Fresh apricot crumble

Apricot Filling

• 600 gr (1.3 lbs) fresh apricots - (about 18-20 small apricots)

• 40 gr (3 tbsp) brown sugar

• 1/2 Lemon, juiced - (about 30ml / 2 tbsp)

• 7 gr (1 tbsp) cornstarch

• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

• 1/2 tsp ground ginger

Apricots Filling

1. Preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F.

Oat Topping

• 150 gr (1-1/2 cup) rolled oats(certified Gluten-Free if required)

• 50 gr (1/4 cup) brown sugar

• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

• 1 tsp ground ginger

• 120 gr (1/2 cup) unsalted buttersoft

2. Wash and cut the fresh apricots into thin slices (I cut each apricot in 8, but you can also cube them). Place them in a large mixing bowl with the brown sugar, lemon juice, cornstarch, ground cinnamon and ginger. Toss together until evenly coated.

3. Transfer into a baking dish and set aside.

Oat Topping

1. Place the rolled oats, brown sugar, ground cinnamon and ground ginger in a large mixing bowl. Cut the soft butter into small cubes and add them to the oats. Use your fingers to rub the butter into the oats to create chunks of dough. Cover the apricots with the crumble. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, or until the topping is golden brown and the filling under is bubbling. Leave to cool down for about 10 minutes, and serve warm.

Notes

1. I used a small oval ceramic baking dish, suitable for about 6 people. Feel free to double the quantities to feed more people.

2. Make sure the butter is well rubbed into the dry ingredients, and evenly combined. You should not see large pieces of uncovered butter anymore.

3. If not serving straight away, leave to cool down completely then cover and transfer in the fridge. Re-heat in the oven before serving for about 10 to 15 minutes, covered with aluminium foil.

Source: https://www.abakingjourney.com/fresh-apricot-crumble-with-oat-topping/

How’s that frog doing?

WVoices of Experience

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My two cents

Moneca Jantzen Editor

hile the summer is half over, it seems we’ve had a much longer “summer” than usual given the way the weather has behaved this year. A big part of me doesn’t want to complain about a summer launched in May. Locally, it has mostly been wonderful and for once there haven’t been too many mosquitos to send me over the edge. This is not to say that forest fires, floods and extreme weather events have not been doing their thing across the country and world. One of my nieces lives not too far from the fires that took out that neighbourhood near Halifax in the spring. My sister was supposed to do an Ironman in Mirabel, Quebec recently and the event was canceled due to wildfire smoke. These events are always too close for comfort, often life changing and they are impacting people everyday even if they aren’t happening to us directly.

I think most of us enjoy classic summer days of heat and blue skies, but that’s really only if you have access to the right conditions. Living through summer can be tough if you don’t have access to an air conditioner, a fan or two, a cool basement to retreat to, a swimming pool or a beach that also offers shade, cool drinks and perhaps a way to cook outside. The rather ominous downside is definitely a record-setting fire season, widespread drought conditions and all that that entails as well as the harsh reality that many people do not have access to all the things to safely get through a scorching summer.

I started out the season with a busted A/C in my car and while clearly a luxury, now that I have it fixed I am relieved, especially on those smoky days when keeping one’s windows down seems foolish, the price of gas notwithstanding. Needless to say, it’s crucial to stay safe out there, find ways to keep cool, stay hydrated and wear your sunscreen, hat and sunglasses.

With the prospect of having to cut back on water this summer, my mom and I have already started to do a few extra things that will help a little. Surely these are things people should be doing anyways even without the threat of water rations. Have shorter (and fewer) showers if you can swing it; do full loads of laundry and just once a week or less; use low flow toilets and don’t flush every time unless necessary (insert catchy little poem here); keep a large catchment container in the sink and use greywater to rinse dishes or water plants; keep the grass a little longer, adhere to municipal watering regulations; water everything a little bit less and maybe invest in rain barrels to catch some of that rainwater if you have a garden to worry about. I have even contemplated what I will do if/when things get worse and I may resort to showering with a small bucket of water—a skill I acquired many moons ago. I also won’t be washing my car often, although this is hardly atypical of me. Beyond that, it would seem anything else we can do is pray and learn how to rain dance and pressure the powers that be to do the right thing.

As individuals, we can all do our part to help the environment, but in the grand scheme of things real change has to come from government and industry on an international level and on a grand scale and I don’t know if that will ever happen in a way that will matter. Just hearing how devastating the war in the Ukraine has been in environmental terms, as an example, makes me despair that humans will ever get their collective act together. That someone like Vladimir Putin can single handedly distract millions from what we should really be attending to and focusing on, not to mention massively impacting the planet in such a horrific way, is infuriating.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like the frog in the gradually boiled water. It’s hard not to be painfully aware of our reality at this point and I guess the question is whether or not it’s too late. We should have hopped out decades ago and figured this stuff out by now, but here we are. It will be interesting to see how things unfold going forward as more and more people are faced with the stark reality of climate change.

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Editor: Moneca Jantzen editor@connectornews.ca

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