parsley Once upon I time I posted about the food Sam and I would make for our food coop on a quasi regular basis. I don't do this anymore because 1. it got dark earlier (ie before the food was photographable) 2. I realized that i most wanted to share the whole beautiful thing called of food sharing--not so much what we make every single time...we do our best, but it's not always blog worthy (my food swapping buddies are always gracious though!)

BUT, I want to chime in once more on the topic because I tried two fantastic recipes from two fantastic food bloggers and they were sublime; definitely keepers!

The first: squash, chard, pecan salad was from the lovely Jenny over at cooking with chopin. All the flavors blended so wonderfully but the most glorious and surprizing flavor combo on this for me was butternut squash + orange zest + parsley.

And second: bean soup with yumazing creamy sauce from the talented Deb at Smitten Kitchen. I couldn't get over the cumin seed crema (as you can tell by my portion). YUM. My local grocery store didn't have whole cumin seeds, but luckly I have a master chief neighbor who provided the goods in a pinch.

And a word about food cooping. It's really great. We now have four families in on the fun, and get this: once a month, we get a meal off! Since left overs generally cover at least Monday-Friday and weekends are for eating jellybeans, this means one week a month, we don't even have to cook if we don't want to. (I'm not serious about the jellybean comment, if you are wondering. But it is fun to eat out occasionally on the weekends. My new local favorite: Fork Heart Knife.)

So if you have some gastronomically compatible neighbors, I highly recommend food swapping.