June Swap

We did it! Another excellent swap went down this past weekend with the MPLS Swappers. Prior to this swap, Kim posted tips for prettifying your swap items. The message was received! Let us relish a few visuals...

My contributions included this Orange Almond Cake made with the infused coffee olive oil I made for the last swap. This was my snack table contribution. I hope everyone read the name so they weren't surprised when they couldn't fall asleep that night!

I also made a giant batch of my pumpkin hummus. This time I altered the recipe to include a bunch of diced preserved lemons. Pretty much anything that we make in our house these days includes preserved lemons.

I also brought some jars of my blueberry lime sauce. I have come to learn after a few swaps, that sampling is key. People really get excited about what you have if they can taste it. However, sometimes I have a hard time tasting the jams or sauces when I eat them on a bread or cracker. What I really want is to just have a small taste of the item by itself. Luckily I happened upon these little sample spoons. I set them out with my sauce, saving the dirty ones after the swap so I can wash them and reuse them next time.

Another thing I realized is that it is great to include at least one of these little 4 oz. jars when I make a batch of preserves. They make the perfect size for sampling. And that way I don't have to worry about eating all of the leftovers after the swap when I really want to be eating all of the items I just got!

So, that brings us to the list of what I brought home with me in my foodie goodie basket.

For the 7 pumpkin hummus containers and 5 jars of blueberry sauce, I received:

• garbanzo bean tempeh
• cultured butter
• black bean brownies
• chocolate chip banana bread
• backyard horseradish mustard
• sundried tomato pesto
• sorrel pesto
• roasted pepitas and cilantro pesto (pesto was a popular item this time!)
• fig, fennel and lemon jam
• dandelion lavender jelly
• cranberry maple butter
• rhubarb hibiscus sauce

This time I just brought the two things, filled out the bid sheets in advance and didn't have anyone that came with me. All of these things afforded me time to chat with my fellow swappers a bit more than I have in the past. It is so exciting to be among people who are as excited about food as I am. So many of the swappers are so skilled and I am looking forward to learning from them. And, as with the previous swaps, I took away not only my basket of food, but so much energy and inspiration as well.