...and cooking

As much as I love Pgh, and lord knows I do, sometimes I wonder why, oh why, I live in a place where it has trouble hitting 60 degrees at the END OF MAY?

It's particularly difficult because I've developed a craving for cobbler. Not just any old cobbler, but my mama's straight-from-the Southwest peach cobbler. This cobbler is unlike any other. It requires peaches so ripe that you smell their sweet scent from another room, so ripe that they would rot if you waited one more day.

But I live in Pittsburgh, and peaches won't be ripe until July or so.

So tonight I tried to make do. I made a strawberry cobbler. My first ever, and I used frozen strawberries from Trader Joe's, which in retrospect might not have been the best idea since they were very moist when cooking.

Here's how it looked. Interestingly, the strawberries sank as soon as I took it out of the oven. Peaches don't do that.

Here's a close-up.

How did the strawberry cobbler taste? It was surprisingly good! With peach cobbler, the sweetness of very ripe peaches combines with the sweetness of the sugar to coat your tongue and your senses with a sweet-gasm of happiness. With strawberries, the cobbler has a tinge of tartness that surprises the palate. I'm afraid to imagine that I could eat a lot more of strawberry cobbler at one sitting than peach cobbler, because it's not so very sweet.

*Transplanted Texan's Peach Cobbler

1 1/2 c. flour

1 1/2 c. sugar

1 t. baking powder

1 egg

dash cinnamon (optional)

splash vanilla (optional)

3 or 4 very ripe peaches, peeled and sliced into bite size chunks (for strawberry cobbler, I used 2 pkgs Trader Joe's frozen organic strawberries)

a couple T of melted butter

Preheat oven to 350. Sift together dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Add egg and mix well. (I mix by hand, using a whisk.) It will be lumpy. That is ok. Add vanilla, if using. Place peaches on the bottom of a 9x13 glass baking dish. Place peaches close together, in one layer, so that you have a peach in every bite. Pour contents of mixing bowl evenly across peaches. Drizzle melted butter evenly across contents of baking dish. Bake until the crust is golden brown, about 20 or 30 minutes. I never really time it, actually. Look for a brownish crust.

Now, to eat this like a true Texan, you have to put a big slab o' cobbler, warm or cold, into a bowl and drown it in milk. Treat it like your cereal, and you'll love it a whole lot more. :)

*all ingredients natural/organic/cage-free, etc. unless impossible to find like that in a Pittsburgh grocery store