In response to the questions from the blog this week, I am answering questions on the etiquette of meal swapping.
Jessica says: I’m anxious to hear about what to do if you can’t stomach someone else’s food 
Maybe you could give those to someone in need…a new mom or new neighbor or something? They’re still being put to good use, and it’s something you would have (or should have!) done anyways.
And Jillian in Canada says: My question is: What do you do with a casserole that turns out great, but your family doesn’t love. I would be happy to give it to another family, but it seems rude! What are your thoughts?
Wendy G says: Looking forward to the next post…I’m wondering what to do with the meal swapping idea if you don’t like the meals that are being made from one or more of your friends! Could get touchy…
There seems to be great concern re: what to do if someone else’s food, well… isn’t something that your family would enjoy.
This happened when we did our exchange. Here were a couple of solutions that worked to keep things running smoothly:
- Pick your people carefully. If your best friend at church is, let’s gently say, high maintenance, you may want to save the friendship and skip the meal swap.
You need to swap with people who can roll with it. You can make the occasional adjustment to a recipe (leave out the mushrooms for one family, etc.) But if one family wants to only eat organic, another is vegan, and another is trying to keep their grocery bill at below $3 a meal, it is not going to work. BUT, if you can find other families who are willing to have open discussions, it can work wonderfully. We had a waiting list of people who wanted to join.
- Share the recipes ahead of time. If you choose the recipes that you want to do, then send them out by e-mail, you will have a chance to ask for accommodations (see the mushrooms above), or, if it gets a thumbs down from more than half of the group, it would be best to choose another recipe. It is a bit easier to say no to a recipe before someone has gone to all the trouble to make it. Remember, this is not the time to bring out your exotic recipes of citrus-infused venison. Make some family basics that everyone would enjoy and you will be successful in the swap.
- You swap – and you hate what your friend made. One of the things we did was before we did the next swap, we would send out the list and give a thumbs up to the recipes that we wanted to repeat. (So, if you don’t get at least three thumbs up from a group of five other people, then it would be wise not to repeat it.)
- Do a trial, and then reevaluate. When you organize a meal swap, agree to try it out for two swap trial, and then decide if you a) want to keep doing the swap b)make some changes to how you are doing things c) bow out without any hurt feelings. Remember –it is just food.
I’ve got to get “my girls” on this!!!
Just checking in for my daily dose of Kathi. Or, today, Miss Manners!
Our group would meet together to plan what meals we would each make. We would bring recipes that we thought we might like and we discussed the ingredients, etc… before deciding if we, as a group, wanted to try it. Sometimes the new dish was great; sometimes not. I feel that the open discussion BEFORE making any recipes helped tremendously.
Also, we were careful to make sure that the difficulty of the recipes was considered before dividing up who would make what. One person should not be stuck with four labor-intensive recipes while another simply puts Pappy’s seasoning on a tri-tip and marinates some chicken.
We are not currently doing food group, but it worked well for many years. Our average cost per meal was between $5.75 and $7.10 each month. One member kept the pantry items so that we wouldn’t have to buy a new jar of oregano (or whatever) each time a recipe called for it. We would just take the ingredients (that belonged to the food group) from her pantry after we knew what dishes we would be making.
I still have all of our menus and most of my recipes. Perhaps I should kick off another group! I’ll think about that.
Thanks for your tips.
“citrus-infused venison”
hahahahahahaha. (and eww)
Love it! Thanks for all your GREAT tips!!!
I am wondering, how do you handle families of different sizes? For example, we are a family of 5 (2 adults and 3 preschool/kindergarten girls) but other friends who are interested have teenagers or many more or fewer children. For a large family my meals might not be enough to feed them all and their meals might last a smaller family for a couple of days. Are any accommodations made for the number of people to be fed? Thanks
So now I am inspired to gather up my girlie friends and have a “distance” freezer meal swap party! We (14 of us) worked on your hubby project as a group this summer and swapped “man” recipes as a fun get together. It was a big hit in just about all of our homes. How great would it be to get together and trade meals, get ahead, and have fun. Like phase II of the Husband Project (in that we would have more time to do “projects” for; and things with our hubbies). This is a fabulous way to fellowship. We do meals for our Mops moms on a regular basis and although we are not recieving meals at the time we are giving someone meals . . . I have found that just asking what a family likes or dislikes is all it really takes to ensure you are close to the things they already eat. And if they are really your 10% friends (meaning close enough to even tell and recieve the last 10 percent of the painful truth without getting hurt) they and you should have no quams in the truth department. We have wanted to do the 2 hour get together and make a bunch of freezer meals all at once . . . but it never really works out that way and we have never actually done it. So I think it is time to post a challenge to the girls and get to swapping!