[Northkeep] Care package

[Jennifer Carlson]

Many hard candies will slag in the heat (ever leave a Jolly Rancher on your dashboard in July?) but will harden again when they cool.  When my brother was in Desert storm, Mom would use individually wrapped candies as packing material and they shipped just fine.  The malted milk balls were no longer spherical upon arrival, but edible.  
 
Then he asked for salted, in-the-shell peanuts instead.  The troops loved the peanuts and salt, and then fed the hulls to a local farmer's camels.
 
If you're sending things like tubes of sunblock or anything else of a liquid/cream nature, put each tube or bottle in a zip-loc baggie.  That way, if one goes, it doesn't get everything in the box ookie.
 
I have a recipe for a kind of chocolate chip cookie that ships exceptionally well, if anyone is interested - Mom sent my brother several batches over the time he was in Saudi.
 
Also - books.  Troopers who don't normally read take to it like a drowning man to a life preserver in camp life.  Action/adventure and science fiction are favorites (sold a lot of these for shipment when I was at the bookstore).  Romances, not so much.  Amadeo is right about the magazines: sports, girls in bikinis (but not in less than that), cars, and National Geographic are the top picks.

With winter coming on, you knitters might want to consider making wool helmet liners.  They're Balaclava helmets, which are like ski masks but the entire face is open.  The liners issued the troops do not cut the wind and are not particularly warm.  I can provide anyone interested with a website with patterns and a list of Army-approved yarn colors.
 
Talana
 
 
 
 
> From: steldr at cox.net
> To: northkeep at lists.ansteorra.org
> Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 09:02:00 -0500
> Subject: Re: [Northkeep] Care package
> 
> So I know melty candy is not a good idea - but m&m's should be ok, right? 
> 
> Mercedes
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> 
> > Joshua told me that candy and magazines are very much in demand 
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