Have you heard of a food swap, where passionate home cooks come together to trade their gourmet kitchen creations? On Sunday, December 2nd, the Chicago Food Swap celebrated their first anniversary at the Peterson Garden Project Learning Center in Ravenswood Manor and I was able to be a part of it.
About the women who made this swap possible...
The Chicago Food Swap was founded by Vanessa and Emily. I met Vanessa last summer when I was lucky enough to share a table with her during my weeklong class at the French Pastry school. Her beautiful blog, Chef Druck, is full of gorgeous pictures, delicious recipes and interesting posts about food and her life. I just discovered Emily's parenting and food blog West of the Loop and I'm very excited to learn more about it. The swap host, Peterson Garden Project, is an amazing non-profit community gardening organization that teaches us city dwellers about urban gardening. It was founded by LaManda Joy, who is an expert on World War II Victory Gardens and an amazing cook herself.
About my swap item, Coffee Walnut Toffee...
My friend Diane and I have been making this candy every Christmas since our daughters - now high school freshman - were 18months old. My friends tell me they love the toffee and hoard their stash at the holidays; Marla has been known to "forget" to tell her husband that the treats arrived so she can eat the whole bag in secret. I figured I could make a few batches without Diane. After 14 years, I should be able to make it in my sleep, right? I settled my five year old at the kitchen table with a coloring book and started in on the first batch, which takes about 45 minutes to make, start to finish. It looked weird as it was cooking and I was afraid my fancy new thermometer was malfunctioning (it couldn't be my fault). When the syrup reached 290, I poured it out onto a cookie sheet, then realized I forgot to add the walnuts. I scraped the gooey sugar/butter mass back into the pan and stirred in the nuts, knowing this would be a test batch. It still didn't look right. Once the toffee was topped with chocolate and I started to clean up, I noticed that I also forgot to add the water to the pot. Clearly, water is a key ingredient, I'm used to working with a partner and I needed to refocus if I was going to make this candy on my own. My subsequent trials were very successful and my family happily ate the first batch, which didn't have the right texture, but was still a delicious combination of butter, sugar, nuts and chocolate.
More about the swap....
My daughter Molly and I arrived right at 3pm. Most swappers were already settled into tables in the learning center. We set up my Coffee Walnut Toffee, packaged in half pound bags, on a patio bench. Each swapper filled out a card for their items so that others could bid and arrange a trade. We walked around for about 45 minutes, looking at what everyone else had brought. Molly zeroed on on pickles and all things sweet; I was interested in jams, jellies, homemade quince paste and other goodies that I don't make myself. When it was time to swap, Molly stationed me by the toffee, while she took bags of our candy and ran to the front of the center to trade. We came home with amazing items...pickled green tomato spears from LaManda of the Peterson Garden Project, picked Brussels Sprouts, vanilla extract made with beans from South India, Emily's quince paste (which I'll serve with Manchego cheese over the holidays), organic baby kale, Vanessa's rich chocolate pot de creme, dried apple chips, apple butter, fudge sauce, meringue buttons, pear and ginger jam. We also missed out on some great things, like a compound maple nut butter. The next swap will be in February. Our family went to see A Christmas Carol last night, so I didn't have time to linger after the swap, but I hope to be able to have more time talk to and learn from my fellow swappers in February!
