A Taste of Sustainability Recipe Spotlight
Crockpot Cobbler and Carbon Consciousness
One aspect of sustainable cooking that people often forget is the very act of heating their meal. Meals that spend extended amounts of time being heated in an appliance like an oven can often be less sustainable. Using energy to heat a large cavity for a small meal leads to a lot of energy being wasted. Some ways to combat this are to use your space more effectively — you could consider cooking your entree AND dessert at the same time, or as we see in this recipe from Katie Shanahan Lindner, of Chapel Hill NC, you could shrink the size of your cooking appliance.
Recipe: Blueberry-Peach Crockpot Cobbler
Prep Time: ~30 min. Cook Time: 1.5-2 hours
Ingredients
8 peaches
1/2 cup fresh blueberries
3/4 cups granulated sugar
2 and 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter
Assembly:
Peel your peaches, and slice into eighths. Pour peach slices and blueberries into your crockpot.
Separately, mix your dry ingredients, and then pour evenly into your crockpot. Slice your butter into appx. 16 pats, and place them on top of the dry ingredients, keeping them evenly spaced.
Next, cover your crockpot with a paper towel, allowing the edges to hang over the sides, and cover with the crockpot lid. This will allow some moisture to escape the crockpot and yield a crispy cobbler topping.
Cook for 1.5–2 hours on high or 4 hours on low, until the peaches are tender and the top is lightly golden.
Recipe adapted from www.wellplated.com.
About the Chef: Katie Shanahan Lindner
Katie is the Executive Director of the UNC Center for European Studies and lives in Chapel Hill, NC with her husband and three children. She is interested in Transatlantic sustainability initiatives, and does her best to think of ways to make sustainability in her own life, and in those of her children, who aided in the creation of this extremely tasty dessert.
For anyone interested in submitting a recipe, take a look at competition rules in our earlier blog post, and submit recipes at go.unc.edu/recipe. Be sure to post your recipes and share your experience on social media! Tag us at @UNCEurope and @UNC_IE, and use #ClimateAction and #ActNow !
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The Sustainable Recipe Challenge is an initiative co-sponsored by the UNC Center for European Studies, A Jean Monnet Center of Excellence, the UNC Institute for the Environment, and Carolina Cupboard.
This post was written by EURO Major Brett Harris
