Life, love and little things. July 2016

I've been on an unplanned hiatus from these posts for a while, for absolutely no reason other than those horrible headaches and migraines which are blighting my days. However, that doesn't mean there aren't wonderful things in my life and as always I'm looking forward to sharing them here.

I finished another blanket this month. This one's a baby blanket for a dear, dear friend who's expecting. It was a lovely thing to hook such love into every row, for the Mama and her bubba. It was also incredibly pleasing to stitch something that I finished in a shortish space of time.

I'm still working on my massive neat ripple for our bed. It uses the Last Dance in the Rain colour pack from Scheepjes for their crochet-a-long in memory of Marinke Slump. I've written about it here and am fairly decided I'll tackle the pattern again, some time next year. I've currently got 2 blankets and some cushion covers on my hooks, and I'm also thinking about socks!



We had our annual Brownie holiday in July - which was the first time I've been away from Harry for two nights, and the first time in the new kitchen in the Division's holiday house. It was glorious to cook in, so much space - and made me loathe our kitchen at home a bit more! The holiday theme was Alice in Wonderland, so on Saturday we had a Mad Hatter's Tea Party - with the ubiquitous jam tarts, cheesy caterpillars, White rabbit sausage rolls and some playing card fairy cakes. Drink me potions and Eat me fruit also featured on the menu. The girls had a wonderful time and I really enjoyed my role as QM.



July is M's birthday and this year was a big one - so a special cake was in order. Harry helped me and together we made him a Funfetti cake with blue buttercream - which is what happens when you let your toddler choose the colour! Topped with a fondant road and some lovely wooden cars from Babi Pur, M adored it. And it tasted lovely too.

The end of term for Guides clashed with some lovely sunny days, and despite having had my feet in the paddling pool at home all day we finished our term in the same way - only adding ice creams into the mix!

The glorious summer weather has not just meant long days in the garden, but lighter food as well. M is not a fan of salad, so I've been roasting peppers, courgettes, mushrooms, red onions and garlic and topping them with our favourite dairy free Heck sausages, or stirring them into pasta. I've also had a (very successful bash) at recreating my favourite Carrefour carrot salad that I eat by the bucketful when in France.

Despite not blogging much, July has been full to the brim of fun and family and of course some fab food too. Lots of blessings for me to recount in my Bullet Journal and of course say thank you for.

If you like these sneaky peeks into our month, why not follow Penelope's Pantry on Instagram for regular snapshots into what's going on.

Argentinian scarf game

A bit of a different post today - a couple of friends asked about a game we play at Guides called the Argentian scarf game. As google came up short, I thought I'd pop a quick Guiding post up to explain.

Split the girls up into teams - I do this by Patrols and as we have four, each patrol has a corner of the hall that is 'theirs'. If we had more, I'd just use points on a clock face around the hall- the girls don't need a large area to be home, just space for a line.

In the middle of the hall a necker is placed, roughly equidistant from the groups of girls

Each group stands in a line with their legs open to make a triangle, each girl behind the other. On 'go' whoever is at the front of the line runs the back and crawls through the tunnel of legs. This girl then runs/ launches herself towards the necker and whoever has it in their hand first wins. You keep going until every girl in each patrol has had a turn.

Our girls love this game, it's up there with Steal and Capture the duck as a favourite.

I have no idea where the name came from by the way... it's just one of those things I guess!

What are you doing on the 9th November? Coffee and cake anyone?

If you've read this post - you'll know I'm in the midst of trying to raise a lot of money for our local campsite. We need £25,000 for a new roof, and I'm determined to help out (not least as I want to use the venue for the wedding)

On the 9th November 4th Friern Barnet Guides will be having a coffee morning to raise money - they've been set a target of £10 per head - and at their estimated costs, that'll be 10 slices of cake each.

I'm opening our doors to all bloggers, cake makers, crafters (guiders or not) who would be willing to make and donate a cake, raffle prize, preserves, or anything else we can sell or otherwise raise money from.

If you can't do any of those things and are in or around the North London area that day, why not pop along, say hello and have your morning tea or coffee and cake with us.



Venue: Guide and Scout HQ, Stanford Road, Friern Barnet, N11 3HX

Time: 11am to 2pm

Date: Saturday 9th November

Cherryade for Cherry Aid

When I think of Cherryade, I can't help but remember the little bottles of pop we had as children. Startlingly red, sickly sweet with no more resemblance to cherries than I have to a marathon runner.

When I first made this recipe over the summer, M and I had been to Brighton for the day.  It's an annual outing for us as on one our first dates we went to the Food and Drink festival they host and learnt about coffee. Anyway, a stall by the station was selling huge bags of local cherries and I couldn't leave empty handed. 

A week of cherry based recipes and permanently stained lips followed,  and one of the recipes was for a cherry lemonade. The sweetness of the cherries balancing out the tart zestiness of the lemons. Of course you could add sugar, but in an ode to a long ago New York trip with Lauren,  I opted not to. 

Cherry lemonade

250g fresh cherries, halved and stoned
1 litre fizzy water/ lemonade
Juice of 4 lemons - zest too if you fancy it
Sugar, to taste

It's simple enough - prep your cheries and add to your jug
Juice your lemons and pour over the cherries
Add the fizzy water or lemonade and sweeten to taste
Chill and serve over ice

So there you have your Cherryade. Now for the Cherry aid part of the post. 

Cherry Green Trees is a campsite and holiday house owned jointly by Finchley and Friern Barnet & Southgate Guides. Thousands of children make use of its facilities each year as volunteers like me take them on holidays. The site houses bluebell woods, campsites, and the holiday house.

The holiday house as it stands now was opened in 1977, and recently we discovered that the roof needed some work doing to it. And then we discovered that there was asbestos in it. This has meant that it isn't possible to repair the roof. It needs replacing. Which is a huge undertaking for an unfunded organisation run by volunteers.  

This year we're trying to raise £25000 in pretty much any way possible.  So I thought I'd design a challenge badge. For those of you not in the know a challenge badge is a badge that anyone from any Guiding section can earn - by completing challenges. You then get a pretty cool  badge to adorn your uniform, sew on a blanket, or leave in a dish with some others that you plan to do something with. 

Here is the Cherry Challenge badge, it focuses on the main aspects of the site that we find special - Cherry - eating, and making. Green - recycling, upcycling and Trees - our Bluebell woods. You also have some suggestions of ways to fundraise for the badge. 

Please help us to raise some money to ensure that girls in years to come can get as much out of tour lovely little site as those who've gone before have.

There you have it - Cherryade for Cherry aid. What can you do to help?

S'more s'mores? Yes indeed

I was sure when writing this post that I would have talked about s'mores loads on the blog - but in actual fact, the only post where I've labelled them is the one from earlier this week - the no cook version for when a fire isn't practical. 

S'mores for those not in the know (where have you been?) are a wonderful invention - their name a contraction of 'some more' Guides and scouts across the years have made and loved these. Marshmallows, toasted over a fire are squashed between two Graham crackers and squares of chocolate in a wonderful combination of biscuit, chocolate and gooey marshmallow-ness (it's a word). The closest thing in the UK to Graham crackers are digestives. We usually buy basics milk chocolate digestives and skip the square of chocolate. 

They're a fantastic introduction to campfire cooking - they get Guides introduced to being around a fire safely and are a firm favourite of our unit. I can guarantee if we're cooking the girls will beg, plead and insist we finish up with s'mores. And who are we to argue! Brownies or Guides without an outdoor space could do these over a disposable barbecue, or even over tea lights. I use kebab sticks usually and if I'm worried about them burning, soak them beforehand.

A few months back we picked up some waffle ice cream cones in the pound shop. You know how you do - just in case they'll be useful. In fact I think they were intended as witches hats for our cauldron cakes. They were lying around in our den and one evening in a fit of inspiration we took them out to use with our patrol fires.

Ice cream cone s'mores

Waffle ice cream cones (check out the pound shop)
Marshmallows
Chocolate (unsurprisingly we used basics)
Tin foil

You could also add chopped up bananas if you wanted to

Stuff each cone with 2-3 marshmallows and squares of chocolate
Wrap in a double layer of tin foil
Cook in the embers of the fire for 5 minutes or so

Eat, messily. And imagine just how amazing they would be if you had vanilla ice cream. Now there's a pudding for camp! 

No pictures today, not because I forgot the camera or left my phone uncharged, but because they were GONE when I got out after doing some Baden Powell work with our older girls. Gone! Outrageous!

Fancy s'more tiffin?

No really, s'more tiffin.

I love S'mores - I could write an ode to them right now, but will save you from any shocking attempts at poetry and merely say that as far as I am concerned they win.

Sadly however I can't always summon up a fire at the opportune moment when s'mores are in demand. I know - it's very remiss of me. As such I put together a tiffin recipe for those moments when nothing else but the pairing of digestives, chocolate and smooshy marshmallow will do. 

At Easter M and I made Jules' Mini egg tiffin for his parents, and this recipe is based around those quantities. 

S'more tiffin

85g butter

2 tbsp golden syrup

100g milk chocolate, melted in a bain marie or the microwave

170g digestives, crushed - I use a sandwich bag, rolling pin and any lingering agression

230g marshmallows - Either get 50g of mini ones, or chop about 50g up small

Melt the butter and syrup in a saucepan and add the digestives and melted chocolate

Pour half of this into a 2lb loaf tin lined with cling film. Press down

Melt 200g or so of marshmallows (I use the same pan because I hate washing up) and pour/ spoon this on top of the first layer of digestives

Pour the other half of the digestive mixture on top

Sprinkle the top with the chopped up marshmallows and gently press them into the top layer - you really don't need too many

Pop in the fridge until it hardens up (overnight is usually plenty of time) 

Those are fairly loose measurements - if you can get 170g bags of marshmallows, buy those - it'll be fine. Don't worry about weighing out the ones to chop up small, just take a couple of handfuls. As always basics chocolate and digestives are perfect. If you have Guides with faith based dietary restrictions or who are veggies you'll probably want veggie marshmallows. I've bought them from eBay in the past, but our local sweetshop now has kosher and vegetarian varieties. 

In terms of doing this in unit cooking - I would make this in fairy cake tins with cake cases for the Guides or Brownies.  When I say I would make it - either group could happily manage this, especially if we used the microwave to melt the chocolate. The smaller size should mean that if we started straightaway they would be take home-able (it's a word) by the end of the meeting.

Outdoor cooking with the Guides

What do you do on an unexpectedly glorious spring evening? Enjoy a glass of wine? Be brave and test out the BBQ? Light 4 fires and teach 24 girls how to cook on them?

Guess which I chose?

Summer term is when our Guides hit their stride, we're outdoors as much as is humanly possible. Some nights we play rounders, others we borrow the Brownie parachute and have a whale of a time playing games some might think we're too old for, we have a campfire, s'mores and singing, and whenever we can, we cook.

Patrol cooking from a leader's perspective is sometimes a bit tricky. You have to let go, not control it, and to a certain extent let the girls make their own mistakes.

We start, as soon as it's light enough by collecting punk (or kindling) in old sweet tins. These tins are refilled each time we cook so that there's always enough dry material to start our fires.

We cook on metal crates, with metal trays on top of them so that we don't burn holes in the grass (not least as we share our hut with a nursery) Once you've got your punk lit, the girls add more and more bigger sticks and pieces of wood until they have good fires going. It takes a while for them to understand that we rarely cook over flames - no matter how pretty they look, but need the fire to die down so we can cook over the white hot embers.

This week was an unheard of universal success, some fires were lit with one match, others took a few more and the only injuries were a burnt finger (mine) and a stabbed toe (another leader's) In terms of safety, both for the girls and ourselves we have a few systems in place to try and keep us all healthy

• Metal water buckets by each fire
• No more than 8 girls working around each fire
• Hair tied back
• Long trousers
• Closed in shoes
• No one turns their back on their fire
• We have heavy pot stands, oven gloves and tongs for the girls to touch and work with hot pots and tinfoil parcels
• Stop. Drop. And roll is reiterated
• Each girl is taught to light a match both confidently and safely
• We work with the girls throughout the year using candles and campfires to chase off any fire based fears

The biggest boon to safety is confidence - not cockiness - but the knowledge that as long as you respect your fire and follow the safety rules you will be safe. We also try to maintain a ratio of 1 leader and 1 older guide per Patrol/fire.

This week we made Cheese dreams and camp bananas. Neither warrants a recipe as such, but I couldn't help but want to post them

Cheese dreams - ingredients

1 egg per girl plus 1 for luck
2 slices of bread per girl (we just use white sliced)
Grated cheese
Butter/ margarine

Equipment

Large bowl
Fork/ whisk
Tin foil
Table knife
Cheese grater
tongs
Pot stand
Oven gloves
Paper plates napkins

Beat the eggs in the bowl using a fork/ whisk
Put the bread in the bowl to soak up the egg mixture (as you would for eggy bread)
Sprinkle as much grated cheese as you want between 2 slices of bread and sandwich together
Heavily butter a double layer of tin foil (enough to wrap your sandwich securely)
Wrap your sandwich up and put it in the fire - the white embers
Cook until the outside is blackened - we found about 15 minutes was enough
Remove from the fire using the tongs
Using either the oven gloves or a leader's fingers (did I mention I got burnt?!) open the tin foil parcel and messily eat from a paper plate

Camp bananas - ingredients

1 banana per girl (and leader)
Chocolate buttons
Marshmallows

Equipment

Tin foil
Table knife
Napkins
Tongs
Pot stand

Slice down the middle of your banana so it opens up (not completely, you don't want it to break in half)
Fill the slit with chocolate buttons and/ or marshmallows
Wrap in a double layer of foil
Place in the fire - again in the embers
After about 15 minutes remove from the fire using tongs
Carefully open the foil using either the oven gloves or a leader's fingers
Enjoy, once again messily

As we cook through the summer, I'll try to post what we do - for many units they'll have been making these for years. But as I'm historically a Brownie leader who fell into Guides, 7 years ago I hadn't and appreciated help from any and all sources.

If you want to see more photos like this - on an almost live basis no less. Why not follow me on instagram?

Guiding and Social Media part two

Hopefully you've seen part one of this series, extolling the benefits of using Social media for your Rainbow, Brownie, Guide or Senior Section unit. This is the write up of the intermediate session run by Rosie from CHQ - again if you've not had this training locally please do direct your local guiders to this post. 

So, lets work on the basis that you're tweeting. You have your unit facebook page up and running and are using it to keep in touch with friends and family. You might have a closed (or secret) group for your Rangers and it's all working well. 

What now? How can you extend your use of social media and  most importantly make it work for you? 

Ultimately of course that's the main question. We're all volunteers - we don't want to be attached to our laptops and smartphones any more than we have to be. I don't know about you but I didn't volunteer as a leader to add a few extra hours each day sweating over Twitter. We need to make our social media channels work for us, not the other way around.

The power of social media lies in it's speed, and the way it encourages engagement. If we're going to campaign we can make use of those strengths to create and sustain a buzz around our message, reach a larger audience over a longer time and ultimately strengthen our message. All in all this means that we increase our impact. 

The starting point of any campaign is the end point. Identify what result you want and work backwards from there. 

• Be specific - is it more volunteers you want? Or in fact do you want 2 new Rainbow leaders?
• Will you be able to tell you've achieved your goal? Make it measurable
• Are you being realistic? Is having every unit in your County fully staffed at all achievable?
• When do you want this to happen by? By being time bound we give ourselves a framework (Again, be realistic!)

The next thing to think about with your planning is who do you want to target? And which social media is appropriate?  Personally I'm a twitter fan* as I feel that you reach a wider audience. Facebook's new(ish) policy whereby you pay to promote your page means that actually your reach is hugely reduced. I've got 100 'fans' on the Penelope's Pantry facebook page, yet my last status update reached 6 people - especially annoying as that was for a competition I'm running giving away a £50 Sainsburys voucher. 

Twitter has no limits like that and as I mentioned before the national Girlguiding page actively follows units and RTs campaign tweets - be it recruitment, event publicity or just #weekendguiding activities. Also with twitter you can schedule tweets using a programme like Tweetdeck so that your message goes out at different times during the day so catches people as the Twitter audience changes. 

When you're developing your campaign, think about it in three stages:

1. The build up... you want to raise interest
• Hook people in by making it interesting. Use a call to action or question in your tweets. Sound enthusiastic - no one is going to be excited if your status update reads "Going to camp on Wednesday. Dreading it. Weather's awful. Guides are stressed" I hate to sound PRish, but spin that fear, why not tweet "Guides and leaders nervous about camping in this terrible weather! Anyone have any suggestions for surviving torrential rain on camp?"
• Encourage engagement. 
• Answer people's responses to you
• Use hashtags # or link people using handles (their twitter name, which starts with the @ symbol - mine is @penjy) to involve others. 
2. The event itself
• Encourage attendees to participate. Ask people to post what they're up to, and to share what you're doing - don't limit yourself to words, use pictures, videos - anything that tells the story. Offer a prize - best picture tweeted on the day wins a Middlesex east thermal mug! 
• Nominate someone to tweet during the event - set up a hashtag and tell people what it is -  it could be something simple like #guidecamp or something really specific like #MEGA2012 
• When you can, try and make sure there's somewhere accessible with wifi or 3G coverage so that attendees can join in with their media
• Make use of other media like Instagram and again use hashtags and handles in those feed to involve others
3. After the event
• Encourage people who attended to again share their updates, pictures, videos (ensuring that relevant permissions have been obtained)
• Curate the event - if you've had a lot of coverage and want to capture it all in one place, use something like Storify to draw it all together
• Keep the conversation going - ask follow up questions
4. Evaluation
• Ask for feedback - you can use something like Survey monkey in case people would prefer to be anonymous
• Did your campaign work? Did you reach that goal?
• What went well?
• What would you do differently? 
• Don't beat yourself up about things that didn't go well - learn from them.

Before this really drags on a few final things to think about

Social media is not just about taking - you need to give as well - so, if you see a unit (even if they're at the other end of the country to you) selling badges for a GOLD trip, RT it. Who knows what badge hungry guiders, or units in search of a challenge badge to fill those few weeks before camp you have following you?

Think about your brand - select your profile picture carefully, and think about what it looks like on screen.

Don't give yourself Guiding fatigue - make sure you've got at least one other person staffing those accounts so it's not all down to you. 

Think about your tone of voice - I tend to keep tweets chatty and friendly. I'm not presenting to the board!

Use apps to help you - I've mentioned Tweetdeck and Hootsuite which will notify you of and help you to keep on top of any mentions you get.

Just be aware of your data allowance - I'm deliberately on Three so that I have unlimited data. Similarly remember your charger! All too often I'm just out of battery when the guides have formed a perfect human pyramid whilst in full uniform on a bouncy castle singing Taps. Ok maybe not exactly that, but you get the picture. 

A huge thank you to Rosie from GirlGuiding CHQ whose workshop this is all based on. I've just written it up, she did all the hard work *Brownie thank you claps*

And now my call to action - have you got any questions? Any? At all? About anything in either of these posts? Either comment here or send me an email at penelopespantry@googlemail.com and I'll bring them all together in a Social Media superpost and ask Rosie and the Social Media team at HQ to answer them all on here. I may even chip in myself ;-) 

As an aside, if you're reading this and fancy winning a £50 Sainsbury's voucher either for yourself, or to put towards the food bill for this summer's Guide camp or Brownie holiday, why not enter the competition I'm running here - for a recipe using your favourite Kitchen Hero or storecupboard staple from Sainsburys? You don't need to be a blogger, just pop your recipe in the comments section and Sainsbury's will pick their favourite!

*Something which no one was surprised at. Ever.

Guiding and social media part one

Social Media and Guiding don't always seem the most natural fit - I don't know about you, but although I am a prolific *ahem* fairly seasoned blogger, tweeter, facebooker etc, I've not quite got to grips with doing those things as a representative of my unit, district, division or County. Or so I thought. This weekend I took part in two workshops run by Rosie, one of the Girlguiding CHQ marketing interns and in response to request am writing up the key points here for people who haven't had access to this training locally to them. 

If we start by thinking about Girlguiding themselves, they have huge reach - their followers and likers on Facebook and twitter amount to about 29,000 - stats which are increasing by 3 - 4,000 per quarter. Whether we're using those mediums for local, regional or national communications - that's a huge amount of people reading and responding to what Girlguiding have to say. You might think "but I only have 30 girls in my unit. Who would listen to me?" But, if your follwers retweet or share what you're talking about then your reach extends and extends. And the Girlguiding accounts follow units, districts, divisions and Counties and will retweet/ share your news, thoughts and views. 

There are things we do need to bear in mind - Child safety, especially on facebook. Closed groups for Senior section, with carefully chosen securities and permissions for photos work best. But Guide, Brownie or Rainbow units could have a Unit page. With Twitter your account is open - your feed needs to be brief but relatively frequent and you do need to engage - neither Twitter nor facebook work as social media tools if you're just shouting into an empty room - but if you talk to people, linking them into your conversations, retweeting others' you start to find your place in those communitiies. 

Some final hints and tips for new tweeters/ facebookers

• Tweet/ Share good news and information
• Use a strong profile picture
• When tweeting or updating your status use a call to action - a question for your followers to answer
• Include links and pictures (bear in mind photo permissions) where relevant
• Don't be afraid to ask people to share your message - Twitter shorthand for this is 'Please RT'
• Tweet others as you would like to be tweeted ;-) - share their news, respond positively, link up

Next time a write up of the intermediate session 

Oh and have some cake  

Chocolate chip and pretzel cookies

Salty and sweet is a thing. A real honest to goodness thing. I was out with my lovely sister and my genius nephew (true story) a couple of weeks back, we popped into M&S ostensibly for a cardigan and picked up an elderly lady (also true story) and some chocolate and caramel pretzel bites. We demolished them happily, as Noah napped and removed his socks in the back of the car. 

I went away that evening thinking about those sweets (what can I say? I need to get out more) and wondering if I could make those flavours work in a cookie. Pinterest threw up a few suggestions but as it tends towards American recipes I wasn't entirely sold on their ingredients. 

When Nigella Express came out I made her Totally chocolate, chocolate chip cookies a handful of times, whilst I love them, they are amazingly rich and sometimes the chocolate feels a bit headachey. Plus M can't eat dark chocolate as it makes him feel sick. So I needed to adapt the recipe and this is my adaptation of that

Chocolate chip and pretzel cookies

125g milk chocolate, melted (I used leftover Christmas and Easter chocolate)
150g flour
30g Cadbury's drinking chocolate (the one you make up with milk)
1 tsp bicarb
1/2 tsp salt
125g softened butter
50g white sugar
75g soft brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
200g chopped up chocolate - a mix of white and milk
150g pretzels (about 2 handfuls) lightly crushed - reserve about 24 whole ones

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees and line a cookie sheet with baking parchment
Beat the butter and sugar in your mixer (or with a hand beater)
Add the melted chocolate, egg and vanilla continuing to beat until well combined
Fold the flour, bicarb drinking chocolate and salt into the batter
Stir in the chopped chocolate and pretzels 

Using a tablespoon measure out big dollops (technical term) of cookie batter onto the sheet. Don't press them flat as the mixture spreads, so leave big gaps between the spoonfuls. I can fit about 8 cookies at once on a sheet. 
Top each ball of batter with a whole pretzel - just push it lightly into the cookie

Bake for 15 minutes - remove from the cookie sheet straightaway with a spatula and cool on a wire rack - this helps mine stay smooshy in the middle (which is how I prefer them). If you like your cookies crispy then cool them on the tray for 5-10 minutes first as they'll continue to cook using the residual heat from the tray. 

This mix makes at least 24 cookies and they keep in an airtight tin for up to 5 days. You can freeze the original Nigella recipe - but I don't think you could with the pretzels as they would go soggy. 

Just a note for the Guiders out there - I know that our girls would go mad for these - try doing them with teaspoonfuls of mix instead of tablespoons and you'll get - 2-3 times as many! As they're such a quick bake (and in smaller measures would be even quicker, 9-10 mins) they're ideal for a chocolate badge evening, or to be bagged up for a bake sale, father's day or mother's day treats... well the list is endless so I'll leave the reason up to you.

Hello, is it me you're looking for?

Source

Apologies for the break in service - I'd like to say normality will resume presently but I'm going to be taking things slowly for a while. Whilst I love blogging, and adore the friends I've made through my little space on the internet, I've recently found life a little challenging. There's a lot going on here in the Pantry; big and little things and to say I've  felt overwhelmed by life would have been an understatement. I am trying to get things a bit more back on track and need to be a bit easier on myself - aren't we all our own worst critics? 

The plan is that for a while I'll just be blogging recipes and activity plans for my Guide and Brownie units - the things I love most. And taking that a bit more slowly. One of the things I've realised is that I can't do everything or at least not well. And that the person that's affected most by trying to be all things to all people is me. 

If you've found your way here from Guiding magazine - hello and welcome to my pantry - hopefully you'll have a poke around the recipes and activity plans and find something that interests you. If there's something you've wanted to try with your unit but am not sure how, or some inspiration for food activities for a particular theme or festival, drop me a line - either in the comments, or at penelopespantry@googlemail.com 

Next up - chocolatey chocolate and pretzel cookies... 

Comic Relief Baking with the Guides

Last week I posted the Activity plans for our unit's Comic Relief bake. We baked and decorated the cookies tonight and the girls have been sent home, tasked with raising as much money with them as they can! 

I thought I'd share the pictures of one of my activity plans in progress. 

As an update - two batches of biscuit dough made 70 biscuits (well 74, but I forgot about the last lot that were in the oven) 

Comic Relief cookies: Activity plan

We've got a new guide starting on Tuesday, and I always like to make sure that there's something interesting happening when we know we have a new girl joining us. Especially if she's not been a Brownie. If you're not used to Guiding coming face-to-face with 20 noisy and slightly hyperactive girls that you've not met before can feel a bit overwhelming, so it's good to know I've got something in hand. 

Of course it's Comic Relief next week, so my thoughts have naturally hopped to red nose based baking (come back tomorrow for fairy cakes) In order to get all the Guides done with a batch whatever we made had to be a quick bake  - these take 15 minutes in the oven tops. As always they're cheap to make - 1 batch should make enough for 2 patrols of 6-8 girls, so you should only need 2 sets of ingredients. If you've got more than 24 girls I'd do another lot. 

	For reference, Guides are aged 10 – 14 Break the girls up into Patrols/ groups of 6-8
Red nose cookies
Equipment: Round cookie cutter/ or a clean cup or mug Baking trays Greaseproof paper rolling pin Mixing bowl Electric beaters or strong arms Clean hands
Ingredients: 750g plain flour 250g butter (Basics/ Economy butter is perfect – but make sure it’s well softened) 250g caster sugar 1 egg 1/2 tsp vanilla essence/extract This makes about 30 cookies (depending on your cutter size) so should split between 2 patrols of 6-8 girls. I've done costings for 2 batches, working on the basis of 4 patrols.	If doing this with Guides it is an ideal Patrol cooking activity – they could do challenges to earn or win the ingredients. Or you could challenge them to do the most creative Comic relief themed icing
Instructions: Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C Wash your hands Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy Beat the egg and add in Add the vanilla and beat again Add the flour in thirds beating well to combine Tip the dough onto a floured worktop/ a table Roll out until about 1cm thick and cut out as many circles as you can (with the cup, mug or scone cutter) before re-rolling the trimmings and repeating until you have used up all your dough Line your baking sheets with greaseproof Put the cookies on the tray and put them in the preheated oven for 13 minutes. If they’re not golden, then give them a couple more minutes.	Safety notes: Make sure that the girls are supervised in the kitchen.  And that they don’t leave you the washing up! For Brownies/ younger Guides – or if you have shorter meetings: You could make these in advance, and get the girls to ice and decorate them. You could even get rich tea biscuits and get the girls to decorate those if you don't have much in the way of space, time or kitchen equipment. Usual kitchen safety rules/ washing up apply.
Decorating ideas ·         Why not make glace icing, and use red food colouring to dye it red? ·         Or find the girls a selection of icing and coloured sweets and see what they come up with? Notes: You could always sell these as a fundraiser, I reckon you could sell them for 50p each – unless you’ve got some potential candidates for The Apprentice, in which case the sky’s the limit!  Costings - I've checked out on mysupermarket.co.uk and Asda is the cheapest, coming in at £6.02 for 2 batches which works out at 25p per head in a unit of 24 girls

A wondrous weekend: the Guides do Harry Potter

Source

We try to take the Guides away twice a year; once indoors in the winter, once outdoors in the summer. This weekend heralds our annual winter trip, excitingly in a new venue. Much planning has been done, crafts purchased, activities planned and voted for. The girls are excited, and spent yesterday evening painting room signs appropriate to the theme.

As QM (QuarterMaster - basically cook) I'll be doing the cooking over the weekend with the help of the Guides of course. The girls voted on the menu and the online shop has been done.

Friday night supper: Chicken or veggie Fajitas, wedges, carrot sticks, cherry tomatoes, cucumber sticks. Grated cheese, guacamole and lettuce to go with. Pudding is my snickerdoodle blondies with icecream or squirty cream

 

Friday bedtime: Hot chocolate

 

Saturday breakfast: Cereal, fruit juice, eggy bread (woohoo!) bacon/ turkey bacon, tea, bread and marmalade/ jam if still hungry

 

Elevenses: Fruit - apples, bananas, grapes, satsumas and Squash

 

Saturday lunchtime: Roast chicken, roast potatoes, vegetables, stuffing, yorkshire puddings, gravy. Nigella's chocolate cake baked in trays for pudding

 

Threesies (it's a legitimate meal): Biscuit and squash

 

Saturday teatime: Soft rolls with leftover roast chicken, tuna, ham, or cheese, carrot sticks, cherry tomatoes, cucumber sticks and lettuce. Pudding will be what we bake in the morning during our Potions class (see back next week for pictures and recipes)

 

Saturday bedtime: Hot chocolate

 

Sunday breakfast: Cereal, fruit juice, Jennifer's special pancakes, bread and marmalade/ jam if still hungry, tea

 

Elevenses: Fruit and squash

 

Sunday lunchtime: Sausages/ veggie sausages, baked potatoes, beans, veg, gravy. Pudding ice cream sundaes

All of this will be interspersed with vats of tea for the grown ups and lots of running around for the girls. See you on the other side!

Remembrance sleepover, batch cooked bolognaise

This weekend heralds Fourth Friern Barnet Guides annual Remembrance Sunday sleepover, seventeen girls and all 4 leaders will be parading on Sunday as part of the local Remembrance service. As I type I imagine (hope) neckers and t-shirts are being ironed, extra layers for under uniform being packed, school shoes being cleaned. And that's just me. 

As the girls are willingly giving up their Sunday to participate in something important, we have a sleepover the night before - we're combining our Confectioners badge with giant jenga, the chocolate game, and making poppy brooches. 

Tomorrow we'll be bag packing in our local Tesco to raise some much needed funds for the unit - we're in desperately in need of our own, lightweight Patrol tents, and other things like new baking equipment, sewing kits and some camp uniform as well as subsiding tickets for Wellies and Wristbands next year. We're hoping that bag packing will help us towards those targets, and we'll also be using the day as as opportunity to raise awareness of Guiding in the local area and with any luck, recruit some new Adult leaders. 

If you've got people being that busy then obviously you're going to need to feed them. We had a Guide chat with the girls on Tuesday and pasta seemed to be the general consensus - most are having it with a traditional bolognaise, some with a vegetarian version of the same, and a couple will have theirs with cheese and butter, but supplement that with carrot & cucumber sticks and cherry tomatoes. 

This meant, that while running a temperature and fighting off a fluey bug I found myself in Asda this afternoon with a list, a trolley and a single minded ambition to get the food for the sleepover sorted. 

In case you're wondering, to make Spaghetti sauces for twenty one people, your shopping list looks like this:

8 tins chopped tomatoes
8 cloves garlic
4 onions
1 large box (750g) mushrooms
12 peppers
12 carrots
Half a butternut squash
1 parsnip
Tomato puree
Oregano
Marmite
2 kg lean minced beef

Vegetarian Bolognaise

Dice 4 carrots, half a butternut squash, parsnip, 4 peppers and about 250g of mushrooms
Blitz 1 onion, 2 sticks of celery and 2 cloves of garlic in a food processor
Add oil to a large pan and heat up gently
Add the onion, celery and garlic and cook gently for about 15 minutes
Add the carrots, butternut squash and parsnip with a splash of water
Put a lid on the pan and let the veggies steam for about 10 minutes
Add the rest of the veggies, stir in and let cook down for 5 - 10 minutes (until the mushrooms start to colour)
Add 2 tins of tomatoes a large sprinkling of dried oregano, a tablespoon of tomato puree and a tsp of marmite
Leave over a low heat for about half an hour until most of the liquid has reduced

After this, I've put the sauce in a large foil tray, let it cool and will reheat in the oven tomorrow. I wouldn't usually use root veg in a bolognaise type sauce, but courgettes and aubergine are out of season and we work on a budget of £5 per head per day for food. The sauce I made today works out at £0.88 per head £18.49 in total. If you add the cost of the pasta in, it's £1.02 per head.

Bolognaise

Split the mince into 4 portions - for each portion, use the following quantities

Blitz 1 onion, 2 sticks of celery, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 peppers, 2 carrots and 100g of mushrooms
Cook down until softened
Add mince and cook through until browned
Add 2 tins of tomatoes, a large splodge of tomato puree and a teaspoon of marmite
Add a large sprinkle of oregano
Cook down until the sauce is thickened and the liquid reduced - for about half an hour or so

I did this 4 times, and working on the basis that one portion of that does 4-6 adult portions, I figure that we should easily accommodate 17 hungry guides and 4 hungry leaders. Please god let it, as there's now nothing else in my cupboards! 

And after all that... what did I end up having for my supper? You've guessed it

And if you've ever wanted to know what the shopping for 21 people for a 24 hour sleepover looks like...