[Sca-cooks] OOP - Soldier Cookies

[Georgia Foster]

OK ... so some of you already have the story ... My son is serving in the Air Force, stationed at Hill AFB and on TDY to Qatar.  My housemates cousin's son is a forward unit Marine, also serving in Iraq.  There is a lad at Walter Reed AMH who is having a bit of life right now and needed some cheering up.  Each and every week these lads receive a box of home-made cookies.  For my son, he takes his box to the hospital at the base ans shares it with the service members there.  My housemate's relative is squad leader and has a group of 11 other boys he is responsible for. The lad at Walter Reed shares among his ward mates.  Each box contains four dozen cookies vacu-sealed and packaged in a box padded with wrapped candy.  In five weeks, all three lads will be back home in their respective homes, and the Soldier Cookies project will be over.  I have mixed emotions about that.

Some of the challenges that have become apparent in this process:

most cookie recipes are for 3 dozen cookies.  That is fine for a family of four.  I mail out 9 dozen cookies a week, plus keep our home cookie jar full and extras for the little warm cookie snatchers under my roof.  Simply doubling the recipe is OK for some, but others do not double well, leave off with tripling, quadrupling or bigger.  I kept track of the changes that I made to each recipe in order to make it biggerererer.

some cookies just don't ship well.  Others require special packaging, and all of them need to arrive at their destination two weeks later and still taste fresh.

SO

I am considering putting together a book of cookie recipes that will ship well and keep well.  What do you folks think?



Jo (Georgia L.) Foster

Never knock on Death's door. Ring the doorbell and run ... he hates that.