A while ago I signed up for a food parcel swapping thing organised by The Happy Sorceress at Dispensing Happiness. The idea is you put a small parcel of goodies together and are given an address somewhere in the world to sent it to and in return you get something sent from someone else from somewhere around the world. How exciting!

Some kind of mix-up meant it took some time to arrive but a few days ago I finally got the slip saying I had a parcel to collect from the post office. Yipeeee. I think my original parcel had got lost in the post (booo) and it seems in the end the person who had actually organised the while thing ended up sending me something herself, which was really good of her. This is what I received:

Blogging by Mail Food Parcel

Having sampled most of the contents (quite an enjoyable process) I can now give you a run down of what was in the box.

The first thing I went for was the Clark Bar. It was some kind of peanutty thing coated in chocolate. Originally made in Pennsylvania. Very nice indeed. Anyone who fancies posting me another feel free.

Next the Mauna Lau Macadamia Nuts. Again coated in chocolate. Again very nice indeed. I’d actually had some of these before, the girl I used to work with’s Mum lived in America and had sent her some once. I think I’d ended up eating most of them (eek, sorry Danielle), and also kept the box on my desk for the rest of the time I worked there as I thought it was super cool, really retro, looks like a Hawaiian shirt. I was very happy when I saw them in the box.

There was a tiny bottle of Heinz ketchup. So common over here I’d always thought Heinz was a British company, by apparently not, it’s from Pennsylvania, so there you go. I used the ketchup to make Poor Man’s Pizza aka cheese on toast with sliced onions and ketchup on the bread before the cheese. Yum.

There was a little packet of purple sweets called Choward’s Violet. They were pretty much the same taste as Palmer Violets and I’m guessing they have the similar kind of “reminds me of being a kid” effect over there as Palmer Violets do here. The packaging appears to have been designed in the 1920’s and they have the kind of chalky taste you could only get away with selling still if there was some kind of nostalgia attached to it. I liked em.

Nutella, yum. I recently took two of my nieces camping and we had fun using this to make chocolate bananas which we cooked on the barbeque. This was something I’d last eaten when I was on Brownie camp aged about 8 probably. I don’t even remember that we made them ourselves, I think it was probably Brown Owl who put our bananas in the bonfire. Despite this Andy seemed to think I was something of an expert at it and asked me questions every 30 seconds. “How much shall I cut it?… How much chocolate shall I put in?… How should I wrap it up?… How long will they take?… Will they be ready yet?… Do you think they’re ready now?…” Really I don’t think you can go wrong, just put chocolate in a banana, make it hot, eat it, it will be lovely. I remembered that when we’d made them at Brownie camp we’d used Flakes, so we put lots of the Nutella in and also broke up a few of the squares of chocolate from the box and put them in too. We then wrapped them in tin foil and put them straight onto the coals of the barbeque we’d just had for about 10 minutes. They don’t look too great on the photo, but believe me, these are amazing. They ought to be a compulsory end to any barbeque.

There was some pop corn in there too which I have yet to try as it’s like a microwavable packet and as I am currently living out of a tent I don’t have a microwave, so these will have to wait. Sounds pretty interesting though- chili flavour, crazy

The Torani Syrup- a kind of vanilla flavoured bottle of loveliness- is going down well. We had some in a cup of coffee after dinner, a great addition. I’m wondering if it can be used to flavour eggs in egg custard or something as I have found myself in a situation where I have more eggs than I can possibly eat and am trying to think of new things to do with them (more about this later). 8 chickens + 2 people = too many eggs.

What else? Hmm… oh yeah, there was some of those little plastic swords people for some reason put in drinks. Looking forward to making cocktails so I can use some of these. There was also some small Tiki Forks. I have no idea what these are actually supposed to be used for, but they came in pretty handy when we made sweetcorn on the BBQ then realised we had nothing to eat it with. They were perfect. Although Ellie’s kept falling out.

All in all the whole thing is pretty exciting. It’s great to get post, especially parcels and especially when you have no idea what you might receive. Can’t wait for the next round. Thanks Happy Sorceress!

One more photo for you. Nothing to do with food, but this was so funny. I’d been telling Beth and Ellie we’d have a fancy dress party on our last night so after feeding the ducks on Wednesday evening we returned to the tent to get dressed up. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo of the best outfit of the fashion parade when Ellie came running out of the tent wearing only a pair of Beth’s pants pulled up to her armpits and a big giggly smile on her face, but I do have this one of Beth sporting a beautiful pair of flurescent leg warmers and Ellie in some enormous star glasses I’d been given on Karen’s Hen Do a couple of days previously. We had a great night although Ellie did seem slightly disappointed when she asked when we were going to go to the “Fancy Party” and I told her we were already at it, it was just us four. She soon forgot her disappointment and ran off to play with some children from across the camp site leaving Andy and I to enjoy a bottle of my Dad’s plum wine from 2001, a great year. Ahhh.