Harlow Auction 2012

Sadly, this will be the last year we'll be able to attend the Camp Harlow Holiday Dinner and Auction at Camp Harlow.  Because, next year, it will be moving across the street to the church as it's gotten so big, the gym at Camp Harlow can no longer contain the crowd of attendees.  That is a very good reason...

 

When you flip the page of the program and see your child's face within it, there's no surprise as to why we make this night a priority every December...

 

This was the view as you walked in - the spread of desserts ready to be claimed at the "Dessert Dash" (pretty enticing, huh?)

Another view, and of course, the man of the hour, Dave Mertz

 

Beautiful decor and trees were courtesy of Carroll's Country Christmas Trees =)

I volunteered to bring two desserts this year.  This one was relatively simple to put together, but ended up rather "purty"-

And, this was the dessert I tried in mid-November with my Bible Study ladies.  I made more of an effort to stack the crust higher to contain the caramel - and speaking of that caramel - this time around it didn't work like it was supposed to (twice!) - so I opted to boil some sweetened condensed milk in a pot for three hours.  It is the more "dangerous" option to achieve the same result that you'd have if you put it in a crockpot for 8 hours on low.  The "dangerous" part of it is the chance that submerging the whole can (minus the label) could cause it to explode.  Fortunately that wasn't the case, and at the very last minute I was spreading the delicious caramel (better than the original in my opinion) over the cheesecake and doing my own dash to get it to Harlow in time.

I need to also point out that this was the second cheesecake I put together in the span of twelve hours.  The first was put in the oven at around 5pm on Saturday night.  Unfortunately, I had such a bad headache that I had to give instructions to John on how to put the pre-prepared sour cream topping on and remove it from the water bath. 

I wasn't thorough enough in my instructions, and let's just say there were a couple of minor catastrophes that took place that evening while I was tucked away in bed.  (The burner accidentally switched on and ignited tissue paper nearby - and the cheesecake flopped inside of the oven bag it was enclosed in when John lifted it out of the water bath).   Oh man...

Round two - that was put in the oven around 6:30am on Sunday, turned out much better...

So much better, in fact, that I am going to shamefully point out (for the second year in a row!) my dessert was chosen first by a table that I had no connection with for $1100!!!!  No way, right?!  Let me just say it made all the hard work worth every minute.  There was some significant chatter about it too throughout the evening, apparently I'd made a good choice in picking a recipe that held some sort of appeal.... =)

On to the Riley table...

Left to right:  The Rileys, Jonna and Chris Leighton (Kenady's parents), Lisa and Dennis Quigley, and of course, Travis and Steph White - they've all been our dining companions for the last four years.

Some couples shots (and, by the way, this is John's camera that is now working...some of the settings could have been adjusted better -bad lighting- but, we are full of praise that his camera did not have to be sent off for warranty repair.  We think it got some water in it at the Championship Pop Warner game and just took some "time off" to dry out.

This is the dessert our table ended up with - individual tiramasu parfaits.  I think John and I were the only ones not smitten with the choice (John is not a fan of the pudding texture).  It's much harder than you think to find a dessert without citrus, raspberries, and coconut (all "no go's" among members of our table) that makes us all happy.

I'm not yet sure how much the auction brought in, but based on what we witnessed, I'm pretty certain they met their goal.    It was certainly a worthwhile evening for us -