Autumnal Anticipation

September 2, 2014September 3, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 2 Comments

We’ve had the first big rain of autumn here in Vancouver and though it seems we’re going to have at least a week’s reprieve, it’s got me thinking about hunkering down with cups of tea and bowls of soup. It also means there will be less outdoors and more books, music, and video to explore, until springtime rouses us.

So, my question to you is what are you looking forward to this fall and winter? Is it the big blockbusters like the latest installments of the Hunger Games and the Hobbit? Or are you itching to get your hands on books like Sarah Waters’ latest?

Here are some of the things I’m curious about this fall:

Film

Jimi: All Is By My Side promises to be more than the usual blockbuster biopic.

Dear White People is a satire that challenges persistent stereotypes.

Rosewater is Jon Stewart’s directorial debut and already getting good reviews.

The Imitation Game – Benedict Cumberbatch as a genius brutally betrayed by his country.

Wild features Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl Strayed and Amy Adams stars as a wronged artist in Big Eyes – a feminist double shot for the end of the year.

Finally, there’s Into the Woods – can Rob Marshall do Stephen Sondheim justice?

Television

Because it’s an Amazon production, I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance to see it, but Transparent looks like it could be a winner.

This is the year of comic book overload on the small screen – my pick is Agent Carter, for some much needed female presence, even though it’s not due to appear until 2015.

What’s with all the 2015 in my fall television picks? I guess there isn’t much that moves me, so let the countdown to Downton Abbey begin.

Of course, there’s The Walking Dead. I don’t care for horror much, but the writing on this show has made it one of my favourites.

Music (brought to you by Kevin)

Look for mandolin master Chris Thile and bassist Edgar Meyer’s new release, Bass & Mandolin, on September 9th.

That’s the same date as Ryan Adams releases his first album in three years. Until then, you can listen to it here.

Ólafur Arnalds gave a charming performance in Vancouver a few months back and we’re looking forward to a new release from his project with Janus Rasmussen, Kiasmos. And his label-mate Douglas Dare has a new EP coming out on September 22nd. And in case you hadn’t guessed we’re talking about Kevin’s favourite label here, there’s another Erased Tapes release worth checking out coming from A Winged Victory For The Sullen.

Books

Love Enough by Dionne Brand promises to be beautiful and heartbreaking by turns.

Eula Biss’ On Immunity: An Innoculation is a much-needed and wide-ranging exploration into the distrust of what were once thought of as revolutionary life-saving medical breakthroughs.

Vikram Chandra’s Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty sounds like the kind of peripatetic exploration of ideas I love.

Kathleen Winter travels Franklin’s path in Boundless: Tracing Land and Dream in a New Northwest Passage.

Those are just a few of this fall’s literary offerings. I suspect that I’m going to run out of holds at the library, working my way through the many I want to read.

Theatre

There’s too much to choose from at the Fringe Festival, which runs from September 4th to 14th this year, so I’ll just send you to their site.

2nd Story: Blood Alley is as much experience as performance.

The Wonderheads’ Grim & Fischer was a highlight for us last year and their new production, Loon, sounds just as good.

Last year’s inaugural East Van Panto was a huge hit. This year they tackle Cinderella and I’m guessing it will be the holidays’ hottest ticket.

I’m hoping I’ve whet your appetite for more exploration. After all, there’s visual arts, dance, museum exhibitions, seminars and lectures, workshops and guided tours – much more than I can detail here.

Now it’s your turn: What have I missed and what are the experiential gems coming up where you live?

FFWD – Chanterelles with Cabbage & Nuts

August 30, 2014August 31, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 15 Comments

It’s easy to think of disincentives for being late: a tapping foot, the flustered greeting, that feeling of being out-of-step with everyone else. But sometimes there are advantages, too. I couldn’t make it to last week’s Farmers’ Market, so I don’t know if they had chanterelles for sale, but I do know I couldn’t find them anywhere else all week. This afternoon, though, there were several baskets of the beautiful fungus sitting front and centre on Wild Foraged‘s table. I scooped up a box, but I admit I almost gave up on the idea of this week’s dish when I found out they also had Chicken of the Woods on hand.

My better angel prevailed and here we are, with an appetizer that is sweet and savoury, meaty and vegetal, all at once. I made a small portion of the dish for the two of us to share, substituting savoy cabbage for the napa and using some vegetable stock in place of bouillon. I’d forgotten to pick up hazelnuts on the way home, so I used chopped almonds instead. I think they were as nice as hazelnuts would have been. I also took Dorie’s bonne idée and threw in some green grapes, which added another lovely layer of flavour to the dish.

The hardest thing about this dish is obtaining the mushrooms. The easiest thing is deciding to make this again before chanterelle season is over. See for yourself, here.

And because we’re heading into the home stretch of Around My French Table, I’m trying to do at least one catch up a week until I’m up-to-date:

Lyonnaise Garlic and Herb Cheese

I’m sort of glad I waited so long to make this one, or else it might have become a staple item in my refrigerator. Fromage blanc (or in my case, ricotta drained overnight until thick) mixed with alliums and herbs makes a wonderful spread for crudités, breads, or crackers. I loved it with oatcakes and slow-roasted tomatoes. If Kevin wasn’t adhering to his vegan diet of late, I’d have filled tomatoes with the stuff for him. I’ve still got quite a bit left and I’m thinking it might find its way into a savoury tart very soon.

Find out what the rest of the French Fridays crew thought about their Chanterelles with Napa and Nuts

And here’s where you can find the verdict on Lyonnaise Garlic and Herb Cheese

Cottage Cooking Club – August 2014

August 29, 2014October 6, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 13 Comments

The drops of rain on this dahlia mark the end of our sunny streak in Vancouver and possibly an early end to summer here. The recipes for this month’s Cottage Cooking Club inhabit the transitional space between summer and fall, as well.

Chard and New Potato Curry

Swiss chard is one of those amazing vegetables that shows up in the spring and keeps on producing right through until winter’s almost begun. Along with some potatoes picked when they’re small and a sauce that’s lightened with yogurt and heightened with Indian-inspired spices, this is a stew that’s welcome in any season. We both loved this curry, eating it without accompaniment on the first night and warming up the leftovers to serve over rice. It’s also one of those recipes that can serve as a template, allowing you to use whatever’s freshest or on hand. We’ll be having this one again and again.

Tahini-Dressed Courgette and Green Bean Salad

This dish hearkened back to my first experiments with vegetarian dishes, when I was in university. We all had jars of tahini in our refrigerators and Moosewood cookbooks on our shelves. Nowadays, I’m more likely to use tahini in Mediterranean or Middle Eastern cooking, but I enjoyed this slightly hippyish salad, especially with the addition of salad greens and tromboncino squash from my garden. The harvest from my first set of green bean vines is over and I’m awaiting more from the second set I planted, so I substituted snap peas, instead. They worked well. I can see myself making variations of this salad for myself (just me – unfortunately, Kevin wasn’t a fan) or using the dressing to marinate vegetables, lamb, or chicken before grilling or baking.

Caramelized Carrots with Gremolata

I couldn’t resist buying some heirloom carrots to use for this dish. These carrots were a deep purple on the outside, with a core of orange – we ate them up too quickly for me to get a shot of that, though. This is another dish I think I’ll be making often, using whatever root vegetables I have on hand. The freshness of the gremolata against the caramelization of the roasted carrots was lovely.

Asian-inspired coleslaw

And lastly, there’s this salad that’s almost like a quick pickle. We loved the combination of flavours in this salad – sweet, tart, earthy, spicy. It felt summery, but the cabbage, carrots, and onions can be obtained at almost any season – this would be a wonderful way to brighten up a late winter meal, too.

Next month, we’ll be exploring vegetarian flavours to pull us into the cooling of the year. I’m eating as much of summer’s bounty as I can, but I admit that autumn’s flavours are on my mind more and more.

Intrigued by this month’s recipes? Buy the book and join us.

Here are the links to the rest of the group’s posts for this month. I encourage you to check them out – you’ll meet some wonderful bloggers and get some great inspiration for vegetarian eating.

Festivals, Fall, and Fun

August 26, 2014August 27, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 2 Comments

The days are getting noticeably shorter, now. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot left to do before the first frost. Now, that’s true for my garden, but right now I’m talking about all the summer events that are still keeping the city busy and the fall events to come.

Family Fun

There’s still plenty to do before school begins and MetroVancouver‘s activities for kids, youth, and families would be a good place to start – you can learn to fish, take a nighttime stroll in search of bats, or help clean up our shorelines.

I like to celebrate the end of summer the way generations of BC folks have and visit the PNE. Who could resist a fair that provides farming displays, a building full of gadgets, super dogs, more food stands than you could ever visit, and an amusement park?

Speaking of traditions, Saturday movies were a staple of my childhood, so I’m glad there’s a series of $2.50 family movies for kids of this generation.

And for those of you who are ready to embrace autumn with your family, there are a LOT of corn mazes in Metro Vancouver. The Chillwack Corn Maze is the best-known, but Hopcott’s Meadow Maze, Bose Corn Maze, and
Mann Farms’ Wizard of Oz themed maze look like a lot of fun, too.

Adults Can Have Fun, Too

Start with Forbidden Vancouver‘s walking tours, which focus on Vancouver’s seamy side – speakeasies, brothels, and murder most foul all make an appearance.

Bored with brewery tours? Hit up Gin & Tonic Fridays at Long Table Distilleries for a weekend treat.

Who Said Festival Season Is Over?

TAIWANfest brings August to a close with films, lectures, food and more.

For a more rhythmic affair, the Vancouver International Tap Festival is back, culminating in a mass tap explosion on Granville Street on the 31st.

After you’ve finished dancing your heart out, it’s time for the Fringe Festival, bringing the city alive with theatre as we move into autumn.

Then, head over to the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival to kick off film fest season.

Harvest Bounty

Many of the community centres around Vancouver are hosting food-focused workshops this fall. For instance, Cedar Cottage Food Network is giving workshops on fermented foods, putting your garden to bed for the winter, cheese-making, and bread baking.

There are also plenty of harvest festivals coming up, too, like the Bowen Heritage Applefest or Earthwise Society’s Tomato Fest.

And right now is when the farmers’ markets will be overflowing with great produce, so it’s time to stock up.

Eventually, you’ll have to go home, so make sure you’ve made the best of the harvest while it lasts. With any luck, you’ll be eating well until it’s time to break ground again in the spring.

FFWD – Quinoa Salad

August 22, 2014August 23, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 33 Comments

I’m a rather mediocre meditator. If I go to a sit or even a day-long retreat, I can meditate successfully and feel as though I’ve gotten a lot out of it (which is entirely the wrong attitude, I know). But, on my own, it doesn’t happen. At least not in that formal, sit and allow your thoughts to pass through, focusing on your breath, kind of way.

My true meditative practice happens when I’m out in the garden or chopping vegetables in the kitchen. It’s in those moments, or in the in-between spaces like a quiet bus ride or a long walk, that I truly reach for a meditative state. The demonstration of this kind of practice is one of the reasons I love the film How to Cook Your Life.

And yes, this week’s French Fridays assignment put me in mind of this, as I cubed or thinly sliced a heaping plateful of vegetables today. Now, I should let you know that the recipe for this week wasn’t actually quinoa salad, it was couscous salad. But, since the other half of the household can’t have gluten, I decided to change it up a bit. It’s a Moroccan-inspired take on a grain and vegetable salad that didn’t suffer at all from the substitution. In fact, I loved the colour the tumeric and other spices lent to my plain quinoa.

You can find the recipe on Epicurious, along with the suggested accompaniment, lemon chicken. Because quinoa is packed with protein, we were able to make a vegan supper of it, along with some corn on the cob.

And as an added bonus, Kevin declared this the best recipe I’ve tried recently. Now, that’s something to contemplate.

Find out what the rest of the French Fridays crew thought about their Couscous Salad

Seed-Saving Season

August 19, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 2 Comments

It’s peak harvest time in the garden now and many of us are focused on eating and preserving as much as we can. But it’s also time to think about next year’s garden, so leaving a few fruits and vegetables to fully mature so that you can harvest the seeds can be part of the plan, too. As I’ve told you before, I’ve been successful saving seeds from the heirloom beans my family grows, but I’m trying to expand those skills.

With that in mind, I headed over to Figaro’s Garden on Sunday to attend their Intro to Seed Saving workshop. The owners are committed to becoming a centre for our neighbourhood’s organic gardening needs and they’ve been providing regular workshops to share skills and build community. They’ve also got a strong connection with Environmental Youth Alliance, which works with young people to build skills and connections with the natural world. One of the owners is the Executive Director of EYA and EYA’s Volunteer Co-ordinator, Katrina Sterba, is also Figaro’s Event Co-ordinator. This crossover has meant that there is a strong grassroots ethos at the garden centre, along with a deep knowledge base for teaching and community outreach.

Sterba led the workshop, allowing some folks from around the neighbourhood to benefit from her expertise. We all had various levels of experience and success with seed-saving, from complete novice to regular experimenter. The workshop led us through a primer on which seeds are the most viable for seed-saving – open pollinated, self-fertile plants are easiest for beginners, while hybrids and some heirloom seeds won’t necessarily grow to resemble the plants they came from. Each of us got a pamphlet with a run down of the concepts she covered and a resource guide for further exploration.

Next, we had a demonstration of the two most common methods of seed-saving: dry and wet. Katrina gave us hands on experience of threshing and winnowing some spring wheat that had been grown right here in East Van. Then, she demonstrated the wet method with one of the most luscious-looking Green Zebra tomatoes I’ve seen.

We also learned from each other. I now have a plan in mind for starting tomato seeds indoors next winter – no small feat in a two-bedroom apartment. There was also a spirited discussion of how to rescue sunflower seeds from hungry birds, or whether we even should.

If you’re in Vancouver, I recommend stopping by Figaro’s Garden for a look at their demonstration gardens or a chat with their staff about your gardening needs. I’ve gotten a number of plants from them over the years, from a dogwood bush for my parents’ (late, lamented) farm to a flat full of annuals for my flower baskets. I’m also going to keep an eye out for more workshops, like the Mason Bee primer they’ll be hosting on September 27th – I think I might become a regular student. In the meantime, I’ve already expanded my seed-saving to the sage plant that flowered abundantly this summer and the peas I grew from seed I got at a seed swap this spring. I’m also keeping an eye on the nasturtiums I picked up from the Kensington-Cedar Cottage Seed Sharing Library so that I can return some to them and keep some for next year’s garden.

Maybe someday, if I keep up the learning, I’ll be able to stop calling myself a beginning gardener.

FFWD – Roasted Red Peppers & Gâteau Basque à la mode

August 15, 2014August 15, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 21 Comments

Hello French Fridays, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I’ve missed you, but I got hit with a nasty sinus infection last month that took away much of my sense of taste and smell, along with almost all of my cooking mojo. I’m coming back on an easy one, so I added in a couple of catch ups, too.

Roasted Red Peppers

I’ve never been a fan of commercial roasted bell peppers – they’re usually a little slimy and the best part of the flavour is in the oil they’re packed in. Homemade roasted peppers, though, are an entirely different matter. Dorie’s recipe has you roasting the peppers in the oven, making it easy to cook them until they blacken and collapse. Once they’ve cooled down enough to peel, it’s just a matter of layering them with seasonings and marinating them in the fridge for at least a couple of hours. I made mine last night and they were wonderful as an appetizer. Unlike the ones out of a jar, they weren’t without texture and they certainly weren’t slimy. Instead, they had a light coating of good olive oil and they were covered in garlic and herbs. I also took a quarter cup of the oil and a slice of pepper, as Dorie suggests in her bonne idée, and made a vinaigrette. I used balsamic instead of sherry vinegar and it was a perfect dressing for salad this evening. Even better, there are still plenty of peppers in the fridge for me to work my way through Mary’s list of roasted pepper ideas.

Gâteau Basque

There has been some disagreement amongst my fellow Doristas as to whether this dessert is a cake or a giant cookie. I don’t really care, because it’s delicious. I used my mother’s homemade cherry jam to fill the gâteau, which isn’t really traditional, but it was wonderful all the same. It’s quick and uncomplicated to make, as long as you leave yourself enough time to chill the dough. I enjoyed this as a summer treat, but I think it will be even better in the wintertime, when a jam-filled treat will bring welcome reminders of the sun.

Olive Oil Ice Cream

Now, I’m not the kind of person that would throw out a cake just because it was made a couple of days ago, but they do tend to get a little drier over time. Since I still had some leftover Gâteau Basque today, I thought a little ice cream might be just the thing to freshen it up. I didn’t have an ice cream maker when the group made Olive Oil Ice Cream, so I decided to tackle one more catch up this week. I was skeptical, I have to say, about olive oil in my ice cream. But this recipe produces a very adult vanilla flavour. The oil cuts the sweetness and enhances the vanilla, while adding a layer of savoury fruitiness all its own. It paired really well with the gâteau, but I would have been just as happy to have it alone, or with some summer fruit.

So, I think I’ve managed a fairly respectable return, don’t you? Once I catch up on the rest of July’s recipes, I’ll be almost on track again. I have to say it’s been good to see you, French Fridays. We shouldn’t wait so long again.

Find out what the rest of the French Fridays crew thought about their Roasted Peppers

You can find links to everyone else’s thoughts about cherry-jam-filled-goodness here: Gâteau Basque

And here’s where you can find the verdict on Olive Oil Ice Cream

Hidden Gems

August 12, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 1 Comment

Last week, I told you about visiting the Centre for Digital Media’s video game exhibit. On my way out, I decided to take a quick break at Momento, the school’s onsite café. As you can see from the photos, it’s got great design and a light, airy space. They’ve also got good food, including vegan and gluten-free fare, and (perhaps most importantly) know the difference between crema and foam when making you an espresso drink.

It’s a good thing they have the school for an anchor, because Great Northern Way isn’t known as a café culture hub. It’s four lanes of fast traffic through office parks and satellite campuses, a shortcut from the east side to the west side that avoids downtown altogether. Across the street, daunting stairs rise up a blank hill to clusters of 1980s condominium complexes. If the residents knew about Momento, I think they’d be willing to make the trip, especially in summer when the students have mostly vacated the campus. I’d wager they haven’t noticed it, though, just as I almost missed a sign for another café in a nearby office park. I didn’t feel tempted to look for it, since it seemed buried somewhere amidst a sea of concrete. I wonder how well it does?

In a truly walkable neighbourhood, places like Momento aren’t a secret at all, they attract a cadre of regulars and eventually become a draw for visitors, too. In the suburbs, even when visible, they sink.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that recently, while I was looking after my parents’ suburban home when they were away. Their neighbourhood has grocery stores and other shops within a similar distance to those in my neighbourhood, but you rarely see anyone walking home with shopping bags. There are also plenty of houses within reach of the old main street, but it can’t seem to support a café – people get their caffeine from places that have drive through windows, or head over to a mall if they want to have coffee with a friend.

As development threatens neighbourhoods like mine with suburbification, where only the chain stores will be able to afford rents, what will happen to the shopping style that prevails there now? Will there be a high street renaissance in smaller centres, as the city pushes out the kind of people who like to shop daily and locally by foot or bike? Or will there be a uniform culture across regions, divided only by concentric layers of increasing inequality? And what will happen to the little businesses that populate the nooks and corners of a well-travelled neighbourhood?

I suggest we find them and cherish them, so that they can thrive as long as possible. And to that end, tell me what hidden gems lie buried in your neighbourhood. Where should I absolutely go if I visit? What would I miss if I didn’t have you as a guide?

Console Archaeology – The Evolution of Gaming

August 5, 2014August 6, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 4 Comments

The history of console games is largely concurrent with my own history.The first console game I ever played was a variation of Pong. My sister and brother and I would go over to my uncle’s house and we’d take turns playing that game with our cousins for hours. It might be unimaginable now, but that square “ball” slowly moving back and forth across the screen was fascinating and fun for us.

It wasn’t long before our gaming options increased and that first game system was gathering dust. Our adolescence happened during the heyday of arcade gaming and I can remember spending afternoons giggling with my sister across a tabletop console, playing Asteroids. Now, that game doesn’t seem much more sophisticated than Pong.

My fascination with gaming waned until well into my adulthood, when I started to become curious about games’ potential for storytelling. Today’s games are richer, visually and experientially, than anything we could have imagined while playing those early games. They are also gaining ground in the realm of storytelling. Though Roger Ebert famously denied games’ potential as art, it’s likely that history will prove him wrong. When you look at how quickly games have progressed since the early Seventies, art might not be too many iterations away.

More importantly for most of us, though, was the camaraderie that was such a big part of gaming. It’s where our culture first learned that interacting with machines could become a profoundly social experience. Those moving pixels were very rarely a solo show – kids would crowd around consoles at home, or do battle in twos, and at the arcade, score-sharing and rivalries were the order of the day.

That’s the scene that was playing out today at the Centre for Digital Media, where I went to experience their exhibit, the Evolution of Gaming. They had examples of many of the most popular games from 1972 onward. It was interesting to try my hand at some of my old favourites, but it was more interesting to see families with kids exploring the equipment and testing out gameplay – gingerly, for most of the consoles had large labels asking users to play gently. I imagined the parents were trying to describe how new and innovative these games were when they first arrived on the scene.

At the same time, you can see how the structure of games has remained constant throughout the years, too. Many of the role-playing games are remarkably similar to the more technically and visually complex RPGs of today. There’s even something charming about their pixelated simplicity. The same can be said of fighting games, too. The changes in responsiveness have made games more challenging, but they are understandable in the same terms as those earlier games.

Perhaps my favourite part of the exhibit was the newest game, a virtual reality romp that has you in the role of an angry Yeti let loose on downtown Vancouver. I enjoyed it not because it’s so much more advanced than the others on exhibit, but because virtual reality games are in their infancy. That newness, with so much potential and so many limitations, brought the exhibit full circle. It made me wonder how quickly this generation of games will become artifacts and what new ways we’ll find to connect and explore in the realm of machines.

The Evolution of Gaming is on until August 10th at the Centre for Digital Media.

Ginger Peach Crisp and Nairn’s Oatcakes – A Review

July 31, 2014March 12, 2016 ~ Teresa ~ 14 Comments

Nairn’s Oatcakes provided me with samples of their products for review. However, all opinions in this post are my own.

I think there’s something both a little homey and a little elegant about oatcakes. They put me in mind of tea and not-too-sweet biscuits with my Irish grandmother. They are also at home on an hors d’oeuvre table, the earthy nuttiness of oats being a perfect foil for dips and spreads, and a nice change from wheat crackers.

So, I was pleased when Nairn’s gave me an opportunity to review their Canadian line of oatcakes. They’re just the sort of thing I like to keep in the cupboard for a snack or light lunch.

Image provided by Nairn's Oatcakes. — Image provided by Nairn’s Oatcakes.

I’ve been eating the oatcakes they sent me all week. The sweet variety are perfect for snacking, but they’re not the North American sugar bombs you might associate with the word cookie. Think of them as biscuits, in the British tradition, instead. Then you’ll be on the right track. I especially like the mixed berry and the ginger flavours with a cup of tea, but the dark chocolate chip flavour is just made for dipping in your coffee. The savoury ones are delicious on their own, but I prefer to make tiny tartines of them, topping them with soft cheeses and berries. They’d also be great with rillettes.

Nairn’s provides lots of recipes and serving suggestions on their website, examples of which you can see in the photos here.

I decided to take the ginger cookies for a spin in the oven, because their spiciness reminded me that I had a bag of ripe Okanagan peaches in the fridge, waiting to be made into a crisp. I used them, crushed, to replace the flour in the topping for the crisp and they worked really well.

I’ve been making variations of this recipe since I was in elementary school. I haven’t actually looked at a recipe for a crisp in years – I use taste and touch to determine when the topping is just right. So, you should think of the recipe below as more of a guideline than a strict set of instructions. If your topping is moist and crumbly, and as sweet as you’d like it to be, it’s ready to top your fruit. I like my topping traditional, but you can add chopped nuts, seeds, or dried fruit to the mix. You can also add dried fruit to the bottom of your crisp. And if your fruit is sweet and juicy, you really don’t need to add any sugar to the bottom. Especially if you’re going to serve your crisp warm, with ice cream. (Yes, that’s a hint.)

Ginger Peach Crisp

1 8X5X2 baking dish

6 – 8 ripe, juicy peaches
1 tsp finely chopped fresh ginger
1/4 tsp finely chopped fresh tarragon
1 tsp vanilla sugar (optional)

5 Nairn’s Stem Ginger Oat Cookies
1/3 – 1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/8 – 1/4 cup softened butter

Preheat your oven to 375°F.

Peel and chop the peaches into bite-sized chunks. Stir in the ginger, tarragon, and vanilla sugar (if using) and leave the peaches to marinate for ten minutes or so.

Crush the ginger oat cookies to a fine consistency. I used our mini food processor, but you can use a mortar and pestle or a ziplock bag and a rolling pin, too. Combine the crushed cookies with the brown sugar and oats, then work the butter in with your fingers until you have a moist, crumbly mixture.

Put the peaches into the baking dish, then cover them with the oat topping.

Bake for 25 – 35 minutes.