Food Swaps: Like minded foodies converge.

When I see the announcement go past my news feed on Facebook that a new Food Swap event is occurring, I mark the ticket sale date on my calendar right away. Woohoo, it's exciting!! I soooo look forward to the BK Swapper food swap! Tickets are actually free to this event, however, getting tickets for the BK Swapper event is coveted by many, and from my experience, it's hard to get in. I usually get wait listed, and then when people drop out, I get into the event. This has happened to me the last two events I went to.

The BK Swapper event is well organized and is a lot of fun. Many people bring their A game. They make such incredible foods to swap with like minded folks. I spotted this really unique food item, "bacon infused vodka"! Wow, I wonder what that tastes like!

I brought with me 6 jars of my Angry Mimi's Hot Sauce. I have the recipe here.  I brought it to my last swap event as well, and it traded well, so I decided to bring it again. The actual "swap time" is a little frenetic. Even though we have slips of paper next to our swap items where people can write what they would like to swap with you, when we actually start swapping it's crazy! I always feel overwhelmed with the actual swapping process. But this time around, I looked at my swap paper carefully and was able to swap with everyone on it. Check out my cool haul!  Chocolate pecan bars, limoncello, chocolate sauce, lavender lemon soda, chai almond butter and butternut squash butter! What's so fun about these types of swaps is that ever time you come home with something completely different to try! I can't wait to taste all my goodies!  

Food Swaps: BK Swapper Event: Part 2

I meant to post this awhile ago, but I became extremely busy. Here are photos from the BK Swapper event that happened back in December.  This was the big Holiday food swap event so everyone brought their A Game.  Everything looked amazing, it was hard to choose what to swap for!

As always, I was so incredibly impressed with all the goodies that people brought. Like really impressive DIY foodies in Brooklyn!

Like seriously! Look at this table of homemade good! Wow and wow! I brought my homemade hot sauce to trade, here you can see people checking out my hot sauce in the middle of this photo. I had a little bowl of hot sauce for people to taste it. I find this helps with easier trading, because other swappers get to taste what you bring!

Doesn't this look just incredible? Lots of people had tasters as well. So many different kinds of pickles, hot sauce, jams, mustards, chutneys you name it.

There is also a table of pot luck items that guests bring, it is afterall a party!

And here is my haul! I got a bloody mary mix, a salsa verde, a hot sauce, pickled cranberries, banana nut bread, pickled jalapenos, and a bacon jam. I opened up a bunch of jars when I got home, yeah, really yummy stuff! I can't wait for the next swap!

Food Swaps: BK Swapper Event: Part 1

One of my favorite local foodie events are the food swaps hosted by BK Swappers. I've written about them before, here and here so I'm not going to get into full detail about what a food swap is. Essentially in a nutshell its where you make homemade food items to barter and swap your goods with other foodies. It's a lot of fun and a great way to try out some amazing food and meet some cool people. For this food swap, I decided to make this Indian relish and this new green hot sauce recipe I came up with recently.

I've always wanted to learn how to make Indian relish condiment that you get when you order Indian food. It's spicy and sour at the same time with a huge onion kick. So when I found this recipe, I was super excited.

It's super easy to make and looks and tastes just like the one you get from the Indian restaurant. I love the color of the Paprika.

Here are the ingredients for my Mean Mimi's Green Hot Sauce. Everything I put into this hot sauce is... you guessed it right.... GREEN.

The only thing not green in this recipe are the onions, garlic and honey. I love making this recipe because it's so easy. You roughly chop all the veggies and sauté it in a pan until soft.

Then you throw all the ingredients into a blender and puree until smooth.

Isn't this a gorgeous color? It tastes amazing too, hot, spicy and a little sweet from our local honey.

I bottled these up for the swap in these cute bottles I found from a local store.

And here are all the jars ready to go to the swap! A cute and easy way to decorate canning jars is to use cupcake liners. Easy peazy. :) Stay tuned for my next post about the actual food swap!

BK Swapper Event

Yesterday, I went to my first Brooklyn Swapper event.  BK Swapper is an event where foodies bring their homemade goodies to swap with other foodies.  Typical items are jams, condiments, chutneys, pickles, salsas, sauces, candy, flavored oils, and baked items. Wow, it was so much fun to meet people who loved to cook and share ideas and recipes!  I never realized that Brooklyn had so many people who loved to can, preserve, and talk about food! I've been wanting to meet more people who was just as obsessed with canning as I am.  This was heaven! 

There were these long tables set out for us to display the homemade items.  There was such an amazing variety, it was hard to choose what I wanted to trade for!  I had only brought 4 cans of Heirloom Tomato Salsa, now I'm wishing I brought a whole lot more to trade with.

The trading worked like this.  You put a piece of paper next to the items you brought.  Then people who want to swap with you put their names on your sheet, and if you like what they have you can initiate the swap.  How fun is that?

The tomato salsa I brought can be seen on the left here of this image.  I canned them in 8 ounce jars.  Next to my jars, my friend Aimee brought her amazing fresh figs from her backyard fig tree.  Yum!

Someone made hot sauce with Habaneros!  I scored one of these!  I can't wait to try it! 

In addition to the fun swapping, there was also a pot luck.  The pot luck was amazing, I was so impressed with what everyone cooked for the swap.  There was rice balls, a pear / fig tart, berry bars, tamales, chips w/ dip, bread with dipping sauces, salad, and I brought some of my sweet dill pickles.  So impressive, I mean, someone actually made tamales!  Wow!  This is a photo of the pot luck table after we started eating, a lot of the food was gone by the time I took this photo. 

This is what I scored from the swap.  In exchange for 4 of my salsas, I got a bottle of chive oil, a bottle of hot sauce, a jar of blueberry jalapeno jam and 2 cheese babka muffins!  I can't wait to try everything!  This was the most fun event and I found out they have these every 2 months!  I am soooo going to the next one!  Next time, I have to bring more items to swap... For sure!  If you don't have one of these types of swaps in your area, start one!  All you need is a group of like minded foodie friends and a place to meet and swap your homemade goods.  I guarantee that it will be lots of fun!