If you’re considering starting a recipe exchange in your neighborhood, PTA, HOA, or church, you’re probably thinking of an in-person paper exchange. But those can be hard to set up with everyone’s busy schedules. To accommodate more people, here are 5 ways that you can exchange recipes without the traditional “in person” swap.

Email

If you start up an email group, you can each type (or attach a copy of) your recipe. Send to the entire group, and people can “Reply All” with their own recipes. This way, people don’t have to worry about losing the paper copy, and they don’t have to be somewhere to exchange in person. There’s also a lot more dialogue going on, as people try out the recipes and react to them.

Mail

What’s more exciting than waiting for something in mail? You can start a “pen pal” type recipe exchange, where you send a copy (or the original) of your family recipe, and then people forward it on to the next person, or someone else they want to share the recipe with. It’s like the “Sisterhood of the Traveling Recipes,” and everyone gets to try your recipe on for size.

Social Media

Start a Facebook group, or create a Pinterest page that everyone in the group can add to. This way, you have a place to “store” all of the amazing recipes, and you also have a way to frequently check in with people. Having these social media groups makes it much easier to find the recipes you want, as well, instead of being stuck with just one kind.

Combining Groups

If you already do an exchange with your PTA, HOA, church, work, or other group, why not combine them all and make one big recipe-trading ring? This expands your circle of friends, mixes up the recipe pool, and makes it easier for people to find new recipes based on their interests. You can use any of the above tools to manage all of the groups, or have multiple “moderators” based on each group.

Blogging

If you don’t have a community that is easily accessible to you (yet), try blogging. You can write about your different recipe attempts, what worked, what didn’t, and what failed miserably. You can also ask fellow readers to respond with their favorite recipes, or a way to make a recipe that crashed and burned somewhat edible. Your readers will enjoy watching your adventures, and will be happy to share their own. You can also craft your own recipes, and have people share them with their own recipe exchanges. There are tons of blogging resources out there if you don’t know where to start.

No matter which method of exchange you prefer, whether in person or not, there are plenty of options as you can see. Really, whatever works best for you and your group members is the best choice. Don’t force something that just doesn’t work!