Monday, February 2, 2026

Crème Brûlée French Toast

Each club in Venture Out participates in fund raising. The Ham Radio club started providing a crème brûlée French toast last year, and continued this season.

Servers on the line

We had a nice turn out -- about 160 tickets were sold, I think.

People were happy to get their plates of crème brûlée French toast!

Fellow volunteers were working in the back -- in the dish pit...

... in the baking and prepping area...

Michael is separating the individual pieces to make it easier to serve.


Monitoring the oven

A tray of French toast -- I think this is pre-baking.

The completed product with two slices of French toast, a sausage patty, blueberries, and whipped cream and a strawberry on top! The folks joining us for breakfast also got orange juice and coffee.

The proceeds from the club fund-raising events goes to the Social Board whose members are responsible for the budget for social activities in the park. The Ham Radio club may ask the board for funds for projects that they need (like a new antenna or radio for the ham shack) -- it may be funded from the proceeds of events that the Ham Radio club participates in, but the requested projects may need more funds than the club has generated this season. The Social Board may decide that the need of the club is worthy of funding the project from funds generated through activities of other clubs in addition to those generated by Ham Radio. The Ham Radio club is a relatively small club (probably 30-35 members) but provides services to the community for no additional charge to the community (e.g. parking direction assistance for special events like tennis or pickle ball tournaments, safety monitoring during 5K fun run/walks, parade assistance within the park) -- since the Ham Radio members have radios that they are legally allowed to use, they can be strategically positioned at various places in the park and able to communicate with others who are located in other places quickly and easily.

The crème brûlée French toast was very yummy! It is prepared the day before and the bread soaks in the pudding and butter/brown sugar mixture overnight before baking in the morning. Delicious!

Sunday, February 1, 2026

Friday night dance

We enjoy going to the Friday night dances at our community

At one of the dances recently -- the band was "The Campbell Band" made up of several members of the Campbell family (two sons, their father and uncle) along with other friends who have been "adopted into the family". They are a country-western band so we enjoyed line dancing and Arizona two-stepping!

A couple of our friends at the dance -- Carl took our pictures so I could send it to friends who have not come down this year (Liz and Jerry whom we visited in Iowas last summer). We're missing Liz and Jerry and are hoping that they may come next season!

Since it was a country western band, we wore the cowboy hats that we got when we became honorary Calgarians. They looked neat, but boy were they hot!