Friday, November 16, 2007

'Tis The Baking Season

The fabulous preschool Soup Dinner soup turned out to be just that (read the previous post to know what I'm talking about). And I made notes so I will know exactly what I did right. I just have to find the notes now...I put them on the counter of doom, so they've got to be here somewhere...shoot!

Thinking of preschool, for several years running I've been involved with our little co-op preschool and their annual day-before-Thanksgiving bake sale. This is the one big fund raiser of the year for this school, with the emphasis on BIG.

This bake sale is a huge seasonal event in our town, second only to the hanging of the lighted snowflakes on the power poles to welcome the skiers and their money to our slopes. The sale runs from 8am to noon, but is usually sold out before then.

Each family (and there is generally 16-20 families) is required to bake enough goods to equal a $90 profit. I usually bake about 6 pies, 6-8 loaves of banana or pumpkin breads, a couple batches of festive cookies and some cranberry bars. It is a ton of work not only because of the baking, but the goods have to be packaged to look like they fell out of an issue of Martha Stewart Living. Packaging and wrapping is not my strong suit as anyone who has received a gift from me can attest to.

So this year, since I'm fresh out of preschoolers, I don't have the bake sale pressure on me. Strangely though, I am so in the mode of baking my pants off at this time of year that I really am missing it. I volunteered to bring 3 pies to our family celebration even though there will be only about 7 of us there. I was worried that this might be a bit much but my sister assured me that there's no such thing as too much pie. I'm pretty sure she's right! I am also going to whip up a few pumpkin pies to drop off to the preschool as a donation, though I'll leave the wrapping and decorating up to them.

I guess it's kind of funny that when I'm not required to do something it's somehow a lot more appealing and fun to do.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mine have a 'cookery' class at school on Friday afternoons. They had to take a 'vegetable' in with them this morning. = not impressed. I'll wait to see what turns up later in their back packs this afternoon.
Cheers

Holly (2 Kids and Tired) said...

When the requirements and the pressure are gone, it's a lot more fun to do a lot of things! LOL. I'm sure they'll appreciate the donation anyway.

Cindy Breninger said...

If you feel you absolutely need to bake and need someone to eat all that baking, just let me know! :)
Cindy
www.adayinthelifeofcindy.blogspot.com

TheOneTrueSue said...

WOW. That's a whole lotta baking. Whew!

Karen Schmautz said...

Heh. too funny. I knew about the BIG garage sale you guys have every year, but I didn't know about the bake sale. I bet it smells devine with all that cooking going on. makes me feel like baking...