A few days after shipping off my vegan food swap gift box to Ainslie at Everyone Is Vegan, I received my box of goodies from Kelly at Three and a Half Vegans. Kelly is the masterful mind behind the culinary creation that won the MOFO award for the Most Epic Post: a giant, edible vegan Candy Land. Seriously, click the link to check out the pics. Crazy brilliant, right? And Ainslie is cool enough to veganize fish custard and Chinese Fireball Dragon Ribs, so I am psyched that the VFS connected me with these two new, amazing and creative cyber friends.
For a recap on what the VFS is and how to participate, see MeShell at In Your City’s post here. Thank you, MeShell, for running the swap in Canada!
Kelly completely spoiled me. I received:
Frontier alcohol-free Vanilla Extract, Mochiko Sweet Rice flour, Coconut Secret Coconut Vinegar, Lotus Speculoos cookies and homemade nacho popcorn seasoning. I haven’t tried any of these foods before!
What excited me the most was the alcohol-free vanilla extract. I adore vanilla but am severely allergic to alcohol which is the base of traditional vanilla extract. I have been looking for alcohol-free vanilla extract for ages with no luck! (And yup, an allergy to alcohol is precisely as heinous as you would imagine it to be.)
I’ve used the vanilla already several times in baking and smoothies and the coconut vinegar in the Chickpea and Cilantro Potato Salad. The Speculoos cookies were also a big hit with the family. I adore anything with cinnamon. I haven’t had a chance to try the Mochiko yet, but look forward to trying the recipe for cocoa mochi (chocolate rice cake) on the box.
The nacho popcorn seasoning was the biggest hit and only lasted a week, having been used as a topping from everything from sandwiches to pasta to kale chips. Yum!
Want to sign up for June and get your own foodie penpal? Contact MeShell by June 7th.
Thank you very, very much, Kelly! If you couldn’t mail me your edible Candy Land, this gift box was almost as good. 
So glad you enjoyed it all!! And it was very nice to be introduced to you as well! It really is the best part of all of this, bringing us all together!
I agree!
I’m so glad you had a positive swap experience! Thanks for participating.
And wow, that coconut vinegar sounds absolutely awesome.
The connections I’m seeing are so exciting, I can’t wait for next month!
The coconut vinegar is great. It’s yummy in salad dressings and I will totally use it in cakes in future to help rise. I can’t wait for next month too!
How cool is this!?! I love this idea!
The food swap was the push finally getting me to start a blog. You can join too — you don’t need a blog if you’re willing to guest blog somewhere (for example, you could guest blog on Earthgiven). Super fun!
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