A days ago my best friend and I were sitting around discussing presents. I could give presents all day every day, if my budget allowed it. I’m not big on receiving them but I love finding that special something that a special someone will enjoy.

With that being said, it should be no surprise that I jumped at the opportunity to get on board with the Foodie Penpal Program that the Lean Green Bean hosts. To summarize (check out the links for more detailed information): you are assigned a random person out of over 1,000 participants and you send them a box of cool food. Someone else gets randomly assigned to you and they send you a box of cool food.

Cool, right?

Greetings from Vermont

The lady who was assigned to me (who sent me the package) was Janet from goal:handstand. She lives in Vermont and I specifically requested local goods. I got this box yesterday (or, by the time this post is revealed, it will have been last week, but that’s all semantics):

I know. Yum, right?! If that’s not convincing enough to participate in the program than I don’t know what is!

As I sit here typing I’m joined by a mug of coffee. It’s delicious, even in its present state: cold, sweetened lightly with vanilla almond milk. What, you don’t drink leftover cold coffee when you finally get the kids napping?

The roasters are Vermont Coffee Company, and here’s a blurb from their website: We’re a small-town roaster located in Middlebury, Vermont. We embrace fair trade relationships throughout our coffee business. We roast certified organic coffees, and we’ve developed a roasting style that creates Big, Bold Coffee! For us, fair trade is a philosophy, not a flavor. We treat coffee like produce, and we want you to enjoy it fresh.

You really can’t boast about local Vermont items without some maple syrup, right? This also happens to be my favorite way to sweeten coffee (have you tried it? You should). I rarely buy syrup anymore because I don’t want the junk kind, so I don’t anticipate this lasting long once the family sees that it’s here. What I mean is, if I let them see that it’s here.

Goats Milk Soap by Elmore Mountain Farm. It smells great. I’m putting out a warning that no one in the house is allowed to use it: it’s for smelling ONLY! Punishable by death.

Anyway, those are the highlights. There was a bunch of other thoughtful, yummy items in there as well but I wanted to show off a few of my favorite to keep the post from getting unnecessarily long. Here’s my public big fat thank you to Janet for the goodies!

My turn

My foodie penpal isn’t a blogger so I just wanted to share what I sent to Bethany, a beginner cook. In addition to prompting her to visit the site for easy to make recipes and ideas, I sent her the following crap:

Some of the homemade items included: dried herbs, as a savory seasoning; homemade granola; the ingredients for raw protein bars; and one of our favorite household staples: ridiculously nutritious spice mix.  I also included some guilt-free store bought snacks.

I won’t go into much detail about what I sent because I have a feeling future boxes will contain pretty similar ingredients and I don’t want to ruin the fun for everyone else.

 

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