Dinner with Grandpa

Enchiladas! Yum. I made red enchiladas for another lovely Dinner With Grandpa night. I lightly cooked up some garlic, onion, carrots, summer squash, broccoli, and pinto beans, then rolled up my enchiladas. So quick and so delicious and nutritious. The rice is a quick and cheap version of spanish rice: I threw in some onion, some chopped bell pepper, garlic, and some salsa. It turned out yummy!

For dessert, I made an old favorite - a Quick Plum and Almond Cake. I saw it Jacques Pepin make it on TV years ago, and wrote it down as best as I remembered it. I like it because you cook whole plums right into the cake! So pretty. Here's my veganized version of JP's recipe:

1 c flour (I used white whole wheat flour or whole wheat pastry flour, spelt also works well)
1 c slivered almonds (the original recipe calls for raw whole almonds, which I've always used before... it's also great and results in a slightly more dense cake - but I liked the way the slivered almonds resulted in a lighter cake)
1 c sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 "eggs" (I used EnerG Egg Replacer)
4 Tbsp Earth Balance
1/4 c soy milk or almond milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp white vinegar or apple cider vinegar
1-2 tsp sherry (optional)
6 ripe plums
extra sugar
3 Tbsp apricot jam + 1 Tbsp water

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a springform pan.

Add the flour, sugar, almonds, baking powder & Earth Balance into a food processor. Chop until blended and the almonds have become fine crumbs.

Mix up your egg replacer and add it into the food processor. Then mix together the milk, vanilla, vinegar, and sherry and add the liquid mixture slowly while blending the food processor. The batter should be quite thick.

Pour the batter into the spring form pan and spread it smooth with a rubber spatula.

Now take your plums and carefully remove the pits. Try to do this without breaking the other end of the plum. It looks better. Pour a little extra sugar into a dish. Get the pitted plums a little bit damp with plum juice or water and roll them in the sugar. Then arrange them in the batter, hole-down.

Cook for 45min-1hour until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Mix up the jam and water and brush it on the cake as a glaze. Just so you know, as the cake cools, the cooked plums will sink down, but don't worry, they will taste totally freaking amazing, so it's okay.

And of course, no trip to my grandpa's is complete without a produce extravaganza in his backyard. I saw the raspberries needed to be picked, and 20 minutes later I had a LOT of berries. Some were given to my aunt, some to my friend JJTWH, some were left for my grandpa, and some for us. Also, a big bag of plums - YUM. And a lovely, perfect, delicious King Fig. That fig tree is full of GIGANTIC figs on the verge of being ripe, I can hardly wait.

Oh, Fig, I love you.