Garden finally giving us goodies

Friday morning, I helped voulenteer at SELMA, which is a voulenteer-local food place that serves breakfast every friday morning. It's at an ordinary house not far from ours, and people voulenteer to cook, with local organic ingredients from the farmers market, and their garden. I voulenteered last week, I made vegan sunny blueberry corn muffins and marinated tempeh bacon. Yummy!! There was a pastry chef helping my dad make pita bread for his dish, and this week she cooked 2 dishes of her own.My dad made pita bread, gyro meat, an egg and kale dish with feta cheese, which was fried then baked, and satziki yoghurt dip, with a tomato and pea garnish. Pretty! The pastry chef that was helping us out the week that we cooked made dishes of her own this week. She made cherry clafouti topped with raspberry sauce and whipped cream, and crepes with a sunny side up egg inthe middle, with the edges of the crepe folded in, topped with pea shoots and black salt. That was served with bacon or sausage, and comes with a side of greens. I was in charge of waffles, which are always an option to have. I plated waffles, with a side of bacon or sausage, and blueberries or cherries on the waffles. There is also always bread pudding, and special orders can sometimes be made. After that, I went home, with an extremely filthy batter stained shirt, and messy hair, with raspberry sauce on my face. (Don't know how that got there?)

Dinner tonight was inspired by our garden and my sister's who lives close to our house. Sauteed kale, (sister Fiona's garden) pea shoots and adzuki bean shoots from a farmer at the voulenteer breakfast place, SELMA this morning, a carrot (trader joes...), some leftover zuchinni(?), peapods (fionas garden), green beans (our garden!!), and a cucumber sliced on top of it all, from our garden. So excited to have goodies!! Cant wait for zuchinni and tomaters.

I am cooking at SELMA in 3 weeks, and my dad had very strict in struction that I make a peach COBBLER. So here I go, opening my Vegan With a vengeance book, up to the Peach cobbler page. What do you know?! We have all the ingredients except for the peaches! Yay. So I rode my bike to TJ's, got peaches, and BAKED!! I even changed it up a bit and crushed graham crackers with melted earth balance to create a little something extra. This was too yummy!!

Filling:

8 peeled and sliced fresh peaches (Boil them for a minute-it makes them a lot easier to peel)

3/4 cup brown sugar (I did scant 3/4 cup, but added a drizzle of maple agave blend to give a maple flavor)

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

2 tsp vanilla

2 tablespoons cornstarch

topping:

1 cup all purpose flour

1.5 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp allspice

1/4 cup brown sugar, plus more to sprinkle on top

1/4 cup veg. oil

2/3 cup milk substitute (I used vanilla soymilk)

1 tsp vanilla

I added about 10 ground graham crackers with about 2 T melted earth balance. I sprinkled that on top along with some brown sugar.

Preheat oven to 450'F and have a 9x13 dish ready and greased.

For the filling, mix everything together until the brown sugar is dissolved, and then pour it into the baking dish. Set aside.

For the topping, in a medium sized bowl sift the dry ingredients together, create a well in the middle, then pour in the liquid ingredients. Mix with a wooden spoon until just combined. Drop by tablespoonfulls onto the peach part, leaving some little windows of peaches between. I like to spread the topping out a bit with a spatula, but you dont have to. I was just concerned that not everything would cook through. Sprinkle the graham cracker crumbs and brown sugar over the top, bake for about 30 minutes until the filling is bubbling and the top is nicely browned. THis was so delicious!!!

Next time, I think I'll make a tiny bit more topping, but the flavor was amazing. I might use a taller, less long dish so the peices arent so thin, but it's not a huge deal. Try this!! I dare you.

NOMZ!!! CRUMBS ARE YUMY!!

I made green tea in the cup that says conosci te stessco, which means "to know thyself." Fiona got it for me when she was in Italy. It also has greek written on it, and that says γνωθι σεαυτον, which translates to "to know thyself." Nifty. Anyways I had green tea in it.

Thanks for reading:)

See you!!