Foodie Penpals May 2012 – Hannah’s Parcel

This post was written by Hannah, the Foodie Penpal I was posting to this month. She has written some very kind words! Her whole post made me blush deeply, but I have left it as written and modesty be damned. The photos are my own, taken before I parcelled it all up and sent it on its way. You can find Hannah on Twitter – @hansyquirk.

This was my second month of Foodie Penpals and after the first fantastic parcel I received I was so excited to do it all again. The person I had been paired with this month was This Is Rock Salt aka Carol Anne, the fabulous lady responsible for Foodie Penpals in the UK.

After letting Carol Anne know my likes (everything) and dislikes (erm… nothing) I was luckily not left with too long to wait to see the foodie delights that would be sent to me and knowing how passionate Carol Anne is about Foodie Penpals and about food in general I knew that I would be in for a treat and I wasn’t disappointed….

Even before I opened the parcel I was excited by the fragrant, smoky, slightly sweet spice I could smell wafting from beneath the wrapper and was amazed to find a small tub of chilli powder that the incredibly talented Carol Anne had made herself! I love spices and have to stop myself throwing chilli in everything I eat so this was perfect. I’ve used it a couple of times so far but am waiting to pick a really special recipe to use more of it because I really think it deserves to be used properly- although I would be just as happy to use it as a nosebag the smell is that great! (CA: click the link to see the recipe for the very same chili powder)

Chili powder, gunpowder tea and garlic and chili vinegar

Not content with making just one item for me, Carol Anne also made some delicious chilli and garlic vinegar and some very unusual sounding turmeric sweets. Turmeric is another spice I really enjoy and use regularly but I have never seen it used in this way and was really intrigued by them. They actually reminded me of a slightly more savoury (although still sweet) crystallized ginger and I actually ended up finding them really addictive, the downside to this being a slightly tingly and bright yellow tongue so maybe a ‘maximum consumption’ rule needs to be applied! (CA: click the link for another blog post, this time about the turmeric sweets)

My other goodies consisted of some lovely little dried apple snacks and jelly babies as guilt-free snacks, some chocolate hazelnut Mikado sticks which I must have seen a hundred times but never actually bought but definitely will be again (the box also had a cheeky little squirrel on the front which has to make them a winner too), a jar of delicious Scottish lemon curd which indulges my sweet tooth to perfection and a tub of gunpowder green tea, something I really enjoy but only treat myself to occasionally when I’m out.

Semi guilt free snacks

Scottish treats

Carol Anne also included a pack of fantastic heart shaped foil petit four cases which I can’t wait to use and some lovely little edible gold star sprinkles to use in my (fairly newly) acquired love of baking.

The thought and effort that went into my parcel by Carol Anne absolutely blew me away and makes me so pleased I got involved in Foodie Penpals. If you’re not already, get involved and you could enjoy the delights of a surprise foodie parcel winging its way to you as well as making someone’s day by making up one for them.

Thank you Hannah for a great post – if you are still considering starting a blog, I know we’d all love to read more of your writing.

If you’re not already a participant, find out more about How Foodie Penpals Works and then go ahead and sign up here!

Foodie Penpals April 2012

Now, time for another Foodie Penpals post. This month my penpal was Nicola from The Fit Writer, and she sent me a great box with brand new things for me to try. Nic is, as you can guess from the title of her blog, interested in fitness and healthy eating, and her choices for me reflected this, as well as matching the list of my favourites that I gave her at the start of the month. Let’s see what was in the box:

This is the box after I tore it open and showed everything off to my colleagues, then tried to put it back together neatly for the photograph… It was really well wrapped and protected from the hurly burly of being in the post. Alright, I just wanted to say ‘hurly burly’.

I opened my wee card first, isn’t it pretty? Really summery and cheerful, just what I needed to perk up my morning! By the time I had opened and read it two of my colleagues were standing impatiently at my shoulder waiting for me to start opening the parcel. Parcel opening is a group activity at my workplace.

Maca power. I imagine many of you will have to look this up, as I most certainly did. Here is the wikipedia page to save you some time. To summarise, it’s a powder made from a dried Peruvian vegetable, which is used as a supplement and brings loads of health benefits including increased stamina, increased energy and it’s even rumoured to be an aphrodisiac. The less said about that the better, this is a family blog. By which I mean my mum and dad read it. It is also contains calcium, potassium, iron, iodine, copper, manganese, and zinc a and 19 amino acids. 19! You can add it to smoothies or into your cooking, or you can add it to baking – it’s supposed to have a lovely malty flavour. Looking forward to trying it.

Also, I’m not sure if you can read the label, but it says ‘Peruvian donkeys are so happy in every way you can imagine’. This in itself is a good enough reason to try it.

Next up, some tea for drinking and some tea for the bath. These two are primarily responsible for the glorious smell that came from the parcel, and that continues in my drawer at work where I left the majority of the Pukka tea bags. I named Pukka as one of the brands I really like, and Nic chose a kind I’ve never tried before which was excellent, I’m building quite the collection! The bath tea bags have lemon, may chang and green tea in them, and I have a wee off coming up during which I intend to take lots of baths and read books and possibly drink gin. The herbal bath tea will balance out the gin, right?

Here we have what are possibly my favourites of the parcel, though it’s hard to pick because the parcel was so varied and everything made me go ‘ooh!’ and hand it over to one of my colleagues who also went ‘ooh!’ and handed it to the third colleague who also went ‘ooh!’. The vanilla pod is a great addition to any parcel, they are so expensive to buy that I almost always use vanilla extract or, even, vanilla essence. For shame! Looking forward to choosing just the right recipe to lavish this vanilla pod on, or maybe I’ll make a jar of vanilla sugar.

The Festive Pie also had to be looked up, it’s made by what seems to be a rather lovely company in St Ives called Living Food – that’s a link to the site for the Festive Pie. It’s raw, sugar free, dairy free and gluten free. Moreover, it smells like Christmas pudding, but better. And the taste? Rich, fruity and BOOZY, which I bet you weren’t expecting. The top three ingredients are raw cocoa nibs, cranberries and brandy, and that is precisely what you get in the flavour. It’s also wrapped up in waxed paper which for some reason I really like. What a treat all round.

This is the final item in my parcel, which I must say was so full that I think Nic must have done some VERY canny shopping. It’s a jar of gomasio, otherwise known as sesame salt, which is a mix of ground, roasted sesame seeds and sea salt. Such a simple thing, but I can already think of so many uses for it! I’d never heard of gomasio before now, even though I really enjoy Japanese food and it is a Japanese Thing. I think I can add it to my list of types of salt, which is already very substantial, and I’m looking forward to using it to season strips of beef, sprinkling it over Pad Thai instead of peanuts and perhaps even adding it to some chocolate chip cookies, in the style of this Joy the Baker recipe.

We opened the jar when it arrived to sneak a wee taste of gomasio, and I only just managed to wrestle it back from the other two ladies who were most enamoured with it…

There we have it, Foodie Penpals has done it again! Than you so much, Nicola, for a really thoughtful parcel that I had great fun opening, and for introducing me to lots of new things. I was sending a parcel to Jennie at Jennie is Happy – I think she liked everything but you can get the lowdown straight from her. You can also check the linky page on The Lean Green Bean to read other Foodie Penpals posts from this month.

If you like the sound of Foodie Penpals (and why wouldn’t you?) you can join in too. If you’re in the UK or Europe, you can sign up with me – all the information is on the Foodie Penpals page. If you’re in the US or Canada, you can sign up with Lindsay at The Lean Green Bean. Look forward to adding you to this list!