Bake sales

This morning, as with other mornings this week, it has been foggy in my mind. Today there is a bake sale at PS 84 in support of the 5th grade trip. A year or so ago, I was presented with the need to supply a bake sale in the rainy dark of the night before. The miracle of eggs and sugar that become brownies was my standard response to such a situation but at that time my oven wasn't working so I needed a top of the stove solution to the bake sale problem. We came up with pudding and jello cups; a bit of market testing has since shown that jello cups are by far the more popular item. (see the "guidance" below for more details...)

So this morning I packed up the jello cups in the cooler in the fashion that I have worked out over a couple of iterations and was done with it. Not however the end of the story... It seems that packing up the jello had replaced packing Zora's lunch in my fog bound mind's automatic functioning (i.e. the standing order seems to be "pack something while making coffee" rather than "pack Zora's lunch while making coffee"...). So the rush to get out the door comes and Zora announces that she has packed her lunch because I forgot. (There is more to this, but it will turn up in Everything Else eventually.)

My kid is amazing!

Jello Cup Guidance (not a recipie)

• You get 8, 1/4 cup cups from a box of jello. The little disposable plastic bathroom cups work great.
  
• We did 2 boxes, lemon and lime mixed together, to get 16 cups. At $.25 each, that yields $4 to the sale. At $.83 per box plus cups (and spoons, see below), it is about a 100% margin (not sure how that compares to brownies...). Should have done 4 boxes of jello.
  
• I pack the cups in a small cooler in layers separated by cardboard. I can get 15 per layer and 2 layers in my cooler (hence the "should have done 4 boxes") (the extras provide quality control tests). My cooler has an ice pack that fastens into the lid. Cover the top layer so that drips don't collect in the jello cups.
  
• Don't forget the spoons (although if you do, the kids will figure out how to eat them anyway)