Thursday, March 12, 2009

And the Winner Is . . . . .

Congratulations to Carol Pungello for winning this year's Silver Spoon Award at the annual College/Shore District Spring Conference. The Junior Friday Club of Hightstown was host to this year's fun filled event, themed A Very Merry Un-Conference. Carol's recipe was so delicious, I had to put it on our blog for all to try.

Roasted Eggplant Spread
from the Barefoot Contessa Family Style

1 medium eggplant -peeled
2 red bell peppers, seeded
1 red onion, peeled
2 garlic cloves, minced (I cheated and used the kind from the jar)
3 Tbsp. good olive oil
1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 Tbsp tomato paste (add after roasting)

Preheat over to 400.

Cut eggplant, peppers, and onion into 1" cubes. Toss them in a large bowl with the garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Spread them on a baking sheet (I lined the baking sheet with non-stick foil) Roast for 45 minutes, until the vegetables are lightly browned and soft, tossing once during cooking.

Cool slightly.

Place the vegetables in a food processor fitted with a blade, add the tomato paste, and pulse 3 or 4 times to blend. Taste for salt and pepper.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

This is the Princeton Area Junior Woman’s Club favorite time of year. From September until the 3rd week in December, our goal is to fulfill the wishes of over 1,200 children of Mercer County’s Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS). We work tirelessly to make sure everything runs smoothly for these girls and boys who, at the very least, deserve to have their Christmas wishes come true. While others are out shopping for friends and family, you’ll find our members hanging wish tags on trees at MarketFair or shopping with carts overflowing with gifts bought with generous financial donations of members of our own community.

Princeton Area Junior Woman’s Club Timeline:

September

1) Contact all previous companies who participated in the Wish Tree project.
We check to see if they still want to participate.

October

1) Receive names and wishes, supplied to us from DYFS caseworkers, of what the children want for Christmas. A Committee goes through the list with a fine tooth comb to make sure that we have sizes, correct toy names, etc.

2) Contact Girl Scout of West Windsor, Plainsboro and East Windsor to make ornaments for our wish trees.

3) Work with our corporations, including PNC Bank in Princeton, Marketfair Mall, and CFMA who without them, this couldn't happen. They each generously supply a tree and collect presents for the wishes given to them. MarketFair, especially, handles the most gifts. Their employees and customers truly come to the aid of the less fortunate in a huge way. MarketFair even provides a room to store all the gifts we receive. Although storing presents sounds like a small endive, image 700+ wrapped gifts. It is a mountain of Christmas gifts.

4) Then we call the MOST important people Bohren's Moving Company. Each year, they generously donate time and a truck to move all 1200 + gifts from each company and take it to the DYFS Facility in Trenton. Without them there is no way that we could do this.

November

1.) Receive ornaments from Girl Scouts.


2.) Each member is assigned a tree. It is their responsibility to write gift tags with the child’s name, wish’s, casework, etc.


3.) Let the monitoring of the trees begin.


4.) Pray that people will donate money to pay for any wishes that are not being fulfilled. Thankfully our wishes get fulfilled too.

December

1) Crunch time. Monitoring trees to make sure the wish tags are moving quickly enough. Move wish tags from company’s trees to Marketfair Tree to make sure that the wishes are fulfilled.


2) Now the fun stuff. Whatever money has been generously donated, we now use for shopping. This is the best kind of shopping. Power shopping. We take the list of the children whose tags were not removed and shop for them. Members break up usually in groups of 2 and shop till we drop. It’s the most fulfilling shopping you will ever do.


3) Deliver any late drop off packages. Things happen and people are not able to drop the gifts off in time. So the members happily drop off any late gifts in time for Christmas. We have been known to drop gifts off on Christmas Eve.

You may wonder why we do this. Yes, we are crazy. But we are also mothers, daughters, sisters, friends and we know that this does make a difference, one child at a time. Do we wish we didn’t have to do this? Yes, our “Wish Tree” wish is that no one was in need. Unfortunately that hasn’t happened, so we are there. We are a small group, or as we have dubbed ourselves “The Small but Mighty”. If you would like to join us and make a difference, let us know at pajwc@aol.com.