Foodie Exchange: my first parcels!

Who does not like gifts and surprises? How not to mention when you receive an email, a text message, a packet full of surprises? It’s like reliving for a moment the magic of Christmas, or birthdays when you’re a child, when you can’t wait to unwrap the presents and see what lies beneath the colorful giftpaper.

So you can imagine my happiness when I discovered – through Mardi from Eat. Live. Travel. Write – the Foodie Exchange group, a group founded with the intention to merge foodies from all around the world, canceling out the distances, through the exchange of local products.

The rules are few and simple: you give the availability to exchange, you arrange it, exchange your addresses and go hunting for local and tasty products, for an amount of 10$ (for convenience I’ve made the conversion to 10 €), prepare the packet and entrusts him to the post office (fingers crossed!) and wait for your little chest full of surprises (fingers crossed again!). This week I got the first two packets!

Let’s start with the first, by Andrea from High, Low, Food, Drink, from New York City!

A parcel full of goodies: pretzels frosted with yoghurt, sweet and savoury at the same time, altought the taste is fairly new for our tastes, they are so good, I’m munching on them now while writing, then the New York Taxi Treats Shortbread, shaped like a New York taxi cab, 2 special lollipop, one peanut butter & jelly, and one lemon meringue pie.

Besides these, a sachet of an unusual white pomegranate tea, two brownies, one white and one black, and one chocolate cake. To round off, a bottle of Mamoun’s Hot Sauce, I can’t wait to try it! All this accompanied by brochures and notes of the shops where the goods were purchased, especially from the Chelsea Market, a recycled New York style plastic bag  and a delicious note made by Andrea herself with the NYC Underground tickets!

The second parcel comes directly from the land of this year Olympic games, sent by Evelyne from Cheap Ethnic Eatz from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Again, surprises are not lacking, and the product that has characterized mostly my parcel is maple syrup!
I found some dried mushrooms, a packet of maple sugar (I can’t wait to use it in some candy), a sauce for Poutine – which I discovered to be a typical Canadian dish made of fries, topped with cheese curd and gravy –, a condiment made of maple and pepper (any suggestions?), sweet candies and some Northen Delights herbal tea sachets, which obviously I can’t wait to try!