Event recap: Holiday Food and Starter Swap

Sourdough mothers, kefir water and kombucha scobies are coming home this holiday and they are hungry!

Slow Food loves locally-produced and sustainably sourced foods and this month’s holiday swap brought forward some of the most local foods you can find. On December 11th, seventeen slow foodies met up at the Cleveland Park Library to swap a wide range of unique home-made or home-grown delicacies including kombucha scobies, marinated feta, freshly baked cookies, mustard, sourdough mothers, spice mixes, fresh cut herbs and more. Everyone had a chance to walk around the room and to learn about the foods being swapped before deciding what they wanted to swap. This was especially important when swapping for the living sourdough mothers, kombucha, plants and kefir water that require routine upkeep to grow and produce. Everyone had a chance to propose swaps for items they were interested in and everyone left with a few new foods to try this holiday. In traditional swap fashion, no money changed hands and instead attendees traded their products for other items of interest.

While it seems like everyone and their mother started baking when the pandemic started, this writer did not. Thanks to the swap, however, there is a sourdough mother slowly grow on the countertop like a scene from the 1958 classic movie, The Blob. Following the instructions from the swap, we are planning to grow the sourdough starter and use it for a bread recipe later this week. While we don’t expect to win a Snail of Approval award for our bread any time soon, I’m sure we can rise to the challenge - ha!