A Favourite Widji Dessert

Summer at camp is a great time to eat lots of food and even for dessert. At camp we gather together three times a day seven days a week to eat together like a big family. For the past two years one of the favorite camp desserts at Widjiitiwin is one that is unnamed but always enjoyed. Here is the recipe for you to be able to enjoy it at home. 

Bring to a boil:   1cup brown sugar

                            1 egg

                            ½ cup margarine

Add:      1 cup graham cracker crumbs

              ½ cup cocoanut

              ½ cup walnuts (optional- at camp we don’t put in the nuts)

Line an 8x8 pan with whole graham crackers. Pour first mixture on to. Cool before covering with icing. 

Icing ingredients:

              1 cup icing sugar

              1 tablespoon custard powder

              ¼ cup oil

              1 teaspoon vanilla

              Milk to moisten

 

Hope that you enjoy it as much as we do at camp!

Palooza

Head Cook

Widji Traditions/Culture # 2

Fruit Social – Each week we have Blast or Sizzle camps we have a Fruit Social. After chapel the kitchen staff lays out large trays of fruit for Sunday night snack. While that happens the campers and staff go down to their cabins to get “ready”. The sound guys and program staff set up the lights and get the speakers humming because pretty soon there will be lots of loud music and planet of dancing campers and staff. It's a little like grade eight dances, at least when I was younger. You know when almost no one is out at the beginning and then they all dance. Usually there is a group of energetic staff that get it all going.

NOPA – each Friday night at dinner for Blast and Sizzle we dress up and have a nice dinner together. Almost everyone dresses up in something nice. We’ve even had a few tuxes. I store a suit jacket behind my office door just so I’m ready, although it doesn’t always go well with the shorts and t-shirt I have on hand. This event used to be called Copa when it was important for campers and staff to have a date. Nopa is a “No Date” version of the old Copa. Campers can sit anywhere for this meal and enjoy the company of people they don’t usually get to sit with. We recently added to it that the cabin leaders serve the campers at their table.

Cabin Clean-up – Every morning after breakfast the campers and cabin leaders go from breakfast to clean up their cabins. The goal is to score as high as possible for the ultimate goal of winning the end of the week ice cream sundae party. They can get up to 10 points each day for the regular cleaning like beds made, lights off, windows open, floor swept, etc. There are also bonus points available if you can figure out what the camp medic likes as a treat. Some options for the bonus points are letters and poetry, pictures, videos, music playing, candy, chocolate or other Tuck items. Some cabins and leaders are very good at it, others not so much. New this year - any score under a “4” means the cabin loses dessert that night.

Signing Cabins & T-shirts – Widji has a tradition of allowing our campers and staff to sign their bunk and even leave a word of encouragement for others. There are signatures going back many years and generations. We have had parents bring their children to camp who were able to show the kids where they signed their name at camp when they were campers. We have a great tradition of multi-generational family camping. We also sign the camper t-shirts they receive as part of being at Camp Widjiitiwin. Saturday mornings after we watch the weekly camp video, all the staff use sharpies to sign their camp names on the camper's shirts. Parents tell me these become prized possessions once they get home. Campers wear them coming back the next summer as a badge of honour.

Mortal Combat – This event is for Sizzle only. It’s a rite of passage like the wake-boarding/water-skiing we also do just for Sizzle. Mortal Combat is a massive pillow fight competition that comes down to the last person to triumph over all comers. It happens late at night and is a long standing tradition at camp. Men have been made by their standing or achievements in Mortal Combat. Everyone starts out at the beginning and are eliminated round by round until one champion emerges and is crowned the winner.

Widji Traditions/Culture # 1

Named Meals – Sub Sunday, Taco Tuesday, Waffle Wednesday and French Toast Fridays, I tried to change some of these my first summer to great resistance. I did manage to add diced chicken to the Taco Tuesday meal, but the rest are well intact.

Dream Scream – happens on Friday nights after the campers have gone to bed. Cabin leaders hype it up to their campers that the girls/guys are going to get one over on the other end. Little do the campers know that both ends are planning the same activity for the same time. The boys “sneak” across the lower field while the girls “sneak” past the Longhouse to the boys end. When they get to the opposite ends they scream to wake up the other campers and then run all the way back to their cabins “knowing” that for sure they did a great prank.

The Longhouse is loud most of the time – you get used to it after a while, but it can be overwhelming at first. It ranges from excited voices trying to convince the leadership staff that their table should go first up to the buffet line to cheers for their cabin mates, to mail call antics and various rhythms being tapped/banged out on the tables. Sometimes it’s very good, sometimes it’s just loud.

Meal time freeze game – to determine who in the cabin has to wipe the table and clear the dishes, cabins play the freeze game. This usually happens after they have gotten into some difficult to hold pose and the cabin leaders yell “freeze”. Campers can then be maneuvered into even more uncomfortable positions by their cabin leaders, other staff and sometimes other campers. The object is to stay as still as possible and hope that someone else moves first. The first person to move cleans up. I’ve seen a group of campers go most of a meal time in the frozen position and keep going even when their food is getting cold. On Saturday morning, The last day of camp, the campers get to call freeze on their cabin leaders and turn the tables on them.

Morning Monkeys – each morning before breakfast 1 boy’s cabin and 1 girl’s cabin duel it out to determine who gets to go in first for breakfast. They need to demonstrate something to the rest of camp and have them play along. A lot of spandex gets put on during these demos. Sometimes it relates to the theme of the week, sometimes to an event that has happened. Many are good and creative, some are lame. The SALTer cabins will also get involved with these and take a turn to win the right to go in first. Judging is done by the program and leadership staffs after the wise sayings have been delivered.

A wise man/woman once said… after the cabin leaders finish their Morning Monkeys demo, they head up to the top of the Longhouse tower to deliver their wise words. Once the wise words are delivered judgment is made and the winning side gets to go into breakfast first. Like so much at camp, some great advice comes from Yoda, “Do or do not. There is no try”.

Widjiitiwin Basketball which I have already blogged about, so see an earlier post or our Widji Ball Facebook page at www.facebook.com/WidjiitiwinBasketball and view the new video

The Last Two Weeks

In the last two weeks at Camp Widjiitiwin we have welcomed 45 summer staff, 22 TNT campers, 21 SALTers (3-week camp leadership program), we’ve served 2,739 meals, made 5 trips to the Huntsville hospital for various injuries, had 14 chapel services with 8 different speakers, sung 100’s of songs, done 20 cabin devotion times, had 8 staff prayer meetings (usually at 7:00 am), done 5 rest periods (for some), had 1 sleep in morning, won Widjiitiwin Basketball (30-11) against the MBC summer staff, did 1 torch relay and a ceremonial Olympic flame lighting, sent our SALTers on a canoe trip to town and a rock climbing trip plus a service day of a free car wash at Canadian Tire in Huntsville.

And all of that equals 2 campers accepting Christ as Saviour. Equals TOTALLY worth it.