The "neighbor plates"--the easy (food storage supply) way

I don't know if the same thing happens where you live, but around this time of year, the doorbell will ring occasionally and when you open the door you are given a plate of scrumptious goodness that you get to enjoy compliments of your neighbors' hard work and good will. Well, we delivered our plates around the neighborhood last night. Thing is, we used food storage recipes that we found compliments of our internet neighbors. To give credit where credit is due, my husband made the treats with the kids (hey, I found the recipes) and great fun was had by all.

We actually gave treats made from two recipes--the Chocolate Cereal Snack Mix over at Safely Gathered In, and the Extremely Easy Peanut Butter Fudge Recipe over at the Jacobus Family Blog Site. Yeah, you sure gotta hope that our neighbors like peanut butter--we do, and we just wanted to share the joy. We didn't have any of those nifty little bags like we have seen out and about and one of which we received this year--you know the kind, clear and shiny and filled with wonderful treats and tied with a bow. I didn't know where to find them, and sandwich bags didn't quite seem festive enough. So when we were out shopping, we got the holiday themed plates, and I saw cupcake papers, also with a holiday theme. We filled about 4 of those cupcake papers per plate with the cereal mix, (and we added the green and red M&Ms--probably wouldn't have those in storage, but they looked and tasted really good :) placed them on the plates, and put the pieces of peanut butter fudge in the remaining space. The plates were covered in plastic wrap and delivered promptly. We overestimated on the cereal mix, so have plenty to munch on for ourselves, but we didn't have enough for family consumption (except for taste-testing, naturally :) of the peanut butter fudge, so I wouldn't be surprised if another batch of that were forthcoming... I was very happy with the outcome of the whole venture, and am very grateful to my internet neighbors for supplying such wonderful ideas for gift-giving cheer--thank you!

Yes, you can make yummy goodies with food storage supplies. If you look on Safely Gathered In, they have their recipes available if you hit the link near the top of the page. On the Jacobus Family Blog Spot, (truly one of the best sources of food storage recipes I have found) you can link to the Friday's Food Fancy posts by clicking on the beautiful button to the right with that label. I highly recommend that you check those recipes out. I'm glad I did.

Oh, and even though I haven't asked my neighbors, I don't think in a million years that they would look at the plates we gave them and think "food storage". However, I do think there's a very good chance that the plates just screamed out, "festive". Either way, I do have a wish for my neighborhood neighbors and my internet neighbors: Merry Christmas!