Cobbler

Today I channeled Little House on the Prairie. I froze berries for the winter and I made a homemade cobbler from SCRATCH.
I know, what in the hell is happening to me.

I wish I knew.

The blueberry cobbler was a hit. I don't eat blueberries, but the kid does and he loved it. I used the Betty Crocker cookbook from my childhood. My mom gave me this cookbook years ago. I like to think it was a wonderful gesture and not a plea for me to PLEASE, OH FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS GOOD, PLEASE learn to cook.

After all, I did fail home economics three times in a ROW, until they moved me to the watering the plants class. I passed that one, or I could still be in high school. Cooking, sewing, all things home related, I pretty much sucked at them all. Still do. Didn't care then. Don't care now.

Only now, I try harder. I have had limited success in this endeavor. I have kept the kid alive for well over 18 years and if you knew my cooking skills, you would nominate me for mother of the year. So I go with my tried and true recipes, tacos, spaghetti, popovers, wok, baked chicken, that sort of stuff. Salad and a lovely bread product generally round out the meal.

I use the motto "It'll keep you alive til morning." Sometimes since the kid is eighteen, I go with the motto "shut up and eat it, or make something yourself." I didn't say I was in the running for mother of the year every day.

But sometimes I surprise even myself and open the tattered, stained, broken spine cook book and look through the pages. The pages that show the way through my childhood. You can tell we loved biscuits, pies, and cakes. The cookie chapter is pretty obliterated with spots of cookies past. The vegetable pages are as new as the day they were printed as are the meat pages. My mother didn't eat meat, so I assume she just sailed right by those chapters. The cobbler page, well it told a lovely tale of berries and hot summer nights. Of ice cream and the tart taste of fruit. The ending of long, free days and the start of school. I decided that is one memory of mine that I will pass on to the kid.

From the look of the cobbler, he has taken that memory right to his stomach.