The Recipe Exchange is a collection of recipes crowdsourced from community and home gardens, published in form of recipe cards.
Backstory
For the last 3 years, I’ve been a part of a shared garden. One of the best parts of gardening in a public space is that there are so many opportunities to connect with plot neighbours and folks passing by. I love learning from others, sharing my herb abundance and farm ideas with my neighbours. With so much knowledge to share, I’ve decided to start a recipe exchange program as an easy way for people to get to know each other and learn more about what we can do with the vegetables we grow. We wanted this to be a fun collaborative activity for home and public gardeners, retired green thumbs, or even curious passer-byers across Richmond.
Process
This was a two-pronged approach: collecting and sharing the recipes. We printed physical forms for paper submissions and attached a link/QR code for virtual submissions. Using a RISO printer, we produced posters to hang up across the city to garner interest. Once the recipes were collected, we designed postcards for the recipes. We had a launch party in November where we made magnets with clay and set up microgreen kits for folks to take home.
Challenges
While the concept of collecting and sharing recipes is fun, refining and writing down a recipe can be a lot more tedious than it sounds; this made it hard for folks to commit. Translating resources was also a bit of a challenge– it was going to cost significantly more to print versions of one card. It also took a lot of time from volunteers to translate resources. These challenges make it difficult to produce multi-language resources, which is something we really wanted to do.
Launch party
The launch event was super fun! We made little magnets to take home. We set up a microgreen kit for folks to enjoy during the colder months. It took one week to produce enough sandwich toppers for a week and a half.
Reflections
This was an incredibly fun project and I am so glad to have been able to connect with so many gardeners and home chefs. It was also really fun to meet new neighbours and learn new recipes!
