VEGAN Fresh Peach Cobbler Muffins

Peach season!  Ahhh, I love them.  On a recent trip to visit my husband's family we picked up a big bunch of peaches from an orchard.  We ate them fresh, froze some, put them in oatmeal but my kids and I were itching to bake with them.  Being almost 9 and almost 5, they are starting to figure out what ingredients are necessary for baking so they helped me come up with this recipe!  I think one of my favorite things in my day is having a child or two in the kitchen with me.  Not only are they good at assisting, but they really do have some great ideas about what would be tasty.  I find that it is much easier to teach them about healthy eating by chatting about why I cook the way I do while letting them be hands on with the good stuff.  Just the other day while fixing lunch my youngest commented that I put chia seeds or flax seeds in almost everything.  Perfect opportunity to explain the "why".  Now he reminds me!  Awesome.  Anyway, back to the fresh peaches....

Disclaimer: as always, my recipes are not exact.  You need to pay attention to what you are making and adjust if you see a need.  It is heavily adapted from another recipe we used to use for muffins (non-vegan and not as healthy overall).  If you make it, let me know what you think!

These muffins were super moist and tasted just like peach cobbler.  YUM!

 VEGAN Fresh Peach Cobbler Muffins

½ c applesauce (less if your applesauce is on the watery side)

1/3 c sugar or your preferred sweetener

1T ground flax+ 2.5T water whisked together and refrigerated for 15 minutes, then whisked again

½ c vegan sour cream, vegan yogurt, or nut milk mixed with chia seeds until thickened

1t vanilla extract

1t cinnamon

½ c + 2T almond flour

½ c +2T whole wheat flour

½ c unbleached flour

2t baking powder

1-1.5c fresh chopped peaches

1c chopped pecans

1.     Grease muffin pan and preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2.     Combine first 5 ingredients. 

3.     Mix baking powder into flours first, then stir flours into wet mixture just until combined.

4.     Fold in peaches and pecans.

5.     Fill muffin tins at least 2/3 full and bake for 20-25 minutes.  Let cool 10 minutes before eating.  Makes 12 muffins.

How to keep and store food scraps for worm composting

I cannot believe that I am typing this, but one thing I missed over the past 2 years was our worms!  They are just so amazing at eating our scraps and giving us beautiful and rich compost.  Managing a worm composter is almost easier than a conventional compost bin… seriously.  

This time I wanted to give our 1000+ new best friends a strong start and also a quick one, so I began saving food scraps in a glass jar in the freezer before they even arrived.   It filled up fast.  Now what? I don’t know about you, but I just did not want to take the time to cut all the peels, etc into tiny pieces, which the wiggly things can consume easier.  One day after cooking I saw my dirty food processor sitting on the counter.  Hmm… it’s already dirty.  Why not use it?  I threw all of the peels, stems, and veggie ends in and gave it a whirl.  Niiiiice.  Perfect.  It wasn’t yet feeding time, so I put that back  into the glass jar and in the freezer it went.  

(Yes, it looks nasty.  Can you tell I had been processing lots of kale from my garden?)

On feeding day I simply placed the jar of frozen scraps on the counter until it was thawed enough to scrape out.  Oh man! I cannot even begin to tell you how FAST they ate it up!  Now, not only can I store more in my glass jar, but I can get them to eat more of our food bits!!!  And faster!!!  

Because they go thru chopped up bits quickly, I have virtually no flies now too.  Bonus.  If you can keep your worms indoors you should not have fly issues at all but, if you are like me and have kids and a puppy that love to peek in on their little friends, you will keep them outside in a sheltered location.  As long as the food is eaten in a reasonable length of time and you keep it covered, you should also not have problems outside.  I always cover the new food with 1-2 layers of newsprint, preferably printed using soy ink. 

(Yes, my worms live in my messy garage...the main place in this house left to unpack and properly organize.  There's something about garden season that makes us just ignore the mess in this space.  Hopefully we'll get to it by winter.  But wait, neighbors tell us we can keep growing things almost all through the winter here.... uh-oh!)

Do you vermicompost?  Do you want to?  Leave your tips, tricks or questions in the comments.  I'd love to hear from you!

Overflow

It's zucchini time!  My husband and kids are not big fans, unless it is baked into muffins or bread.  This year I decided to grow 4 plants, thinking that would be just right.  Yea, I hear you laughing from over here!  Not nice!

So, you’ve cooked and grilled it, shredded and baked it, frozen it…now what?  Kale chips are all the rage but it doesn’t have to stop there.  Zucchini chips are easy peasy to make and delicious to eat.  (I also tried yellow summer squash - not nearly as tasty or as sweet.)

1. Thinly slice your washed zucchini.  My dehydrator held about 3-4 medium zucchini.  

2. Arrange on dehydrator  trays so that no circles touch.  Heat several hours at a medium heat setting - your preference.  I usually set mine somewhere around 105-120 degrees.  

3. When the top is starting to crisp and the bottom is chewy in texture flip them over.  Dehydrate until crisp!  

4. Often I let mine cool overnight or at least several hours before placing in a glass jar for storage.

I’m not certain how long these will keep because we eat them quickly!  Typically, if you have fully dehydrated a food, it will last for months.  (Update: our leftovers lost their crunch.  I'm not sure if it has something to do with the humidity here or something else, but they're still tasty.)  

Try it and tell me what you think!

Knock, Knock....

....anyone there?

For real.  Somehow I forgot about this space.  Well, my little family moved from the mountains to a city, to a small urban spot that we knew was temporary... just didn't know how long temporary would be.  After yet another move we are finally settling in to SustainableHomestead 2.0, the more urban version.  Settling in means building garden beds like mad so that we could have some sort of harvest *this* year because we cannot, just cannot, wait another minute to grow things in dirt once more.  Most other things have been neglected because of all of this activity.

So.  Here I am.  Possibly back again.  Hi.  How have you been?  I'd love to sit and chat gardening, urban homesteading, and living in the moment with you.  You game?