Lunch Buds Canning Exchange

I have a great group of friends that hang out together at lunch.  Between the two tables there are about a dozen of us or so and sometimes the laughter we share shakes the walls!  What a wonderful break this is in the middle of a work day and oh how I enjoy the time we share together.  Much of my work is solitary and my personality well, it’s not!   

Two of the guys in our group are hot sauce aficionados and in the past couple of years they’ve even taken to growing their own peppers and making hot sauces.  While I used to shy away from their sauces one day curiosity got the better of me and now it’s not unusual for me to taste their weekly experiments.  Mmm, mmm!  While they might stir in a couple of Tbsps. into their meal, my adventure usually means a few drops on the end of a spoon carefully spread throughout my meal.  But, I’m getting there.

Anyway, all of this to say that as the group of us would sit and chat in the lunch room we quickly realized that many of us were canning a variety of items and it would be fun to have a canning exchange.  The 1st Annual Fall Fair idea was born and yesterday was exchange day.

Back in June after we went strawberry picking Hannah and I spent an afternoon making 24 jars of yummy strawberry freezer jam.

Yesterday I pulled some of our jam out of the freezer and took it to work for the exchange.  It was neat to see the table full of all the things people made.  What a great way to quickly gain a variety of delicious homemade treats! 

In the end Hannah and I exchanged our strawberry jam for:

• hot sauce
• pasta sauce
• red pepper and green jalapeno Christmas jelly
• chili sauce
• cranberry sauce
• apple pie jelly
• pumpkin maple butter
• brownies and chocolate chip cookies!

Hannah checked out our new treats and couldn’t wait to dig in!  She already had the apple pie jelly on her toast this morning.

We had such fun doing this that a Christmas Cookie Exchange has already been talked of and recipe ideas are being formed. 

Thanks to Cory for organizing this wonderful event and to my friends for their smiles and laughter every day at lunch!