My sister used to bake a cake with leaven, pull it out 15 minutes early, wrap it up good and ship it.
It would age with the leaven in transit, cure, and I would get it like it was 4 days old, but it was still chocolate cake from home! :)
I also thought that sending the Sunday Funnies was really good, sending a hometown newspaper, too
I offered to send a friend’s son a short wave radio so his kid could listen to Voice of America when over in Iraq...he looked at me and told me they had CNN, FOX NEWS and all cable stations!...am I that old??
My aunt, bless her soul, baked me a cake in a coffee can (a trick, learned in WWII to prevent it being crushed by the mail service) and shipped it to me in RVN.
I got it, sliced it up and shared...I forgot she was a terrible cook..troops gagged...accused me of attempting to poison them, but I still thanked her for the cake...got three more of them in the next three months...killed three NVA regulars, and destroyed a weapons cache with them...OK, the last part was BS, but the idea had merit, according to my guys. 8^)