Bannock

Because a few staff had to leave early for school, scheduling was a little creative this week. There is always a mistake here or there, so it wasn't surprising yesterday afternoon when we realized that we had scheduled Counselor E to be in 2 places at once this morning. "Who can we have teach his boys sports?" The answer was me. Me and ten 10 year old boys playing a sport...

I like to lead activities and I enjoy the opportunity to hang out with kids. But I'm not an athlete, I don't know how to play sports and I was totally at a loss of what I was going to do with them. I briefly considered googling the rules of soccer and then I decided I would rather rip all of my hair out than play that, so I came up with the best plan of all. I switched with Counselor N who was supposed to teach them fire building first hour. He taught them sports first and I took over plans for fire building 101. It was a win win since he was dreading that activity.

Instead of just building a fire, I decided we should cook something too. After all, what's the point of a fire without doing something with it? So I decided we would make bannock.

I've heard of bannock many times, but I can't say that I've ever actually made it myself. However, with google, self confidence and the right spirit, no one knew this was a first time thing.

3 cups flour, 2 tablespoons baking powder, a little bit of salt, a little bit of butter and some water. I decided to also have them add cinnamon too. I mixed the dry ingredients first and we divided them into ziplocks and then added water. I found a HUGE frying pan in the camping supply shed and grabbed a big container of Crisco from the kitchen.

Once the kids had mixed the dough in their ziplocks, we cut the corner off and squeezed it onto the frying pan. I'd also brought a big bag of powdered sugar, because I could pretty much eat anything covered in powdered sugar.

The bannock turned out sort of like a pancake, with more of a bread texture. I was SHOCKED that it actually tasted really good (I'd expected something like cardboard). The boys loved it and kept saying, "I'm so glad we signed up for this activity". The dogs loved it because they got to eat all of the scraps and I loved it because it wasn't soccer!

I have been in the office a lot this summer. Between ACA re-certification and Operation Purple paperwork, I feel like the summer has passed me by in a mess of paper and emails. I miss leading activities, doing special things with kids and actually having fun. I'm sad that it is the last week and this is one of the first times I have done anything active. I am going to try to make more of an effort to schedule those times into my day next year. And yes, I am already beginning the countdown to summer 2011.