Winter Warmer Recipe Swap Roundup

Do you remember the recipe swap my friend Fiona and I hosted in December? It had been Fiona's clever idea, but we had fun organizing it together. Even though there were a few hurdles and glitches, it was a great experience to get people involved in this.

A big THANK YOU to all our lovely readers who made this experiment happen!

We opened a link list for the swappers to share what recipes they gave or received, and here are some of their creations:

Vicky got a recipe for Taco Soup from Shiloh and blogged about with delicious pictures. She made her own tortilla chips!

Michelle received instructions on how to make Spinach and Ricotta Cannelloni from Rachel. If you'd like to see how nicely that baking dish filled up, check nowhere else but here:

Laura thought a cookie tree would be fun to make for Jessi and her family and shared an old family recipe:

This is the letter that Jessi received. Laura wrote the recipe on a star shape and included templates for the cookies.

Fiona shared her grandma's chocolate brownie recipe with swap partner Kerry. To see what Fiona made on Grace's recommendation, check out her blog post!

And finally, I sent one of my favourite quick dinners to Jess and made the sweet acquaintance of Jessi's aunt Vera's sugar tarts.

All the linker-uppers' blogs are great places to spend some time, so if you like, pay them a visit!

Sparrows And Arrows

The Adventures Of MacGirl

I Ripple. I Dance

Coffees And Milkies

© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

Winter Warmer Recipe Swap - Link Up Until The End of January

Alright, Winter Warmer Recipe Folk.

This is important. As I mentioned before, not everybody has received their recipes yet, which may be partly due to the postal service going mental in the run-up to Christmas. So here's the deal: the opportunity to link up you swap posts is now open till the end of this month. Link below if you have written about the swap and would like to be included in a round-up post in February.

If you have not received any mail, please let Fiona and me know at fiona.and.annika@gmail.com. If we don't know, we cannot do anything towards sorting out the situation! If you have sent your recipe but have not heard back from your swap partner, please contact them through email or their blog to ask if everything is fine and dandy at their end. If your letter got lost, maybe you could send them the recipe in an email, so that everybody can still take part. Won't be ideal, but sugar happens...

Please be gentle with us, as this is both Fiona's and my first swap, and we would love for everybody to be happy in the end!

I will keep the button open in my sidebar and if you click on it any time during January, it will take you to the link list, okay? You can also link up here at Fiona's blog. Fingers crossed for everybody to finally get cooking and baking as they should!

Lots of Love,
 © Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).  

Winter Warmer Recipe Swap - Extended

 

Hello again, Swappers.

Hope everybody had a good time over the Holidays! As some of you had still not received their recipes after Christmas, we just wanted to let you know that there will be another chance to link up your cooking adventures in the new year, so that nobody needs to miss out due to slow mail. Please, please let us know if you are still waiting, we'd love to sort the situation out for you!

All you recipe senders: if you have not heard back from your partners, would you do us a terribly nice favour and follow up with them? In case anybody's mail got lost in a flurry of Christmas deliveries, maybe you could email your recipe instead, so that there is at least something to work with? That would be fab! Thanks for being great and so patient! 

All the non-swappers who come hear to read: sorry it's been quiet, but I've been busy Christmassing... I'll be back for your enjoyment in the new year, okay?

Love to everyone!

 © Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

Winter Warmer Recipe Swap - Last Day to Share Your Posts

Hey Swappers.
Remember, today is the last day to link up the blog posts that you would like to be shared in the Winter Warmer Recipe Swap round-up!
You can add your recipe swap posts by linking either here on my blog or over at Fiona's Corner Of The Internet...

We'd love to include everybody's swap experience, so get linking!
Ta!

© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

Winter Warmer Recipe Swap - Aunt Vera's Sugar Tarts

I got my swap recipe last week! It came all the way from Canada, from Jessi, who is one half of Sparrows & Arrows. I have been following Jessi's blog for a while, and she even guest-posted here in September, so I was very happy to be paired up with her!
Jessi sent me a recipe for sugar tarts that has been in her family for a long time and are a staple at Christmas. I loved the little lace trim on the recipe card, that was such a cute touch.

Aunt Vera was Jessi's great-grandfather's sister, in case you were wondering. I made her tarts on Sunday.

I could not find any frozen tart shells here in Britain, so I just bought some ready-rolled dessert pastry and cut out rounds with the scalloped side of a cookie cutter. 

I placed them in a muffin tin and pricked them with a fork before I poured in the filling. In the end I had 12 tarts and a bit of leftover filling. Because I also had some pastry left, I made one big tart out of the remains.

Marco and I had the tarts for Kaffee & Kuchen and liked them a lot. They had formed a lovely sugary crust on top of the sweet gooey filling, which reminded me of crème brûlée. Marco said they tasted almost like the butter tarts he used to buy when he still lived in Vancouver. He got fairly excited!

Thank you, Jessi! I would call these tarts a definite success and they will be made again!

P.S.: Swappers! Don't forget to link up your recipe posts HERE or HERE! It would be lovely for everybody to see what you've been up to and Fiona and I will do a round-up some time after Christmas to showcase your creations.
© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

Winter Warmer Recipe Swap - Link Party

Hey Swapperoos!

How's it going? Have a lot of you received their recipes yet, or are you still waiting for the postman? Some of you might have to be a bit more patient than others, as this swap drew an international crowd and the intercontinental mail will take a little longer to reach its recipients. If you are still waiting by the end of this week, maybe let Fiona and me know, and we'll investigate.

Because I know she has received her recipe, I can now reveal that my swappy partner was Jess from Peonyfish. I sent her a recipe for Chicken & Artichoke Pilaf, which is one of my favourite quick dinners. I found it in a magazine and have been cooking it for over 5 years, tweaking it until it was perfect in my eyes. Jess wrote a lovely post after she received it. Her kind words made me feel all happy/embarrassed! Thank you, Jess!!!

Here is what the recipe looked like on paper:

I used patterned paper and a sticker maker for the letters and silhouettes, which I drew freehand on the back of the paper before cutting them out. I actually have veg box leeks in the fridge right now, so I think I will make this for Marco and me one evening this week. 

I've also made my first ever linky thing for this swap, so if you have anything Winter Warmer related going on on your blog, you can link up below and let the world see. You could also link up anything that you have added to the flickr group. You will always be able to get to this post from the Winter Warmer Recipe Swap button in my sidebar. Links will show up here and on Fiona's blog and you can upload your posts until 23 December. Extended until 31 January! After that, we will showcase your creations in a big round-up for everyone to marvel at.

Happy cooking!

SEE OTHER POSTS ABOUT THE SWAP  © Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

Winter Warmer Recipe Swap - Recipe Cards

Today starts the countdown towards posting day for everybody's Winter Warmer Recipe Swap choices, which is on Friday. I must admit that I have been thinking a lot about recipes this last week, but have not yet made a decision on what to actually send. I just want the recipe to be something that my partner will hopefully enjoy! What about you other swappers? You all set?
Like I have mentioned before, I personally collect my recipes on whatever scraps of paper they come on and just paste them into my recipe book. But I know that a lot of you have proper recipe boxes with cards and indices and all. I did have a mosey around the internet to look at examples of recipes cards and came across a whole lot of lovely design-type people who are offering card templates for absolutely free. And seeing some of the designs kinda made me want to start my own box...
Here are my favourite finds. You can click on any image to be taken to the source. Make sure to leave a thank you in the designer's comments if you decide to print yourself a set!
I Heart Food from Scissors.Paper.Wok:

Bunting Cards from Heartmade:

Cross Stitch Design from Chez Sucre Chez:

Patterned Cards from Love Vs. Design (via How About Orange):

 Cute Owls from My Owl Barn:

Vintage Baking from My Girl Thursday:

For more inspiration, you can go look at Fiona's and my Recipe Cards Pinterest board if you like. You could also upload photos of your own collection to the Winter Warmers flickr group if you feel like sharing with the other swappers! Or, if you have a link to another cool recipe card printable, leave it in the comments below!

© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

Winter Warmer Recipe Swap - My Recipe Book

                                                                                       



  By now, everybody has been assigned their partners for the Winter Warmer Recipe Swap. I would like to thank you again to all the lovely people who have signed up. I hope you are excited about where your recipe will be going and that you will have fun with this!  If you would like to get some inspiration on what kind of recipe you could send to your swapping buddy, check out Fiona's food post. If you are feeling artsy, maybe you aspire to follow in the steps of these amazing recipe writers. Whatever you do, however simple or elaborate, please make sure to send your recipes by 2 December. And maybe start reading your partners' blogs to see what they might get up to in the kitchen department!  I am not yet decided on what recipe my partner will get, but I thought I'd share a few pages from my recipe collection with you. I have been keeping my favourite recipes in the same A4 notebook since I was about 13. It's falling apart, it's stained with unruly ingredients and it is no longer my only recipe collection (amongst others, I now also have a folder of internet printouts and various loose magazine clippings in various locations. Not to mention my personal cookery book library...). But this tatty volume is still the place that the family classics and more recent keepers get written down or pasted into. All the early recipes are in German, but since the year I lived in the States there has always been a mix of both German and English entries. This book has moved with me where ever I went and is full of foody memories.

The Cover

Fahrenheit to Celcius Conversion Formula

My first ever recipe in the collection, a lasagna that I found in 

a girly magazine and have cooked a gazillion times in the last 20 years.

Party recipes - the first one a tuna salad that I had at a friend's 

birthday celebration as a teen (her mom wrote it out for me). The 

second one a melon punch I made for another friend's apartment warming do.

The page with my chocolate mousse recipe. Guess what: I 

spilled chocolate mousse on it... I am not a clean cook.

These are recipes that my host family in the States would make.

Some recipes I liked as they were to begin with but started altering 

when I began imagining how they might taste even better, like this pasta dish.

That white chocolate mousse was dessert the first ever time 

I cooked for my husband Marco.

My recipe collection contains the beer bread that started as a clipping from Delicious 

magazine and became a staple. And my mom-in-law's delicious potato salad.

The Back.

So there you have it, a piece out of my culinary history. How about your own? How do you collect your recipes? Do you have recipes that have been passed on to you by your friends or family? Do your recipes come in various languages? Or do you not cook at all? If you like, upload your own images to the Winter Warmer Flickr Group and maybe we can get a full-flavoured discussion going? (Pun very much intended!)

© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).