I really like to make desserts, especially truffles. So when Mother's Day came along I realized that this would be a great thing to make my mom!

 Ingredients:

300g high quality dark chocolate (you could use milk chocolate too)
300mL heavy cream
100g dark chocolate for dipping (again you could use milk chocolate)
your choice of toppings to roll your truffles in. I used peanuts, chocolate shavings and sprinkles

     Directions:

 1) Heat up the cream in a small saucepan.

 2) Break up the chocolate in a medium sized bowl.

 3) Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and stir until itmelts. This is called ganache.

 4) Let the ganache cool in the fridge for a least three hours.This is going to be the filling of your truffles.

 5) After the ganache is done cooling, it should be firm enough to shape into spheres.

 6) Melt the other chocolate. and get your topping into individual bowls.

 7) Dip your spheres into the melted chocolate. The two spoon method works well here, unless you want to get messy.

 8) Right after you dip your sphere, roll it in your selected topping. Then repeat for the other truffles

I hope you enjoy this truffle recipe as much as I do!

 I recently read an autobiography called "A Stolen Life", written by a courageous woman named Jaycee Lee Dugard. Jaycee Lee is now 31 years old, has two daughters whom she loves dearly, and is surrounded by friends and family - but her life was not always as charmed as it may seem.

When Jaycee Lee was 11 years old, she was tazered from a vehicle on the way to her bus stop, and then abducted by a man and his wife. For several years, Jaycee Lee was forced to live in a tent (and later a shed of sorts) in the man's backyard, while he repeatedly molested, abused, and raped her. While in captivity, Jaycee Lee was impregnated twice by her kidnapper (the first time at the age of 13!), and delivered her children in the backyard, without painkillers or any assistance, other than from the kidnapper himself. 

It was 18 years after her kidnapping before Jaycee Lee was discovered, and freed to go home to her family, along with her two daughters. Her kidnapper and his wife are now in prison, serving life sentences. Jaycee Lee wrote a book about her experience to show the world just how gruesome her time in captivity really was. However, Jaycee Lee makes it very clear that she is not a victim of her situation, but a survivor. She is currently back at school and working towards a career to support her and her daughters, and hopes to even find love someday. She has taken her terrible circumstances and turned her life around for the better. She is a symbol of hope, and in my opinion, an incredibly strong, brave woman who well deserves the title of a role model.

As I’m sure you are all aware, it is Girl Guide Cookie season!

As part of my unit’s work towards earning our Chief Commissioners Gold award we hosted a Cookie Blitz on Saturday. We invited a few other units from the surrounding area. We met at the local community hall, handed out route maps so the girls could go door to door, and counted the money at the end of the day.  There was a lot of work and planning involved.

One of my tasks for the Blitz was to provide refreshments for the 40 girls, their parents, and the volunteers. Fortunately, I was able to dig up the original Girl Guide cookie recipe from the national website. This is the recipe that started it all, and helped build cookie sales into Girl Guides biggest fundraiser.

This recipe from 1927 belongs to Christina Riespman. It makes a lot of cookies (one batch fed everyone at our event), and they are super delicious and insanely addictive.

Why don’t you make some for your cookie sales, or just a unit meeting?

What a delicious way to celebrate guiding!

Christina Riespman’s 1927 Cookie
Recipie

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

3 eggs

2 tablespoons cream

Pinch of salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking powder

3 or more cups flour to make soft
dough

1)      Cream butter and sugar

2)      Beat in eggs and cream

3)      Combine salt, baking soda, baking
powder, cardamom and flour.

4)      Sift dry into wet ingredients and
mix into dough

5)      Roll and cut, using a small floured
glass or cookie cutter.

6)      Sprinkle with sugar and then bake at
moderate heat, until done.

Enjoy!

Does anyone else have that problem where they’re supposed to do what they love and build a whole high school identity off that – and yet, they don’t know what they love?

 If we do have an idea at all of who we are, it’s constantly changing and never static. So I think it’s pretty hard to figure out what you love to do, what you really love to do, when you don’t know who you are or what you want. That is, unless you’ve been raised from the age of three doing dance competitions or playing hockey non-stop, then it’s probably set in stone.

 In high school I revved everything up by joining every possible club and committee there was. I was sick of elementary school, and once I was free to be one fish out of all 1,200 at my school, I seized the chance to be anonymous.

 I learned a lot from grade nine, since I was part of so much. I treated the school like my stomping ground – I played three sports, went to leadership camp, did far more than my mandatory forty hours of service – but one thing I didn’t learn was what I loved to do. It was only this year, when those hours of club meetings started falling apart, as I started to drop out of ones I didn’t enjoy, that I began to stop hating the fact that I didn’t have any one thing to my name: I was, and am, a pell-mell of a million different characteristics. I used to see that as a lacking of identity, because there was so much pressure to be somebody and to stick a label on it.

 I’m still someone who is all over the map in every single way, and I am still using my world as my stomping ground, but the thing that has changed is the way I see it. I’m not only a rugby player or only a writer or only a bad singer or only any one thing. Everyone’s a lot more than that. Just because you can’t find a label for what you love to do, doesn’t mean you’re not a person. 

 I’m kind of sick of labels. Who you are doesn’t need to have a word attached, and if you really need it to have one, the only word I can think of that should always be attached to any given personality is happy.

 Love what you do – your life. Do things that make you happy, and if you can’t find “your thing”, don’t stress. It will come. Forget about words, and labels, and superfluous things that high school is all about, and just go with your heart. It sounds cheesy but it’s true:  find that passion, and you’re set.

 Do what you love, and if you don’t know what you love, then set sail all over the map to find it. The winds won’t let you down.  

Love always,

Catherine

This week Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Tumblr have all been blowing up about Kony 2012. Joseph Kony is a leader of the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army). The group Invisible Children has made a 30-minute video to make Joseph Kony famous, in an attempt to raise awareness about his crimes, and gain support for his arrest.

If you haven’t seen the original video you can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

This video has shed light on some of the horrible things that have occurred in Uganda. According to the video, over the past 26 years Kony has kidnapped almost 30,000 young girls and boys. He trains the boys as soldiers, and the women as slaves. They are forced to kill their own parents and mutilate people’s faces beyond recognition. Invisible Children wants Joseph Kony captured and brought to justice, as he is on the International Criminal Court’s list. On April 20they want to plaster cities around the
world with KONY 2012 posters to raise awareness.

However, this video has also been getting a lot of hate. There are comments asking why people are suddenly so willing to help out abroad, when there are so many other issues around the world that we have ignored for so long.

There are concerns about Invisible Children. Its reputation has been called into question. The action plan provided in this video is very vague. What exactly are we doing with our new found awareness of this issue, other than raising more awareness on April 20? What does Invisible Children think the government should do to resolve this problem? What do their donations do to help people?

I watched an interesting response video by a Ugandan Woman (you can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDyfTnydhMU), who doesn’t think other countries should be interfering with this problem.According to her, the only way to fix many of the problems in Africa is to stop giving hand outs and constant assistance, and instead give Africans the tools to solve their own problems. Interference by well meaning groups often causes more problems than it solves. 

Does the United States have the right to interfere in other nations’ affairs? Is military action the way to bring peace to a nation?

There is also the issue that Joseph Kony has been laying low since 2003. It is estimated he has few followers, and he is no longer in Uganda. Has this issue passed us by already? Is Invisible Children the right way to support the cause of bringing peace to Uganda?

Obviously this video has merit. Before March, I had never even heard of Joseph Kony. He may have been at the top of the International Criminal Court's list of most
wanted criminals, but he had never been on the cover of People or Us. What he did to those 30,000 children in unforgivable, and they should not be forgotten. There is no question that raising awareness about this man’s crimes is important. But, there are still a lot of other things to consider. I have still yet to fully form my own opinion about this topic.

I encourage everyone to watch the video, read other points of view, and then form your own opinion on this topic, and then comment and let me know what you think.

Helen