Basil-Blackberry Crumble

Recently, when we offered basil and raspberries to our Veggie Coop members, Joan Scott, wrote that she had used her raspberries and basil in this recipe. .

Basil-Blackberry Crumble/ Resource: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
2-3 apples, chopped
2 pints berries/ your choice
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 large handful of basil leaves, chopped
1/ 4 cup honey - or more, depending on tartness of your berries.

Preheat oven to 400. Combine the above in an oven-proof casserole dish, mix and set aside.

Crumble Topping
5 tbsp flour
3 heaping tbsp. Brown sugar
1 stick butter
Cut butter into flour and sugar, then rub with your fingers to make a chunky, crumbly mixture (not uniform). Sprinkle it over the top of the fruit, bake 30 minutes until golden and bubbly.
(Kingsolver acknowledges the original source to be Linda Heuring)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a book by Barbara Kingsolver, her partner, Steven Hopp and daughter Camille Kingsolver. Kingsolver and Steven made a decision to leave the water thirsty Tucson area and move to Southern Appalachians to develop a family farm, which had been in Steven’s family for many years. It already had a farmhouse, barn, orchards and fields. She describes this new phase of her life in this way. “We wanted to live in a place that could feed us; where rain falls, crops grow and drinking water comes right out of the ground. She goes on to say that Tucson has a wide spectrum of activities and services to meet the daily human wants - except where human sustenance is concerned. Virtually every unit of food consumed there moves into town in a refrigerated module from somewhere far away. Every ounce of the city’s drinking, washing and goldfish-bowl-filling water is pumped from a nonrenewable source - a fossil aquifer that is dropping so fast, sometimes the ground crumbles.”

Kingsolver is a fiction writer. The books she has published is listed on the front flyer. This book, is different. Published in 2007 by HarperCollins is an account of her journey from Tucson to the Appalachians, how they settled in and year of trying to be self-sustaining. She describes each trial and error around growing, harvesting and cooking the food grown on her own farm and the surrounding area. The recipes and meal plans are introduced selectively at the end of each chapter. For example, like most of us, her family was delighted with the first zucchini of the season, but after more and more zucchini and limited other vegetables, she and her daughter used squash in every way possible including chocolate chip zucchini cookies. This reminds me of the days before the Veggie Coop when we had more zucchini than we knew what to do and resorted to making a chocolate zucchini cake. .

The weather has been especially cold and wet here on the Avalon Peninsula on the Island of Newfoundland, this 2008 season. In mid-July, our production was limited to garlic scapes, green onions, chard, kale and Asian greens along with our son’s wonderful salad mix. We try to provide ideas and recipes for, “What’s In The Bag!” Mike, my husband and co-owner, Organic Farm was reading the Kingsolver book. He suggested Kingsolver’s recipe for Egg In A Nest, which describes how she used greens and eggs for a nutritionally balanced meal. It displayed beautiful on the plate and was a great success with our vegetarian guests. See recipes/ Website.

For more information about the book or to review and/or download other recipes, go to: wwwAnimalVegetableMineral.com. This book is also available on CD, read by the author.
Happy Kingsolvering!
Melba Rabinowitz, August 2008