My workout group started a once a month dinner swap last week, and let me tell you, it’s the best thing ever. Dinner arrived at my doorstep ready to go into the oven, microwave, or slow cooker and I didn’t have to give a thought about what to cook that night. Maybe the best part was that there were no dishes to do, because we used disposable pans. Can I get an amen to that??!
Here’s how it works. You make one meal 6 times. You package the meal and deliver it to 5 neighbors (keeping one for yourself) with heating or cooking instructions. Then, for the next 5 days, your friends bring you dinner! It’s just brilliant.
Our swap is a little different from the the freezer meal parties everyone is doing these days because we deliver the meals earlier in the day ready to be cooked or heated. We are all neighbors so it works for us. And when you don’t have to freeze the meal, it opens up a lot more recipe options. If you’re not going to be eating at home that night, just save it for the next night. It’s a great feeling to know you’ve got a meal ready to go! Over the next week or so I’ll share my friends’ awesome recipes with you.
Here are 5 tips to a successful Dinner Swap:
1) Limit your group size. You have to prepare and deliver one meal for every family, so more than 6-8 meals gets unmanageable. We keep it in the neighborhood because we deliver the meals. You could pick a meet up spot, but delivering works for us. You only have to deliver one day, and the other days dinner just shows up.
2) Choose similar type families. Families of comparable size, diets, and budgets work best for a dinner swap. A family with teenagers needs more food than a family with toddlers. Likewise, a steak loving family might not work well with vegetarians.
3) Don’t take food preferences into account too much. If someone’s husband doesn’t like bell peppers, he might just have to pick them out….it gets too complicated when you’re dealing with so many folks. Food allergies are another subject. We have a couple of gluten free-ers in our group, and it’s been fun learning how to work around the gluten.
4) Keep it simple. Our group is made up of superwomen, so one of our ground rules is no cute printed tags or fancy labels. But that’s just us…we’re all overachievers. Also, side dishes and dessert are not necessary.
5) Elect one person to be your organizer. Someone’s gotta be in charge. Determine how you’ll all communicate (we text), set a schedule, and figure out what works for your group. Have fun with it!
