PUHI — Cookies from a cardboard box recently took on a new meaning for Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts on Kaua‘i. Landon Fleming, a quartermaster for Boy Scout Troop 334, said sometimes you have to cook where there is no
PUHI — Cookies from a cardboard box recently took on a new meaning for Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts on Kaua‘i.
Landon Fleming, a quartermaster for Boy Scout Troop 334, said sometimes you have to cook where there is no electricity, and his troop was showcasing how to bake chocolate chip cookies using ovens fashioned out of cardboard boxes and one made out of wood.
“You use charcoal briquettes,” Fleming, a Boy Scout for four years, said. “One briquette equals 10 degrees in a regular oven, so when you use the cardboard box oven, you figure out what temperature you need and that’s the number of briquettes you use.”
The chocolate chip cookies were a hit with visitors at the annual Boy Scout Makahiki, Saturday, at Kaua‘i Community College.
“It tastes pretty good,” a lady said after gingerly taking a bite out of a warm batch coming out of the cardboard box. “This is interesting, cooking with cardboard.”
The annual Makahiki, described as the oldest show in Scouting, is a showcase of the achievements attained by Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts around the island and each of the different troops and packs had different activities that spanned from technology to survival skills.
Scouts from Troop 168 competed with the chocolate chip cookies as “chef” Andrew Stem kept bringing over samples of a special malasada he created with other Scouts cooking the morsel over a propane burner.
Scouts lined up to experience a homemade hovercraft powered by a shop vacuum cleaner while others worked to fill two-liter pop bottles with water so they could launch homemade rockets on a specially created jig using compressed air from a bicycle pump.
The most popular event was the functional suspension bridge that has been a mainstay of the Makahiki through the years.
The people in line waiting to cross the bridge never ebbed and once a young person got on the rope bridge, the demonstration of teamwork and working together was clearly seen as Boy Scouts Troop 148 distributed themselves to act as bridge anchors and others as safety monitors for the bridge users.
“Scouting is a program that is needed right now,” said Debbie Lindsey, a parent and principal of Koloa School. “It teaches character development along with other skills children need to succeed in life. That’s the reason we’re in Scouting.”
William Arakaki, the Kaua‘i Area Complex superintendant, shared similar sentiments as he manned the food booth where visitors could help the Scouting program by whetting their appetites for burgers, hot dogs and cold drinks.
Arakaki, a leader of the Boy Scouts of America Aloha Council, said there are about 800 young boys in the Scouting program on Kaua‘i.
For more information, visit www.alohacouncilbsa.org.
• Dennis Fujimoto, photographer and staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 253) or dfujimoto@kauaipubco.com
