2011 August | Guilty Kitchen

Peach and Blackberry Upside Down Cobbler

This week I’m kicking off five glorious days of peaches. You’ve got peaches on your counter? Fruit flies making a home in there? Well, I’ve got five delicious solutions for you.

Today’s recipe is for an upside down peach and blackberry cobbler. So here’s the thought process behind this: I wanted a cobbler. Check. I wanted it to be different. Check. I wanted it to be delicious. Check. This cobbler has your standard biscuit dough, but I added browned butter and thyme to liven it up and I used it as a bottom crust, instead of a topping. Then I cooked it in a cast iron pan. I filled this pie with juicy peaches and hand picked blackberries from the park down the road. Then, seeing how naked this cobbler would be without a topping, I also added a crisp topping filled with butter and oats and sugar.

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{Guest Post: Stephanie of Global Dish} Rustic Plum and Peach Pie

Being that I’m suddenly overwhelmed by freelance work at the moment, I thought it would be great timing for another awesome guest post. Today’s post is from Stephanie of Global Dish. Stephanie is a woman of many talents. From her “About page”:

“Stephanie Arsenault is a writer/photographer/recipe developer based out of Calgary, Alberta. She specializes in the areas of food, travel, and parenting. Stephanie has been educated at a variety of institutions including the Southern Alberta Institution of Technology (SAIT), theUniversity of British Columbia (UBC, on location in Southern France), University of Los Angeles, California(UCLA), Mount Royal University (MRU), and the New York Times Knowledge Network.

She is a member writer of the Parenting Publications of America (PPA), and the Writer’s Guild of Alberta (WGA). Stephanie has also acquired her certification in the Fundamentals of Wine from the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET), and is currently enrolled in a nutrition program with the Alive Academy of Natural Health.”

So you could imagine how happy I was to let Stephanie take over the reigns for a day here on Guilty Kitchen. I hope you’ll enjoy this delicious looking rustic pie. I know I have an abundance of plums and this will be on my table for the weekend. Thank you Stephanie!

Hello, Guilty Kitchen readers!

My name is Stephanie, from Global Dish, and I am so excited to be sharing one of my favourite recipes with you. If you’re anything like me, the single most important part about this season is the abundance of farmer’s markets. For eight months of the year, I sit waiting, anticipating the arrival of the seasonal markets. As time goes by, I begin to wonder what types of produce will be available, and what I’ll create with it… my imagination runs wild.

It is now August, and I still can’t get enough. My countertops are overflowing with peaches, blueberries, cherries and nectarines, and my fingers and tongue have acquired a mulberry hue from excessive fruit consumption. I may have to declare cherries to be their own food group.

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a fund for Jennie

Two weeks ago I made a pie. This pie:

I made this pie in honour of Jennifer Perillo, a woman well known in the food blogging industry both for her writing and her glowing personality. Quite suddenly, on August 7th, her husband and best friend, died of a heart attack. He left this world in such a hurry, there was no chance for anyone to say goodbye. His sudden death left a rift in the lives of not only Jennifer, but their two daughters, Isabella and Virginia.

Although I have never met Jennifer in real life, I felt connected to her and her family. Thousands of us banded together with the hashtag #apieformikey and sent her our positive vibes, our “thinking of yous”, our “things will get better.” We made efforts to speak our mind to Jennifer and to spread the word through not only the food blogging industry, but the mainstream food websites too. Our cause was picked up by CNN and even The Food Network. #apieformikey spread like wildfire.

But as time went on, it somehow didn’t feel like we were doing enough for Jennifer and her girls. Here is a quote from Shauna Ahern of Gluten Free girl:

“As you can imagine, Jennie is overwhelmed not only by her grief, and the sudden responsibility of raising two children by herself, but she is also struggling with this financially. She just learned that she cannot collect widow’s benefits from Social Security because she earns too much money each year. The health insurance for her and her kids runs out in December and she just learned that the total she will have to pay will be more than her mortgage. It’s possible she’ll have to pay off the entire mortgage in one lump sum because the apartment was in his name alone.

And more than anything, Mikey wanted Jennie to continue living her dream of being a food writer. And he wanted to make sure his kids were taken care of well. That’s why he worked as hard as he did.

So we want to help. And we hope you want to help too.”

As if the timing were meant to be, a charity founded by some of the most amazing food bloggers on the web today suddenly got to it’s feet (after months of tireless work to get it going). Bloggers without Borders a charity founded by Maggie Keet of ThreeManyCooks, Erica Pineda-Ghanny of Ivory Hut, and Aimee Wimbush-Bourque of Simple Bites, aims to help those who cannot help themselves.

And so with all these wonderful people working together, #afundforjennie came into being. The tireless efforts of so many people organized together to help out this family has many in the industry moved to action. What can be achieved when we all work together to help one of our own? Amazing things.

Many of us today will have posts featuring this button:

Clicking this button will take you directly to PayPal, where you can give whatever you can afford. $2, $5, $2,000. All of it will help Jennie and her girls.

There are also many amazing bloggers offering services and gifts through online auctions. Although I thought about doing an auction, I didn’t know what I could possibly offer. Though if there is a recipe on my site that you would love for me to cook for you and send and I get enough people asking for one, I might also do an auction. For now, I offer this and hope that everyone out there feels the amazing power this community can have when it comes together.

Current Auctions:

Gluten Free girl and the Chef – Gluten free dinner party for six in Seattle

KC Bakes – Custom 30 pop cake pop stand

What Gaby’s Cooking – Two dozen homemade Giant Chocolate Chip Cookies

Food Woolf – Wire Sculpture and a Visioning Workshop

Ivory Hut – Two tickets to Big Summer Potluck 3

Use Real Butter: Two fine art prints (raffle)

Penny De Los Santos – A Day of Photography on Assignment

All we can do now is push. Push ourselves to help in any way we can and to spread the word about #afundforjennie. Those girls deserve to live their lives free from the crush of financial burden. Jennie’s dream was to write and we can help keep that dream alive right now.

Please help Jennie and her girls, all you have to do is push that button.

Thank you from the bottom of all of our hearts.

Elizabeth

Blueberry Topped Cottage Cheesecake

Summer came a little late this year or not at all according to some people. In fact, with the cool evenings and dark morning, it feels as if we are slipping directly into fall. I can’t complain, as autumn is my favourite season, after all. Usually, it’s a welcome reprieve from the overbearing heat of summer, but this year, that was not so. Spring/summer/fall, it’s all felt the same. I’m thinking we just call the “summer” of 2011 Sprummerall (that’s spring, summer and fall all wrapped in one).

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