A Holiday Cookie Exchange That Gives Back

We’re heading to a holiday cookie exchange on Saturday (hence my cry for help on Facebook) that I’m really excited about. Our friends thought this type of party would be a great way to mobilize a bunch of people to help the community while having a lot of fun in the process. I could babble on, but I think I’ll just cut and paste the invite instead so you can see the details for yourself. Feel free to use it as a template for your own party!

We invite you to  join us for our annual cookie exchange.  Our hope is to again send you home with a wonderful assortment of delicious holiday cookies while at the same time working together to help make the holidays a bit better for others in our community.

COOKIES

The idea is for you to take home about half of the cookies you bring.  Together, we will put the other half into individual tins to be delivered to seniors and shut-ins.  So bring as many cookies as you want to bake!  And if you do not care to bake nor to take home any cookies, please just bring more of the items needed for the food pantry.

FOOD PANTRY

We are also asking for your help with gathering items for local food pantries.  Listed below are those items which they need most.

Beans + Rice:  We hope that as many of you as possible will bring large bags of black beans (10#), pinto beans (20#) and/or rice (20#), all of which may be purchased at Costco.  We will then work together to break down the large bags into smaller individual bags, which saves the food pantries a great deal of volunteer labor.

Senior bags:  The Healdsburg food pantry assembles bags for about 35 seniors in our community and they are always in need of the following items in individual packages:

  • fruit/breakfast bars (soft to chew)
  • instant oatmeal packets
  • fruit and/or pudding cups
  • hot cocoa
  • bar soap or soft soap in pump bottles
  • toothbrushes and toothpaste
  • cereal
  • jello + boxed pudding
  • macaroni + cheese
  • tuna fish
  • low sodium soups
  • peanut butter
  • dish detergent
  • toileteries: shampoo, conditioner, mouthwash, deodorant
  • tea and coffee-individual sizes (like Starbucks)

We look forward to spending a fun and rewarding afternoon together and thank you in advance for your generous souls.

How cool is that? I’m bringing these oatmeal cookies as one of my contributions and would LOVE to know your favorite cookie/bar/brownie recipe. Leave a link below or on Facebook!

Need more creative cookie ideas? Alison recently when to a cookie exchange hosted by Food Bloggers Los Angeles. Here are some more recipes from our creative friends at FBLA:

FBLA 2013 Cookie Exchange Recipes

Non-Cookie Items

 

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