July Foodie Penpals Reveal

July Foodie Penpals Reveal:

During one of my many hours of clicking through the abundance of food blogs that there are on the Internet, I came across a post about Foodie Pen Pals. I was intrigued. Basically, you sign up and then once a month you get linked up with another blogger, or foodie reader, and you send each other a food parcel. Sending and receiving food? This sounded like something I needed to be part of – so I signed up.

A few days later we were all paired up and I received an email from Zoe who introduced herself and asked me if I had any allergies or foods I was avoiding. Apart from artificial sweeteners, I said that I am pretty easy and I was looking forward to seeing what she would send me.

A week or so later, this lovely parcel arrived at my door.

As soon as I opened the box, it was really nicely presented with shredded red paper, but that cat had away with that before I had a chance to take a photo of it. Zoe decided to go with an Italian theme in the hope that is brought us some nice weather too, and it worked as we had sun the next day – although it didn’t stay for long.

I do love a theme, and Italian food is one of my favourites. The first thing that caught my eye was the olives and I opened them right away and ate them as a pre-lunch snack. They were very garlicy which is a plus in my book. Also included in the parcel was some heavenly raisin and hazelnut dark chocolate, some scarily moreish amaretti biscuits that had to be hidden after opening them as I couldn’t stop eating them, some coffee, bread that we used to make pizzas with, and then some rice, stock cubes and a risotto cook book which is brilliant. I haven’t used the rice yet, but I shall be modifying one of the recipes in the book this week and using the rice to make a risotto – I can’t wait. Thanks Zoe

This was such a thoughtful parcel and I am so glad I signed up to be involved, I shall definitely be doing it again next month.

I was also paired up with Joan, who I sent a parcel too. Joan had mentioned that she is looking for ways to eat healthier, so I thought I would send her some of my favourite healthy snacks from my favourite health store here in Manchester, Unicorn.

I can’t actually remember everything that I sent, but I made her some of my brownie bites that went down really well from the email she sent me when she received them, as well as the recipe so she can make them herself. I also included some apple puree that I use in baking instead of butter, some garlic sticks made from gram flour (great alternative to crisps), some brownie bars, sumac (as not many people have used it before), cocoa nibs (an alternative to chocolate chips), fruit puree, almond and rice milk and something else I am sure I have forgotten. They are all foods that help me stay on track, so hopefully Joan will find them useful too. You can read Joan’s write up of what I sent here.

Joan nearly received a cat. If you leave a box open for longer than 10 seconds, Chilli is in it.