VEGGIE CITY DISTRIBUTION NIGHT #3

Blogito by Angelito :O

Watering, picking weeds, giving love and harvesting vegetables, that’s just another regular day for the Veggie City Crew. After picking all our vegetables we gather them together, wash them, and separate them for our shareholders, who come later that day to our distribution night to pick them up. These days are quite special because we get to talk to many residents of the neighbourhood, and unpredictable things happen.

            Last distribution night, two residents showed up to try or delicious dipping sauce, they basically sat down and ate half of it, even though they weren’t shareholders of veggie city. That’s alright though; we now know that for our next distribution night we should have more things for people to try! They weren’t the only community residents that decided it to try our sauce...we had many other residents that came discretely to try it while we were talking to our shareholders.

             There was also a particular resident who came to talk to us and try our dipping sauce. What was interesting about this resident was the fact that she decided to debate one of our team members, by stating that women were better than men and it was a very entertaining experience. We would like to thank all our shareholders and residents for being freaking awesome!

VEGGIE CITY RECIPES

Blog by Sosina, Hayat and Dan

At the request of residents Veggie City has been in the kitchen making up recipes with our fresh herbs.
Here are some of the recipes we have created. We hope you enjoy!

Veggie City Garlic Sauce

½ cup of extra virgin olive oil

Bunch of oregano

Bunch of chives

3-4 cloves of garlic

¼ cup white wine or rice wine vinegar

Blend all ingredients together and enjoy! This is extra yummy on pizza!

Veggie City Pesto Sauce

2 handfuls of fresh basil

½ cup extra virgin olive oil

¼ cup almonds or walnuts (pine nuts are just too expensive these days!)

3-4 gloves garlic

¼ cup hard cheese like romano or parmesan

Salt and pepper to taste

Blend all ingredients together and enjoy! Great with spaghetti!

Watermelon Mint and Feta Cheese Salad

Mint is a hard herb to know what to do with, here is a summer salad recipe that is super delicious!

1/4 cup fresh mint sliced

Half of a small watermelon cut in cubes

1 cup feta cheese cubed

3 to 4 tablespoons balsamic reduction *

Combine first 3 ingredients and drizzle reduction on top of salad. ENJOY!

*Balsamic Reduction

Combine equal parts balsamic vinigar and sugar in a pot

Simmer on medium-low heat until reduced to a syrup

Refrigerate after it cools

Use this on salads , on steak with strawberries or as a dip for tomatoes

If you have any great recipes we would like you to share them with us :)

VEGGIE CITY'S FIRST DISTRIBUTION NIGHT!

Hayat's blog:

Our first distribution of fresh veggies was on Wednesday July 13, 2011.  Some of the Veggie City crew helped the sponsors to get their Vegetables. First we picked all of the ripe veggies and herbs, then we had to set up a tent and get a lot of boxes with vegetables in it. There were a lot of vegetables; for exemple,  there were; Banana Peppers, Berries, Rosemary, Parsley, Cilantro, Basil and Mint. It was a lot of fun working with the crew, even when some of them decided to leave because they were tired!  I offered to stay and spend the time working with Eric, a member of the Veggie City crew.  We made a lot of distributions and I ended up having one box of the vegetables left to take home to my family. It was a good day, great for making connections with the crew and residents and made a lot of effort spending my day giving good and delicious vegetables for every sponsor.

VEGGIE CITY LAUNCH BBQ

Launch BBQ Blog- Reeon

To The Veggie City Followers:

The BBQ was a success and we had so much fun! We had Hamburgers, Hot dogs, and Veggie Kabobs. Me as a very social person, I tried to juggle two events that I scheduled on the same day: being a part of the Mentors and Mentees program and Veggie City -I had my bike riding from Kipps Lane to The Park on the other side.  The Veggie City Shareholders came to the event with smiles on their faces and “Human Bingo” cards in their hands. I couldn’t believe the questions I was being asked while I was handling the grill! Some of the questions made me want to drop the spatula and start laughing. After the day starting dying down and the residents left, I was wondering what has happening in my other program and then Tosha said “Hey Reeon go call the other people over here we have lots of food” which made my day because I got do both things at once even though I doubled booked and I won’t ever do that again way too hard to manage. Jules sang and played the guitar for us, which was awesome. She is a fantastic musician! Thank you to Trevor for being my grill bud and to Jules for making our BBQ the best!    

Planting Day- By Eric and Sosina

The second Saturday in June was our planting date. All the Veggie City workers showed up at the drop off point at 8:00 am half awake. About 15 minutes later volunteer workers showed up with around 2000 plants (900 of which were tomato plants). Part of the crew split off to finish putting compost in the last garden while the two of us stayed behind to sort the vegetables with Tosha. The sorting took us most of the day because we had to figure out what vegetables fit which gardens and the quantity of vegetables each garden needed. We also had to sort out what vegetables grew well together.

It was a very long and hot day. Apart from sorting out the vegetables we had to deliver them to each garden in Tosha’s small, messy, overused and crowded van! (Yeah to her new and clean van!)  This meant that we had to go back and forth to pick and drop off the plants which made the process much longer than it should have been.

A very big Thank You from the Veggie City staff to Fernlea for the Bonnie Bell veggies and the volunteer workers that helped deliver the thousands of plants which will help us on our long journey to make some of the best and most productive gardens in London!

A Week With Robyn Harvey

Last week we received a phone call. Robyn Harvey, community gardening expert and environmental advocate was tending his plots and invited us to join him. We raced over to see what Robyn was up to and to check out his fantastic gardens. When we arrived, Robyn was all smiles, touring around the garden, offering us herbs to nibble on and teaching us about leaf composting, planting and spacing in the garden. He let us plant some tomatoes and taught us the trick of adding bone meal to the compost while planting. Robyn was full of gardening stories and tips, as well as humor in the garden. His biggest advice to us was to always remain humble. Gardening is an art, but much of the work and success is not up to us! The day felt a little surreal. Robyn was commenting on the amazing gardening happening around the city, and hopes and dreams for the future. His dream involves young people participating in the urban food movement: Veggie City setting a great example of the possibilities in years to come. Did we also mention that Robyn has an uncanny knack with young people? Throughout our day with him, he showed patience, humour and spontaneity to two of our mini volunteers, and over the week that we spent with him planting our resident gardens, Robyn was able to draw out mini residents and include them in planting and watering the veggies. We not only learned to separate our basil and cilantro herbs before planting, but Robyn helped us to make sure that our plants had enough space to grow and that we had optimized our gardening space. Robyn will continue to mentor us, especially during harvesting times, offering up much needed support along the way. Thank you Robyn for getting your hands (and feet) dirty with the Veggie City crew!

Garden Creation Day with TLC Professional Landscaping

Saturday, June 11th, 8:30am: Volunteer residents from River Park Towers have been out for an hour, edging the soon-to-be garden. Hot apple fritters arrive from the Western Fair Market, with the Veggie City crew trailing close behind. We are finally at the stage where we are digging in the ground, creating the gardens that we have been wishing for since April. We look over to the parking lot and see the truck pulling in. It is huge! Out comes the TLC landscape crew, one-by-one. Then, another truck arrives with more men! Eight crew members and Tim, manager of the landscape crew are here to rescue. They bring all their heavy equipment, including two trailers and a mini-tractor. First they cut the sod and then the crew teaches the Veggie City staff and volunteers how to roll it up and wheel it into the trailers. Speed is of the essence. The rototillers then come out of hiding and two crew members push the heavy machinery in rows, trudging up the newly created garden. This process continues at each of the Veggie City resident gardens. The crew stops to take a  water break, enjoying some bagels and juice that residents like Teresa Wilson provide for all of the members on this hot summer day. Back to work they go, working up a sweat and sharing stories, tips and tricks with the Veggie City student employees. Crew members like Daryl, Jason and Ryan are particularly inspiring and funny and the students feel like part of the team, even riding in the trucks with the TLC crew. At the end of a very long 11 hour day, everyone is dirty and tired, but all smiles at the amazing work that has been accomplished on behalf of TLC for the Veggie City garden project. All of the resident gardens look fantastic! Next step: compost and then planting. A very warm and appreciative thank you to TLC and the crew for volunteering to make this project a success! We couldn't have done it without you!