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Not As Good As Pork Cracklins

misadventures in cooking

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Bake Sale Success


Malawi is one of the poorest countries in Africa. But it's home to some of the most talented runners in the world! For Malawi's elite runners, the opportunity to compete in the U.S. is the opportunity of a lifetime. It's a chance to provide for their families, to buy medicine for sick relatives, to pay school fees for their children – and maybe even buy themselves a pair of decent running shoes!


Rogue Training Systems
is giving 6 athletes from Malawi the opportunity to travel to Austin to run the AT&T Marathon on February 17th. You can read more about these incredible runners on the Malawi Project Homepage.









The group that I am coaching is trying to raise enough money ($3,000) to support one athlete as an honorary member of Team A-M-E (Austin Marathon Experience) and we are well on our way! This weekend, we held a bake sale at the end of a 16-18 mile training run. There's not a better captive audience than a bunch of exhausted runners! In 2 days, we raised approximately $1,000!!!!!










Anna from Cookie Madness gave us some great advice:
giant brownies sell well,

Rice Krispie Treats are low cost/high profit margin,



and signage is important.


Starbucks donated coffee and one of our marketing strategies was to give "Free Coffee with the purchase of any baked good!"



They're runners; you have to offer something that reasonably healthy so they can offset the less-than-healthy :)


Isn't that some beautiful bread? I didn't bake it, but I can vouch for how fabulous it is!



Some big eaters and some big spenders, we were grateful to them all!






Lots of people donated their time, their energy and their money. There are too many names to name, so I won't try or I'd leave someone out, but THANK YOU~

Thursday, December 06, 2007

It's all about the packaging...

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Snowflakes



There is some sick similarity between Ironman, marathons, and cut-out cookies and it is this: after each event, I am likely to say to myself and anyone nearby, "Remind me to never, Never, NEVER do this again!"

But time goes by, the pain subsides, I forget my promises, start click click clicking around on the internet, and get tempted by what others are doing.

I keep seeing the most darling snowflake cookies! And so, having already made most of my inexpensive, easy to churn out recipes for this weekend's bake sale, I foolishly decided to give snowflakes a try.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. The only smart thing I did was to mix a half recipe, instead the full one. Impossibly difficult to deal with, I threw most of the dough away and ended up with only seven - count them ladies and gentlemen - SEVEN cookies that more resembled daisies than snowflakes. Ah, I thought brightly, not yet discouraged, a little royal icing and they will look festive and snowy! Baloney.

I am sticking with these. And if I ever say I'm making anything else, please wop me upside the head.