Thunderstorm, Tornado, Tomatoes, Toma-toes By Angel and Eric

Wednesday, August 24. London was expecting a thunderstorm and was under a tornado watch. Since it was just a tornado watch, and it was suppose to happen during the evening, Veggie City crew decided to go on with the distribution night. It didn’t rain earlier in the day as we expected which made it easier for us to set everything up for our shareholders to come and pick up their veggies. Eventually it started to rain but it wasn’t too bad and at the end of the day, it was a successful day.
            Despite the rain, it was a great night! We had collected a lot of goods from our gardens, we had an average of 700 cherry tomatoes, and many other vegetables. Also, the public healthcare nurse Jane came by to watch and help despite the tornado watch, she also thought many cool facts such as “root vegetables are good for your cholesterol”. With the help of Jane we decided to change the location to the side of the plaza in case of rain. Jane is also going to talk to the dietician at the Middlesex Health Unit and get some squash recipes for our shareholders to try. 

Just remember, rain or shine, Veggie City always does the job and we try to satisfy everybody.

  

Lots of Love from

Angelito (Deejay) and Ericito (Phil)

Hayat and Sosina's Blog--The Week of the Northeast Community Market and Fair

Thursday August 18 was our distribution night for that week because the Veggie City crew were at a training seminar with 200 other youth that are employed by Youth Opportunities Unlimited for the summer.  It was a very rainy distribution night. We had gotten back from the YOU graduation BBQ and picked a lot of our usual vegetables and a massive amount of cherry tomatoes and banana peppers. We set up a picnic table under the roof of the Sanctuary for shelter because it was thunder storming. We did not have all of the shareholders come to pick up the vegetables because of the rain but we had fun sitting under the roof and have a conversation about the storm.

 North East Community Market and Fair at Ross:

We had our own table at the market giving away birdfeeders, planters, and bulletin boards that we made on the days we weren’t in the gardens. We were also selling Veggie City t-shirts and water bottles. Eric and Derek made the best lemonade ever! The people at the market enjoyed it very much. We were also giving away the vegetables that were not picked up by the residents on our last distribution night. It gave the people that were not shareholders a chance to have our veggies and talk to us about Veggie City.  We didn’t have any vegetables left by the end of the market. Myself, Eric, Derek and Jasmine were able to take turns walking around and checking out what people were selling around the market. 

The community market was a lot of fun! People sold food, clothes, jewellery etc. The talented group of young dancers known as the Dynamic Dozen performed for everyone. There was also a group drawing chalk graffiti on the parking lot with kids. Towards the end of the day DJ Hex came and we all had fun dancing. Luso was also handing out corn. The Kipps Lane Northeast Community group was handing out water bottles for free to support recycling. There was also a junior and senior soccer tournament going on at the field right beside the market.

Distribution Night #4- The Spoken Word By Tyree

It was our fourth distribution night and we made a pesto with breadsticks for our shareholders to sample. Unfortunately, they were so good that we ate them all instead of saving them for our residents! That day it was also very cold and the people who went to the distribution night were cold because we didn’t have any warm clothes besides shorts and a t-shirt.  The weather sure is changing fast! We had an “all boys” distribution night and Trevor stopped by during the night and we had fun talking about different point of views about how things would be done and telling really funny jokes (that had to do with absolutely nothing related to Veggie City). When time was up for us and it was time to go home, Eric’s mom came by and helped us bring the equipment back to the storage unit not realizing she took home the extremely HUGE zucchini that we picked earlier on. That’s ok, this week we picked an even bigger one and we made zucchini muffins for all of our shareholders to try. Until next time…

Derek's First week At Veggie City!!!

Hi my name is Derek McLay and I have recently been hired to be a supervisor in the Veggie City Program. My week started out with meeting with Katie Knapp, who has also been hired to work in the same role as me in the Veggie City Program.  We started our week by meeting with some of the youth in the Veggie City team, and they walked us around the neighbourhood to see all of the gardens. It was quite the day, getting to know the youth and getting to see all of the houses. From there we just jumped right into work, watering, weeding and spending quality time with all the youth. On Wednesday we would experience our first pick up day, most of the day was spent gathering all of the vegetables that are ready for everyone to enjoy. We bring everything back to the hub to count it, and ready it for all the shareholders to take home. The highlight of that day for me was counting 744 cherry tomatoes!!! We spent the last 2 days of the week, really  getting into the gardens and trying to get them picture perfect, as we found out that they were due to be photographed for an end of the year wrap up book. These 2 days was a lot of hard work, and at times it seemed we would never get through it all, but with our noses to the grind and fingers getting dirty we were able to clean it all up. I am really looking forward to week 2, and really starting to help the program grow!!

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.