***SOLDIER INFO***

I received some information on the soldier that we will be sending our goodies too. Here is the note that I received from Val (Team Just Add Nuts):

I have gotten info on this round's soldier: Dustin Forbush. He is a 20 year old marine stationed in Iraq for his first tour. He's expected to be home in April and will be marrying his high school sweetheart, Faith, soon after he gets home. Dustin's favorite goodies are chocolate chip cookies and banana bread. I asked Dustin's dad if there was anything in particular he would like to receive other than baked goods, in case someone has leftover space. He said phone cards and anything fun to raise group moral. I read something once about needing to send special phone cards to the troops though, or else they get charged way more minutes than they use. I'm trying to gather info on that to share, or if any of you know more about phone cards for troops, please forward the info. I had a question about what to send...that is always the question. I wish I had an easy answer but I'm kind of new to this too. Go with your gut. I would say send mostly what you're sure will travel well and maybe experiment with a couple of maybes...we will gather information about how things arrived where we can and together we'll build a list of good candidates for our shipments. On that note, if any bakers from previous rounds have received feedback, please pass it along to the rest of us. For my part, I have learned that the troops seem to prefer baked goods that are packaged individually or in small portions so that they can grab some and go about their business, so I am going back to individually wrapping my cookies for this round. I think I'll be including a self-addressed stamped envelope with a request to our soldier to give us some feedback about how things arrived this round, so we have a little more to go on next time. If I do that (and it works!), I will post the results for round 6. I know the soldiers are busy though, so we might just be left to guessing and learning from the rest of the bakers as we go.