U.S.|Throwing Together a Meal, One Swap at a Time
By TWILIGHT GREENAWAY MARCH 24, 2011
When Karen Solomon, author of “Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It,” began sending out invitations for a monthly baby-food swap, she was not sure how her recipients would respond.
After all, she was inviting them to feed their children meals, including roasted pears and curried lentils, made by people they did not know.
But for parents interested in consolidating food preparation while providing organic, homemade food to their newborns — as well as some impromptu parenting advice — Ms. Solomon’s swap at 18 Reasons, a nonprofit food center in Mission Dolores, was just the thing.
“Most mainstream baby food just isn’t very appealing,” said Ms. Solomon. “Anything that saves young families any amount of time is enormously valuable.”
Ms. Solomon’s event, which is now more than a year old, is one of a number of food swaps popping up around the Bay Area. Taking cues from the food co-operatives of the 1970s, these urban dwellers are restructuring their food economies around face-to-face relationships.
In San Francisco, 18 Reasons, which is affiliated with Bi-Rite Market, is the swapping hub. In the East Bay, the backyard-fruit-focused group Forage Oakland has been host to several produce and preserve swaps, and two new series begin in April: the Homemade Food Swap from East Bay Swappers, led by Kendra Poma, and the Belly to Belly Bartermart, hosted by Ellen Johnson, a chef who is host to underground dinners made with local, seasonal foods.
Some have termed the swaps “collaborative consumption”— a new, tech-savvy angle on the familiar idea that sharing and trading is crucial to creating prosperous communities. Clothes swaps, co-working and car shares are among the most visible forms of the new sharing economy, with sites like thredUP (for children’s clothing), RelayRides (for cars) and Sharable.net (everything from bikes to data) gaining traction nationally.
Food sharing is an inherently personal form of collaboration; it is hard to quantify because most swaps occur privately. But thanks to social media and a resurgence in urban food production and preparation, it is now fairly easy to set up more formal exchanges.
No money changes hands at food swaps, and thus far, public food swaps have not been subject to Department of Public Health regulations, as underground restaurants and food markets are.
Ms. Johnson, host of the coming Belly to Belly swap, describes her event as “an entirely different experience than shopping at Costco or Trader Joe’s.”
“I can look a farmer in the eye, take the product he’s lovingly made, transform it into something tasty and then trade it with another individual,” she said.
Most food swaps are structured to drive home these values — as well as to function practically. Ms. Poma is asking participants in her 30-person April event to state their offerings in advance, to make sure that everyone does not end up taking home jam.
Ms. Solomon requires that attendees’ baby food be organic and, when possible, local. Her lunchtime event draws 5 to 10 parents at a time. Each swapper is responsible for 10 pints of pureed food, like squash and yogurt or green beans.
The mood varies between brisk exchange and social outing. “I usually have to get back to work myself,” Ms. Solomon said, “and trying to get everyone out in time feels a little like closing down a bar at the end of the night.”
Simran Singh and Stacie Dong, bloggers for A Little Yumminess, began their monthly Homemade Family Dinner Swap in the fall of 2010, also at 18 Reasons, because they wanted to encourage people to eat at home in a city where residents still consume about half their meals at restaurants.
Every participant makes four batches of each meal, intended to feed three adults. They meet for half an hour on Sunday afternoons to swap. It is common for ingredients to come from local farms or from participants’ gardens, a kind of transparency and personalization that goes beyond mere cost-effectiveness.
The spirit is one of generosity. For example, a new dad showed up late to a recent swap run by Ms. Singh and Ms. Dong, after the trading had already taken place, but the remaining members let him in anyway. “The people who were leaving all just traded what they’d gotten with him, so it worked out fine,” Ms. Singh said.
At Ms. Solomon’s baby-food swap, community is also a theme. The information and advice exchanged among parents has been so meaningful to Ms. Solomon that she continues to put it on, despite the fact that her youngest son has moved on to solid foods.
She hopes to start cooking for Ms. Dong and Ms. Singh’s swap when time allows, but for now, she is still encouraging those interested in homemade baby food. “I’ll be happy to host as long as people come,” she said.
Vanessa Barrington, the author of “DIY Delicious,” has been swapping things like preserves, pickles and granolas informally for years, but she is heartened by the potential for a larger cultural shift toward organized swapping.
“There is trust involved, but also a deeper appreciation for the work that goes into producing these foods,” she said. “And that can only bring us closer.”