Hobart Manns’ philosophy is rather simple:

“My priorities are ‘Does it taste good?’ and ‘Do you want seconds?’” The Portland resident has been a fixture at the Western Washington Sportsman’s Show camp cooking tent for 15 years.
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White has a half-dozen recipes in the recently released “The Scout’s Outdoor Cookbook” by Christine Conners and Tim Conners (Falcon Guides). One of his favorites is the Ding Dong Cobbler.
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The recipe layers Ding Dong snack cakes with yellow cake batter and cherry pie filling.

Oh, I just went into sugar shock from the description alone. Hmm. Cub Scout pack meeting tonight and I have to work late tomorrow. We have a campout at the Christmas tree lot on Saturday night. Maybe I can try this out then. Oh, I’ll be a hit. Hey, there’s even more good info in this article.

Preserve your veggies: For Manns, fresh veggies are a must. Thanks to a salt wash or some lemon juice, those veggies keep well two to three days into a trip. He uses “a quarter handful of a salt in two to three quarts of water.” He then uses that to wash potatoes to keep them from oxidizing. He also will precut vegetables, sprinkle them with lemon juice and then put them in a plastic bag. They stay fresh enough for stews, said Manns.
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Unusual tastes: Don’t be afraid to try something different. Conners said one of the most interesting Scout recipes, “the one that people laugh about the most,” is the Flaming Gorge Hot Dog.

You take a hot dog, and put it in a bun. Wrap it in aluminum foil, then newspaper and then put it in a half-gallon milk carton. You set the top on fire, “but, because of the wax paper carton, it burns slowly and it cooks the hot dog really well.” Someone had to give it a try once to see that it works.
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Bleed fish first: For anglers, Manns recommended they bleed their fish as soon as possible. “They are the only people who will eat something they’ve killed and not bleed it. They catch the fish, they bonk it on the head, then toss it in the cooler to take it home and eat it,” he said. “When you bonk it in the head, the blood settles in the flesh and you can’t get it out. That’s what gives the fish a gamey, rank flavor. If they bled that fish, it wouldn’t taste bad.”
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Can’t go wrong with popcorn: Having worked in Mount Rainier National Park’s climbing ranger program for 19 years, Mike Gauthier knows the value of a good meal or snack. That’s why he always takes along some popcorn, whether he’s hiking or climbing.

“It’s light, it’s dirt cheap and it’s easy to make,” said Gauthier, who supervises the program. “Every time I pull that popcorn out and make it in the backcountry, people love it.”

Gauthier uses regular popcorn, and cooks it in an oiled pan.

Wow. What a great article. Kudos to Jeff Mayor for collecting all this good stuff to share. Thanks!

Sitecore, the leading provider of .NET Web Content Management System (CMS) and portal software, today announced that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), the nation’s foremost youth program of character development and values-based leadership training, has deployed Sitecore’s Web CMS for their national and local sites. Sitecore’s multi-site management capabilities offer streamlined content management for all of their websites, while maintaining a consistent message and brand.
The BSA has hundreds of affiliated websites dedicated to serving the Scout community, ranging from the corporate level, with approximately 40 sites, down to local councils, with approximately 304 sites. mindSHIFT Technologies, a Sitecore partner, was selected by the BSA to achieve BSA’s online goals to obtain content management capabilities across all their sites. Sitecore’s Web CMS was chosen for its flexibility and ability to scale to hundreds of sites. Utilizing Sitecore, mindSHIFT and BSA developed a site creation wizard that allows for individual or region-specific content, while maintaining a united brand standard for site items such as fonts, colors and corporate content.
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Today, the BSA national site, www.scouting.org, offers rich content, updated web pages, RSS feeds and an internal search function. In a second phase to this project, mindSHIFT and BSA will implement Sitecore within 33 national Boy Scout sites, as well as the 300-plus local council sites. The sites will also expand in both functionality and accessibility by incorporating social media features to build the scouting community as well as develop a Spanish language version of their main site.

Didn’t Scoutingnews have an article a while back about a new social networking thing on the national site so you could converse with other Scouters? That must be the social networking thing they’re talking about.

I don’t know about other councils, but right now ours is updated by whatever volunteer you can lay your hands on. Does this mean my buddy’s work on the district part of the website will go down the memory hole? Will there be a tech person at every council? I know we don’t have that right now. I guess we’ll have to see.

About 700 girls in Spartanburg and Cherokee counties are on a waiting list to join the Girl Scouts, according to a local staff person with the organization.

Though many want to be Daisies, Brownies, Juniors and Cadettes, there aren’t enough Girl Scout leaders and other adult volunteers, said Teresa Foster, a community development manager with Girl Scouts of South Carolina - Mountains to Midlands.

Parents call and tell Foster they filled out a card, but no one has called about a troop.

“Our response to them is, ‘I’m sorry, but all our troops are full and we don’t have a troop for you, but we’re looking for more adult volunteers, would you like to volunteer?’ ” Foster said.

Some do volunteer, but Foster said many times the response is no. The parent may work long hours or have other children to care for.

So, what’s really going on? Are the girls not joining or are the parents telling their daughters they can’t join when they find out they have to do more than just drop them off at a weekly meeting? I actually agree with the GSUSA that leadership is important. I disagree with them on the method of teaching it, but I agree on the basic premise. Too many parents are gravitating toward an attitude of “somebody else will take care of it”. Maybe the GSUSA shouldn’t be spending so much time trying to figure out why girls are joining. Maybe they should be trying to figure out why parents aren’t stepping up to lead a troop. 700 girls on a waiting list? That doesn’t sound like a lack of interest from girls.

Representing every county in Connecticut, the board consists of life-long Girl Scouts, prominent community leaders, nonprofit and corporate executives, two university presidents and many board veterans. The 27 members who comprise the new board will draw from their extensive experience in Girl Scouting, banking, finance, communications, government, education, technology, marketing and strategic planning to lead the state’s largest girl-focused organization.

Members also have deep Girl Scout connections. More than half of its members have served on one or more Girl Scout council boards. Most of its female members were Girl Scouts as children, and served on the Girl Scouts of Connecticut’s interim board or nominating/development committee.
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Continuing the Girl Scouts’ commitment to diversity, the board includes members from the African-American, Hispanic, Asian-American and Indian-American communities.

Meh. I know this is important to some people, but I was told as a kid that race doesn’t matter so I pretty much stopped paying attention to it and it kind of shocked me how incredibly excited people were when our new President was elected. I mean, I understand the significance, but I just don’t think that way very much. I use the King approach: content of his character, rather than the color of his skin. One of my pet peeves with the Girl Scouts is they are so interested in what color everybody is. Nearly all the forms about registration and events ask what color and from which region somebody’s ancestors were. I wonder if the white South African kid in my Boy Scout troop gets to put African American on his BSA registration form?

The Connecticut Girl Scout page doesn’t even have the board announcement yet, which I found amusing. They do have this link to their reflections on the recent convention, though. I liked it, but it seems like most of the accounts about this subject make the convention sound more like a party than a business meeting. That’s fine. After all, the Boy Scout Jamboree is basically just one big party, with a little merit badge work if you want it. It just seems like the GSUSA can’t make up their mind if they want to party or work at the convention so they mix liberal doses of business and pleasure. It’s a good thing, just a little frustrating when you try to get details. Fortunately, we had Mary Ann Chick Whiteside keeping the info flowing so we got the details we needed.

Good luck to the new Connecticut Board of Directors. E Pluribus Unum.

A Girl Scout leader and her husband were arrested after an emaciated, terrified and nearly naked 17-year-old showed up at a gym with a chain locked to his ankle, saying he had just fled his captors, authorities said Tuesday.
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The boy said he had been held captive for nearly a year, said Ellis, adding that he looked as if he was only 10 to 12 years old.
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Police arrested Kelly Layne Lau, 30, and Michael Schumacher, 34, late Monday after questioning the couple.
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They were being held at the San Joaquin County jail in lieu of bail of nearly $1.2 million each.

Here’s the part I wanted to highlight.

Lau started serving as a local Girl Scout leader sometime in September, after a background check turned up nothing to cause concern, said Pam Saltenberger, chief executive of Girl Scouts Heart of Central California.

So, the woman was a leader for about 3 months and a background check was performed. Obviously, evil people who hide their actions beyond detection are going to find ways into organizations, but background checks are being done and this particular person wasn’t in a leadership position for very long.  For some reason the Girl Scout leader connection is front and center, but it seems pretty much irrelevant to this issue.

Update:

To enter for your chance to win send an email to contests@scoutingnews.org with “Theodore Roosevelt” in the Subject line by 11:59pm CST on December 10th, 2008. Each email will be assigned a number based on the sequence they are received, on December 11th a random number will be picked, and the winner will be announced and emailed on December 12th, 2008.

Entries must contain a name and valid email address, and you must reside within the United States. Email address submitted to Scouting News for this contest will not be stored, sold, or used; with the exception of notifying the winner.

There you go. Show Dan the love and enter his contest. You’ve got to support the sites out there that are giving you good info. Sorry, I don’t have a way for you to support mine right now. No, wait! I do. Just tell everybody you know to read my site. There. I don’t have any books for you, though. I’ll just give you info. How’s that?

By the way, this is also the web site where you can report illegal use of Boy Scout logos and terms.

Want to become an official supplier of Boy Scout stuff like AKD? Click here to find the details.

Neat! The FAQ on site also says that if your business is in a council’s service area (and I guess that means everywhere in the USA) you are allowed to make and sell stuff to your local council without having to get a standard license; you just have to get the okay of your local council’s Scout Executive. You can’t make stuff to sell to the public, though. This would be if the council wanted to buy staff t-shirts or printed materials. You could make and sell the stuff to the council without any royalties or an official license. The one loophole appears to be that you could make stuff that would be sold at your local council’s summer camp. You sell to the council; the council sells the stuff at summer camp. You just can’t sell stuff to the council that they would turn around and sell in their day-to-day Scout shop. With this local council agreement you’re allowed to use all the BSA logos and stuff. If you care about that sort of thing, like maybe the family in my troop that owns a print shop, you can get more details on this local council thing here at the licensing FAQ.

I need to stop. I’m like an info junkie on this subject now. I was wondering, what is a protected item according to the BSA? Obviously any of the logos, but what about terms like “Boy Scouts of America”? The web site give this helpful, and very extensive list.

Whew! As the web site says, “In effect, just about any mark that reasonably relates to BSA or its program is protected. Accordingly, anyone seeking to use any marks, words, or phrases, which may reasonably be related to BSA and its programs should contact the BSA Legal Department at 972-580-2000 to obtain permission in advance for such use”. Ahem. There is a spot on the site that says informational materials are exempt. Thought I was going to have to get a license for my blog there for a second.

Okay. I’m done. I need to stop playing with that site and move on.

Update: All right I said I was going to stop, but I couldn’t help myself. Get this: official caskets.

UPD has the only licensed Memorial Line with the BSA®. Caskets and headstones are coming soon.

They’ve got a bunch of wooden urns for your ashes. So, if you don’t prefer cremation, you’ve got to wait to die until they get the headstones done.

Jim Muller has submitted that he thinks his site is worth your time if you’re planning on camping in winter conditions. His site is dazzling in its display of snow as a backdrop to all his camping plans. He’s not even kidding, either. His recommendation for your camping experience? Snowshoes. We’re not talking some chilly, damp cabin. He’s trying to scale mountains covered in layers of snow.

I’m advising the Boy Scout in my troop who is coordinating the Snow Camp this year. One of the links I’ll be providing him with is http://wintercampers.com.

I always love the idea of constructing a snow shelter, but usually there’s just a few inches of snow on the ground and no drifts anywhere to experiment. I think I’m going to have to pack a bigger shovel this year to try to make a pile big enough to play with. It’s better than having my tent collapse on me like last time. We’ll see. And we’ll have fun.