Here we go!!!!

Meal Swapping:
We are hoping to make our lives a little easier by sharing meals.  Below are some guidelines to swapping.  If you know of someone who would be interested, please email me so we can add them.
  
What It’s All About:

We choose a main entree recipe that serves a family of 4 and then we make that recipe 3 times over. Our budget should equal around $10 a meal per family.  Sometimes we may spend more, but then the next month we choose a less expensive recipe to make. We exchange once a month.

The group can assigns food category (soup/chili/stews, Italian/Mediterranean, Southwestern/Mexican, American/European, Far East (Asian/Indian) and sometimes “Breakfast for Dinner”). We should bring 2 recipes to the swap meeting and we can all vote on the recipe we want and majority wins. That’s how we will decide on the menu for the month and then we swap the food we decided on the previous month.

We can communicate by email or this blog. Also we disclose family allergies.  The recipes we use can come from a variety of resources.

Meal swapping will hopefully provide tremendous time and financial savings, and simplified trips to the grocery store. But high on the list of benefits is that even in the midst of sometimes hectic days, you will no longer stress about what to make for dinner! 

Basic Group Guidelines:

We should pick a constant date and place each month to swap meals.

We make one recipe 3 times. Each entree should yield 4-6 servings. This is optimal for most families, to have leftovers. Our biggest family in the swap is 4 people.

Our entree budget is flexible, we try not to exceed $10 a meal.  But this budget does not include packaging. We are free to spend more, but the $10 should be the standard. We all agree quality is preferred. If you use product from our own gardens we count that the same as if we were to buy it.

The recipes we chose should be able to be cooked or reheated by one of these ways – grilled, broiled, stove top, crock pot, microwave, and oven.

Bring 2 recipes to the meal swap for the group to vote on.

Bring prepared meals already frozen to the exchange site in a large cooler or clothes basket to carry the food.

Package food in containers that are freezable. Not all our has group has stand alone freezers. So we should try to put most things in freezer bags whenever we can. We make sure we label all packages with the month/year, what it is and what it goes with. (Example: 3/08 – package 1. Beef Fajita Meat, 2. Beef Fajita Shells, & 3. Beef Fajita veggies.)

As for distributing recipes for the meal, email them to Misti and she will post them to our blog.

Meals should only take 2 to 3 hours to prepare and package. We want this to be as stress free as we can.

If someone will be out of town/unavailable for the exchange date, you should arrange an alternate plan with the swap coordinator. Maybe you could put it in your freezer to be picked up by someone in the swap group or opted out for that month. Talk with the swap coordinator if an occasion a rises about options if needed.

I am really excited about this and hope it goes as well as I think it will!