What is a foodie pen pal?

Well it’s a pen pal that you send food and a written letter too! Oh yeah…and you receive a letter and food from somebody else too. It’s cool!

About a month ago I stumbled upon a blog which was promoting foodie pen pals run by Lindsey a/k/a The Lean Green Bean.

Here’s the link: http://www.theleangreenbean.com/foodie-penpals/

On the site is a sign up form for newbies if you want to try it after reading my experience with it. This is seriously fun!

Here’s how it works:

Lindsey sent out a spreadsheet in a mass email to everyone that had signed up for the month. The spreadsheet listed my foodie pen pal for this month. This month I had Amanda. I sent Amanda an email asking her what kinds of food she likes and if she asked if she had any dietary restrictions and also if there were any foods she didn’t like. I got lucky because Amanda was not picky at all!

Once I had Amanda’s preferences I had until 8/15/2012 to purchase her snacks and mail them to her. In the box I was allowed to include homemade and store-bought snacks and could spend $15.00 on my pen pal. I bought a box to mail the food in, bubble wrap, packing tape and got some really yummy treats. My husband was kind enough to help me pack up Amanda’s box and my grandmother was kind enough to take the box to post office today to mail it. The only other thing that needed to be included in the box was something written like a recipe or letter. The art form of actually writing a letter to someone was quite fun and something I haven’t done in a long time since everything is sent in a text format.

In return, Danielle had me as her foodie pen pal. After Danielle received the email she contacted me about my food preferences. I told her I was a vegan that didn’t like peanut butter. Danielle was not a vegan but eager to learn about it. Danielle emailed me yesterday to let me know that my box was in the mail and on its way to me. I’m really looking forward to receiving Danielle’s box!

The commitment is only monthly so if you don’t want to continue doing it the following month you don’t have to. It was so fun and a great way to connect with someone you’ve never met. It’s also a great way to do something nice for a stranger and brighten someone’s day. It has been such a positive experience and a neat way to get creative and personal through writing!

The last part of this is it’s a great way to promote other people’s blogs. Since Amanda was paired with a person that has a blog, she will be making a guest post on my blog about her box that I sent her. Danielle doesn’t have a blog so I will not be posting anything for her. But this will give you something to look forward to reading in the future! I know I’m excited to find out if Amanda liked my box of goodies.

I’m definitely going to do this next month. Next month I will get a brand new pen pal and someone new will be sending me a box. You get someone new every month which is pretty cool too!

Sara Sawochka