had it shipped. The package would get to the first stop on it's journey to Joe on Wednesday. The gentleman at the UPS store said that it was somewhere in New Jersey. Once there it would find its way onto a military plane headed to Afghanistan. Hopefully a direct flight and not the scenic route. :-)

The best part of all this outside of the obvious is that Joe doesn't know he's getting these packages. He knows he's getting "a" package but is not aware that he has a dozen or more women baking up a storm, all for him and his buddies. I'm so looking forward to hearing about his reaction.

One last thing so many of you bake to try out different recipes, experiment, or just for the love of baking. I've heard many of you mention their weight and needing to lose a pound or two this is an ideal opportunity. It's a win-win situation. You get to bake, try out a recipe, have a taste, and then give it away to someone who would really appreciate it! Or maybe you even have some yummies hiding in your freezer? Whaddaya say?

LiveJournal Tags: GALS,bars,brownies,blondies