This morning I sat surrounded by cookbooks and a stack of cooking magazines trying to decide what would best satisfy my craving for a baked dessert that would feature berries and pair well with ice cream or whipped cream. Because this sort of dessert, in my mind, is as essential to the 4th of July as fireworks and food cooked on the grill.

In the American Fruit Dessert section of the Joy of Cooking the first entry is a Pandowdy. Which has such a great name, I was instantly drawn to it. However, it is usually made with apples. While I could substitute berries, typically when I try a new dish that has some culinary history I like to honor its traditions and make it without wacky variations the first time I make it. Once I feel like I understand what its all about I’ll put my twist on it. Perhaps I’ll have a pandowdy report sometime during apple season.

Cobbler is a simple, tried and true preparation that I love. But since we are headed to a potluck style BBQ, I kind of had this strange desire to wow people with my silly named confection. I wanted to really spark the party converstation with the history of my dessert. You can tell I’m really the life of the party if this is what I think about heading into a potluck.

So I moved on to read about Grunts & Slumps. According to Joy of Cooking they both are relatives of puddings that were cooked in pots over a fire. While Alton Brown mentions in I’m Just Here for More Food (his baking cookbook) that a grunt gets it’s name from the sound of the fruit bubbling through the crust while it cooks. Both have great conversation potential, but I was craving something with a touch of crispiness to go with my sweet, fruity filling and these recipes all seemed to yield a softer more saturated result.

Of course a crisp would work, but what a bland name! So then I considered a Brown Betty which is made with sweetened buttered crumbs and has a history dating back to Colonial times! A darling name and plenty of historical conversation potential! But here again I ran into the issue of the traditional fruit being apples. So I have another fall dessert to research.

The last funny named American fruit dessert I brushed up on was a Buckle. Again, my priorities in choosing a dessert were slightly askew. I learned that a buckle is a type of cake with fruit folded into the batter and then generously topped with streusel. Sounds delicious! But also like the fruit might take a back seat to all that batter and topping.

In the end I realized that I had already made up my mind about what I wanted to eat and its cobbler! Easy, fail-proof, full of fruit, cobbler. I followed the recipe fairly closely (which I tend to do when baking, because its not my strong suit in the kitchen) for the Joy of Cooking’s Blueberry Cobbler with Sour Cream Cobbler Biscuit Dough. I even got jazzy and made a lattice top! I just made a few of my standard baking substitutions such as using natural sweeteners and whole wheat pastry flour.

I just pulled it out of the oven and my heart soared! It smells delicious and looks beautiful and browned and a little craggy and rustic. Just what I’ve been craving all day! And while I probably won’t get to wow any of the BBQ guests with my expansive knowledge of the history of American fruit desserts, I bet a bit of this cobbler with a dollop of fresh whipped cream will win their affections just the same.

I hope today you all get to celebrate being American in a really delicious way!

Blueberry Cobbler with a few Kip twists

Filling

3 pints blueberries

1/2 cup unrefined granulated sugar (such as Rapidura, Sucanat or Florida Crystals)

1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour

Zest from 1 lime

Topping

1 1/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour

2 tablespoons unrefined granulated sugar (such as Rapidura, Sucanat or Florida Crystals)

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1/2 cup sour cream

1/4 cup heavy cream

To make filling:

Wash and pat dry the blueberries. Combine the sugar, flour and lime zest and toss with the berries. Spread evenly in a baking dish that has a 2 quart capacity and is about 2 inches deep.

To make topping:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Add butter and toss with dry ingredients. Cut the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture is like coarse breadcrumbs. Combine the sour cream and heavy cream in a separate bowl and then add it to the flour mixture. Mix by hand only until the dough comes together and can be rolled or patted. Gently knead the dough 5 to 10 times in the bowl if needed to press any loose pieces into the dough. At this point you can spoon little walnut sized dropfuls on top of the berries or you can roll out the dough to cut out shapes. Really you can do whatever you want to get the dough arranged on the fruit. To roll it out, dust the top and bottom of the dough with a little flour and roll the dough to between 1/4 and 1/2 inch thick. I chose to cut the dough into 1 inch strips for a lattice. Once you’ve got the dough arranged, lightly brush the top with a lightly beaten egg and sprinkle with a tablespoon of sugar. Bake 45 to 50 minutes until the top is golden and the juices have thickened slightly.

While I still consider myself to be a novice gardener, I’m starting to feel like I might be slowly approaching intermediate status. Every time I get out in the garden and poke around, I learn new stuff. There are continually sucesses (fava beans!) and failures (carrots) and things that fall somewhere in between (Brussels sprouts). This learning process humbles me; especially to the farmers who do this for a living and grow the food I eat.

Since we started working in the yard (January 1st 2008) we have drastically made improvements. It’s been quite a journey from the days when our primary biomass came from kudzu to today when we are cultivating a fairly decent variety of fruits, vegetables, flowers and other various plants.

When I share with people I have a garden, they almost always ask me what I’m growing. So here it is:

Vegetables

Fava beans (Windsor)

English peas (Grandma Denlinger’s Sugar Pea)

Southern peas (Whippoorwill)

Tomatoes (Roma, Brandywine, Beefsteak)

Peppers (Ancho, Cayenne, some mystery peppers that our friend gave us)

Lettuce (Bon Vivant Spicy Mesclun Mix, Oakleaf, Drunken Women Looseleaf, Buttercrunch, Bibb, Vivian Romaine)

Swiss Chard (Five Color Silverbeet)

Kale (Lacinato, Red Russian, Blue Dwarf)

Potatoes (Yukon Gold, Caribe, Russian Banana Fingerling, Rose Gold, Red Cloud, Cranberry Red, Carola, Rose Finn Apple Fingerling)

Zucchini (Tender Grey, Black Beauty)

Winter Squash (Delicata Honey Boat, Waltham Butternut)

Carrots (Little Finger)

Red Cabbage

Brussels Sprouts

Red Onions

Fruit

Blackberries

Raspberries

Blueberries

Pomegranates

Nuts

English Walnuts

Herbs

Sweet Basil

Thai Basil

Peppermint

Cilantro

Rosemary

Thyme

Oregano

Sage

Tarragon

Sorrel

Feverfew

St John’s Wort

Citronella

Flowers, Shrubs & Other Stuff

Cala Lilies

Cana Lilies

Hydrangeas

Gardenias

Sedum

Euphorbia

Yarrow

Daylilies

Irises

Nasturtiums

Roses (Knock Out)

Hellebores

Virigated Liriope (aka: Washington Grass in my family…another story for another day)

Vinca

Ferns (Christmas, Leatherleaf)

Creeping Raspberry

Yew

Nandinas

Acuba

Hops (Cascade & Chinook)

Things that grow whether we like it or not

Kudzu

Poison Ivy

English Ivy

Mimosa Trees

Mulberry Trees

There are things that are not on this list that we have grown in the past and may or may not grow again. There is a ton of stuff not on this list that I plan to grow eventually. One of the areas that I really want to turn my attention to next is more herbs, particularly perennial herbs.  I also have no experience with citrus, but I’d like to give it a try. Perhaps some dwarf varieties in containers? Have any tips for citrus or favorite herbs you’d like to tell me about?

]]> http://www.downintheholler.com/2009/06/07/whats-growing/feed/ 0 http://www.downintheholler.com/2009/05/20/14/ http://www.downintheholler.com/2009/05/20/14/#comments Wed, 20 May 2009 22:28:22 +0000 Kip http://www.downintheholler.com/?p=14 For a period of time yesterday and then again today my brain was consumed with stress over finances. I was mostly fretting over student loans. And while I (and we) are in a stable financial situation, every time I look at those big balances I wince a little. Or really I want to pull a Rip Van Winkle and go to sleep for twenty years and wake up when it’s all over.

But what I did instead was call my sweet, comforting, level-headed father and asked for some sound advice on the best strategy for continuing to chip away at those daunting numbers. He gave me good advice, but best of all he reassured me; he gave me some perspective and he told me he was proud of me.

Throughout the course of our conversation I began to think about things that are important and things that I value. I thought about things that I’m willing to live without and things for which I’m willing to pay extra when I can. I also thought about how fortunate I am that we are in a stable enough financial situation to be able to make the choice to pay extra for some things.

Food is one of those things that is really important to me. I’m often willing to pay extra to get better quality when it comes to food. This doesn’t mean that we lounge around the homestead eating beluga caviar, Wagu beef and gold foiled chocolate confections while swilling it down with vintage Bordeaux. But it does mean that I’m willing to pay the price for locally raised grass-fed beef and pastured pork. It does mean that now and again I’ll shell out some extra bucks for artisan goat cheese. I am also willing to regularly pay extra to stock our kitchen with mostly organic and sustainably produced foods, whether I’m shopping at a conventional grocery store or a farmer’s market.

We offset these extra costs by growing some of our own food, making most of our food from scratch and eating most of our meals at home. But by doing these things we get more back than just the ability to buy more nice food. We make an investment in our health. We support our local economy and local farmers. We hone our cooking skills. We learn about new foods and new flavors. We create an environment for wonderful shared meals with friends and neighbors.

All those things are really important to me. And while I love to go shoe shopping just like the next red-blooded American gal, I’m willing to make the shoes I have last another season if it means I get to eat well.

Brian Hardy is the computer brains behind this operation drawing on his skill as a software developer and trainer. But don’t let his nerdy profession lead you astray. His dynamic interests range from home-brewing beer to vinyl record collecting and from cooking elaborate ethnic dishes to working on diesel Mercedes Benzes & a vintage Vespa scooter. He’s a creator and a fixer and an imaginative idea maker and generally a super handy dude to have around the homestead.

I think you’ll dig him almost as much as I do…and that’s a whole lot!

In addition to a casual documentary of our lives, we hope this site can be a place to share exciting new ideas and experiences. Learning and growing together with our friends, old and new, is one of our favorite things to do!

You must forgive my lack of introductions. Allow me to start with my compatriot in this tiny kingdom: the love of my life, Ms. Kip Slaughter. She’s a saucy young woman with a head full of knowledge, and she’s not afraid to tell you all of it; you might not even have to ask! But seriously, as a trained Master of Science in Nutrition, she will have a lot to say about gardening, cooking, composting and living sustainably in the semi-suburban patch we call home.

And with that, I’ll leave my introduction to her.