Cartthrob report templates: using overall order data while in order items loop

Question

I'm trying to create a custom report. In it, I need a table with rows that would look like this:

 # Product   Order id Order date
 1 Partridge 1234567  2014-09-15
 2 Dove      1234567  2014-09-15
12 Drummer   1234567  2014-09-15
 3 Dove      2345678  2014-08-01
 4 Drummer   2345678  2014-08-01

Clearly this involves a loop over orders, and an inner loop over the items in the order. However, I haven't been able to access much of the order's data from within the item's loop. While i can see the order ID, I can't seem to access the date the order was entered; instead, entry_date gives the product's creation date, which is not what I want at all. Other attempts -- starting a second-level exp:channel:entries loop with the appropriate order ID, guessing at possible prefixes or containers for order data (like entry:entry_date or order:entry_date) haven't gotten me anywhere. The following is the code I've written for this so far.

<table>
{exp:channel:entries channel="orders"}
    {order_items variable_prefix="item_"}
        <tr>
            <td>{item:quantity}</td>
            <td>{item:title}</td>
            <td>{order_id}</td>
            <td>{entry_date}</td>
        </tr>
    {/order_items}
{/exp:channel:entries}
</table>

Answer 1

I just got an email from cartthrob support; they offered a solution: embeds. All the following code is from them.

In reports/.order_date I put:

{exp:channel:entries channel="orders" entry_id="{embed:entry_id}" limit="1"}
{entry_date format="%Y-%m-%d"}
{/exp:channel:entries}

THen I changed the relevant line in my report to say

{embed="reports/.order_date" entry_id="{order_id}"}

Inside the embed, the loops and other data from the main template don't exist; all I can see are the globals (like exp) and the parameters I pass in (order_id). Thus, using a quasi-loop within won't break anything, and I don't have to worry about anything shadowing my variables.