Peach-Blueberry Cobbler and My Face: United in Love

I don’t like to mess with recipes. Part of that comes from a lack of confidence in my cooking abilities, and part of it comes from too many experiences like this:

ME: Hm. It says here that there should be one cup of sugar in this cake. I’m out of sugar, so how about … rock salt! Yes! Rock salt! That’s it. It’s crystalline and white and about the same size. Nobody will notice.

(Cut to an hour later. My friends are strewn comatose across the living room furniture, pale and clinging to life.)

FRIEND (whispering faintly): Birthday cake … supposed to herald … year to come. Instead … brings only … pain. Please take me … sweet release … of death …

ME: Hm. I don’t think I did that right.

Peach-Blueberry Cobbler (found at Cooking Light, or with a slight variation at Closet Cooking) was a pleasant surprise, then. I didn’t substitute any ingredients, but DID use alternate preparation methods, both of which succeeded in spades (if I do say so myself).

(And I do.)

First, CL asks for a pastry blender or two knives for step 4, but I figured a single fork would do the job just as well. Using medium pressure, I pressed the tines through the dough, rotated the bowl, and repeated. In about 3 minutes, I had the requested coarse meal consistency.

Second, for the biscuits, the recipe says to flour a small surface, knead the dough, roll it out, and carve 16 uniformly-rounded pieces from the ¼” mat. Alas, I didn’t have a biscuit cutter, or the patience for all those extra steps. Instead, using two teaspoons, I dropped 16 similar-sized glops all over the top of the cooked fruit. It worked perfectly, and gave a neato, semi-spiky look to the cobbler when all was said and done. I was pleased, yo.

Four servings and two days later, I’m thoroughly happy I didn’t mess with the ingredients, because hot, cold – whatever - this stuff is farging DELICIOUS. Someone, somewhere had once mentioned that peaches and blueberries complimented each other like gangbusters. And man, she wasn’t kidding. Together, they form a single, bluish superfruit that strawberry-banana combos can only envy from afar.

Of course, if you’re not into cobbler, I highly suggest Leigh’s Oatmeal Peach Betty from yesterday OR Maple Walnut Apple Crisp from last October. They're frugal, healthy, and tasty as all get out - with or without vanilla ice cream.

Oh – as always with Cooking Light recipes, they provided the nutrition information, so only the price is calculated below.

Peach-Blueberry Cobbler
8 servings (serving size: 1/2 cup cobbler and 2 biscuits)
Adapted from Cooking Light.

1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 cups coarsely chopped peeled peaches (about 3 large – Kris)
2 cups blueberries
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Cooking spray
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons chilled stick margarine or butter, cut into small pieces
6 tablespoons low-fat buttermilk

1) Preheat oven to 400°F. Coat an 8x8 baking dish (glass if possible) with cooking spray.

2) In a large bowl, combine sugar, cornstarch, lemon rind, and cinnamon. Add peaches, blueberries, lemon juice, and vanilla. Toss very gently, so peaches stay in good shape. Pour contents of bowl into baking dish. Bake 15 minutes.

3) In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add margarine. Using a pastry blender, 2 knives, or a fork, mash ingredients together until mixture looks like big crumbs.  Add buttermilk. Stir everything until just barely moistened.

4) Using two teaspoons, drop 16 similar-sized glops of buttermilk mixture all over the top of the cooked fruit. Bake until topping is golden brown, about 20 more minutes. If you have mint lying around, it makes a good garnish. If not, no worries.

Approximate Calories, Fat, and Price Per Serving
212 Calories, 3.5g fat, $0.69

Calculations
1/2 cup + 3 tablespoons sugar: $0.22
1 tablespoon cornstarch: $0.03
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon rind + 1 tablespoon lemon juice: $0.66
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon: $0.01
3 cups coarsely chopped peeled peaches: $2.42
2 cups blueberries: $1.66
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract: $0.06
Cooking spray: $0.05
1 cup all-purpose flour: $0.09
3/4 teaspoon baking powder: $0.02
1/8 teaspoon baking soda: $0.01
1/4 teaspoon salt: $0.01
2 tablespoons butter: $0.12
6 tablespoons low-fat buttermilk: $0.19
TOTAL: $5.55
PER SERVING: $0.69

Veggie Might: Wild Berry Betty - Betty Does the Trick

Penned by the effervescent Leigh, Veggie Might is a weekly Thursday column about the wide world of Vegetarianism.

Aside from being a vegetarian, I am not a picky eater. When eating at a new restaurant, I make it a point to order something I’ve never had before. A couple weeks ago some friends and I went on a “Wildman” Steve Brill tour, and I ate stuff I picked in a Brooklyn park. I’ll try just about anything that didn’t blink before being served. Until the dessert menu comes.

As you may have noticed in my bio, I have an aversion to jelly and some fruit/cream desserts. It’s complicated, but mostly predicated around a disdain of cooked or smashed fruit and cream mixed together. A list looks a little something like this:

Fruit ice cream/frozen yogurt/sherbet: never
Fruit yogurt (nonfrozen): berry only
Fruit + cake: no, except some muffins
Fruit pie (and its relatives): yes, except cherry or citrus
Fruit pie + ice cream: yes, except cherry or citrus
Banana anything: puke
Jelly/jam/marmalade: never
Any of the above + whipped cream: I’ll pass

There is no logic to any of these preferences, no rhyme or reason other than the quirks of taste buds. Don’t get me wrong; I love fruit. I could eat berries all day long. Apples make me very happy come fall. Grapes and I hang out pretty much all the time.

So what possessed me to pick a nearly a cup’s worth of elderberries on the Wildman walk, even after he explicitly said, “They are disappointing raw. You’ll really need to cook them.”? Curiosity? Because they were there? Because they looked pretty?

Because there was still room in my satchel.

The last time I visited my parents, my mom and I foraged through memory jungle, going through a bunch of boxes of junk in what used to be my bedroom. It’s now a catchall room for whatever my folks don’t know quite what to do with, but can’t bear to toss. Pack-rat-ism is hereditary and runs in my family on both sides.

Among the family photos, nerd trophies (perfect attendance, good citizen, outstanding alto), and holiday decorations, I found a long lost treasure. My mom and I aaawwed at the same time as I uncovered an old kid’s cookbook that we’d both grown up with.

It was a promotional cookbook produced by Westinghouse to promote (think of it!) electric ovens. The book was given to each of the girls in Mom’s Girl Scout troupe when she was about 8 or 9 years old. The cover is missing, but all the yellowed, sticky pages are still intact.

One page is especially stained. When I was a kid, Oatmeal Peach Betty was a favorite dessert at our house—it fit all my dessert criteria, and my siblings and I could help out like good little ladies and gentlemen.

A betty, like a crisp, is easier than a cobbler, which is easier than pie, so it makes a perfect dessert to make with kids, the baking challenged, or the impatient among us. Subbing the elderberries and an overflowing pint of blackberries for peaches, this comforting childhood recipe rescued me from the jelly/jam horror that was surely my fate.

It turned out beautifully. I’ve never made a fruit dessert before—let alone with berries I picked myself. I was shocked and delighted. Betty’s made for good eating this week. My dear friend and dessert connoisseur, JB, partook and said when I asked if she could tell I made an odd substitution (you’ll see), “All I taste is delicious.” Betty rules.

(Thanks, Mom, for letting me borrow the cookbook to scan. You can have it back soon, I promise.)

Wild Berry Betty (vegan)
Adapted from Oatmeal Peach Betty by Julia Kiene
Yields approximately 8 1-cup servings

2 heaping cups fresh blackberries (Note: Original recipe called for 2 cups canned peaches.)
2/3 cups fresh elderberries
2 tbsp lemon juice (Note: I was out of lemons and subbed 1 tbsp of apple cider vinegar. It worked like a charm.)
1/2 tsp cinnamon (Note: Original recipe called for 1/4 tsp.)
1/2 tbsp vegan butter (Note: Original recipe called for 1 tablespoon of regular butter)
2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
2/3 quick-cooking rolled oats (Note: I used regular rolled oats and it turned out fine.)
1/4 cup melted shortening
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla (Note: I added about 1/8 to 1/4 tsp extra vanilla)

General CHG note: The original recipe calls for 2 cups of fruit. I used almost 3 cups of berries, but did not increase the amounts for the topping, and I cut the amount of butter by a 1/2 tbsp.

1) Preheat oven to 375°F.

2) Coat 2-quart casserole dish with cooking spray or your cooking lube of choice.

3) Add washed berries into greased casserole.

4) Sprinkle cinnamon and lemon juice (or apple cider vinegar if you’re me) over the berries.

5) Dot berries with vegan butter.

6) Before measuring, sift flour, then measure and sift again with salt and baking soda into a medium mixing bowl.

7) Add oats into flour and mix well.

8) Melt shortening in a small saucepan or microwave safe dish.

9) Add brown sugar to shortening.

10) Combine brown sugar and shortening with flour and rolled oats mixture. Stir until crumbly. Add vanilla and stir until combined.

11) Spread mixture over berries and bake at 375° for 45 minutes.

12) Serve hot or cold with soy ice cream as shown. It breaks no rules and is amazingly delicious. Oh. So. Good.

Approximate Calories, Fat, and Price per Serving
176.6 cal, 7.9g fat, $ .49

Calculations
blackberries: 143 cal, 2 g fat, approx. $2.50 (from the CSA)
elderberries: 71 cal, .6g fat, free (picked in the park)
apple cider vinegar: 3 cal, 0g fat, $.01
vegan butter: 50 cal, 5.5 fat, $.06
flour: 225 cal, .6g fat, $.14
baking soda: negligible calories and fat, $.01
salt: negligible calories and fat, $.01
rolled oats: 203 cal, 3g fat, $.08
shortening: 440 cal, 52g fat, $.31
brown sugar: 279 cal, 0g fat, $.19
vanilla: negligible calories and fat, $.58
cinnamon negligible calories and fat, $.02
TOTALS: 1413 calories, 63.7g fat, $3.91
PER SERVING: 176.6 cal, 7.9g fat, $ .49

CHG Favorites of the Week

Thanks to everyone for the good pinkeye wishes this week. My ocular region's reached a lovely shade of Strawberry Mousse, and should be near-white by Saturday. Go Eyeball!

Food Blog of the Week
Closet Cooking
Simple, no-frills food blog filled with fairly easy, delicious-looking recipes and dazzling pictures. I’ve tried two dishes off of it now (White Bean and Kale Soup with Turkey Sausage and Peach and Blueberry Cobbler [look for that post tomorrow]), and they’ve both been aces. Instant blogroll material.

Food Comedy of the Week
Doonesbury
Background: Zonker’s employer (a national chain restaurant) recently began posting calorie counts on the menus. Customers aren’t taking it well. Well-observed and dryly hilarious (as always). For more, check out Slate or the Houston Chronicle’s Build-Your-Own comics page.

Food News of the Week
CNN: Chef Julia Child, others part of WWII spy network
As if she couldn’t get any more awesome, Julia’s secret spy-dentity (sorry) was disclosed today. According to Eater, “Child cooked up shark repellent for underwater explosives to prevent the sharks from setting them off instead of German U-Boats, and she spent days in an experiment squeezing fish to see if a solider on a life boat could get drinkable water from them. Child traveled to Sri Lanka, China, and India, and ‘tracked sensitive documents, dispatches, and espionage/sabotage under the South East Asia Command.’” Perhaps you’d like a side of INTERNATIONAL ESPIONAGE with your escargot, madame?

Food Organization of the Week
Humane Society of Missouri
It’s becoming tougher and tougher to be shocked by the news lately, but this story was truly appalling: the Humane Society of Missouri rescued 360 abused animals from a single property this week. All were living in total squalor, and several were underfed and suffering from various neglect-related diseases. There’s video here, and a more thorough description of the situation here. They’re asking for monetary donations and pet supplies (food, blankets, etc.) if you can swing it.

Food Quote of the Week
“I eat pretty much whatever I want. I don't have a strict diet. It's all about cramming in as many calories into my system as I possibly can. To be honest with you, I have a tough time keeping weight on.” –U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps, who consumes an estimated 8000-10000 calories per day

Food Video of the Week
“Chop Suey” by System of a Down
Are you ready TO ROCK, food lovers? (Note: the song’s not actually about noodles, but I think we can let that pass.)



Totally Unrelated Extra Special Bonus of the Week
Nike Commercial featuring USA Basketball Team and Marvin Gaye’s rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner (full 2:31 version)
I don’t even really like basketball, but if you don’t get chills from this, you might not be alive.

If I Had Known Then: Food and Financial Advice for the College-Bound (Also, a Story)

As summer draws to a close, gazillions of monumentally stoked 18-year-olds are preparing to leave the warmly comfy, comfy warmth of their hometowns for four years in cinderblock lecture halls. Yet college isn’t all reading, studying, and sporadically penning 25-page papers on FCC v. Pacifica (1978). It’s also occasion to figure stuff out – like how to seriously manage your adult life for the first time.

Fortunately for this blog, that adjustment period has much to do with frugality, food, and health. High school grads everywhere will soon be budgeting and cooking for themselves, and the initial months won’t be easy. I know, because once upon a time (the year 45 BC) I was there.

Looking back, I think I did okay. Still, there are quite a few CHG-type things I wish I had known before I left home. Like…

How to feed myself competently and frugally. My parents were excellent providers and decent cooks who fed us rounded meals from birth through late adolescence. Yet somehow, after 17 years, I never picked up on simple concepts like, “eat a vegetable, doofus,” or “an all-mozzarella stick diet will bankrupt, then KILL YOU.” If I had paid attention or done any research, the road to good health might have been an easier and cheaper one.

How to cook. In my small college town, it was ritual for students to eventually move out of the dorms and into run-down off-campus housing (owned by a landlord who worked nights as the anti-Christ). Of the eight kids who shared a single kitchen my junior year, only one knew what she was doing. The rest of us bought overpriced convenience food from the local superstore and/or made do with whatever she (note: me) could glean from her night job at the donut shop. In retrospect, an elementary grasp of basic cooking skills could have saved both time, money, and lots of donut indigestion.

How to avoid buying worthless junk. Every semester, I subsisted entirely on a few hundred dollars earned over summer or winter breaks. It was barely enough for textbooks and food. Yet, I still bought 14 tons of useless crap for no other reason than I COULD. Once, it was pair of vintage jeans. Another time, a Phish album (which, ew). And another time? I blew $7 on a vial of colored dust from a local tchotchke shop. To repeat, I spent SEVEN DOLLARS ON YELLOW DIRT. I wish I had read a finance book at that point, or even had any clue about maintaining a budget. At the very least, I wouldn’t have bought any beaker soil.

How to read nutrition labels. Oh man. How many muffins did I think contained only 220 calories, when it was actually more like 660? Duh.

How to care about my body in the right way. This is a tricky subject, because on the whole, universities are sadly rife with eating disorders. Too much self-scrutiny can land one in Bulimiatown, and too little will make the Freshman 15 seem like a fond memory. So, I’ll say this: I wish I had spent less time worrying about my weight (which nobody cared about half as much as I did), and more time investing in my health (which … it wouldn’t have hurt to hit the gym once or twice). Negative body images are endemic to teen girls – in America especially, and applying my energies the correct way (to eating right and exercise vs. stressing out about my butt) would have helped me greatly down the road.

I might also add “how to enjoy inexpensive beer” to this list, but I actually learned that part kind of quickly. And it still wasn’t half as valuable as the single best lesson I gleaned from my parents during college: namely, there are no second chances with real world money.

Let me explain.

Back in the spring of (DATE REDACTED), I was accepted to the aforementioned semi-affordable public institution in upstate New York, where the seven-month winters were matched in intensity only by my need to GET THE CRAP AWAY FROM HOME. I adored my Long Islander parents (and still do), but the prospect of living 400 miles away from them excited this lifelong Girl Scout to no end. So, I sent the “yes” letter, got my roommate assignment, and spent the rest of the summer earning textbook funds at the local Wendy’s fryolator.

For the most part, Ma and Pa were incredibly supportive. Besides making the obligatory trips to Bed, Bath, and Beyond for girly-blue shower caddies, they also offered to pay my tuition until my little sister entered school, two years hence. Being good parents and savvy businesspeople, they had one condition: I had to maintain a 3.0 average.

“No problem,” I thought. “Bs are easy.” I’d breezed through high school (for the most part - damn you, Physics), and wasn’t intimidated by the prospect of a higher, harder education. Subsequently, when I entered school in the fall, I devoted most of my time to … um … not schoolwork.

It went fine for the first few weeks, until I received a string of fairly awful grades on papers and tests. Those Cs (and in one or two cases, Ds) were both tremendously humbling and a serious wake-up call for my stupid (drunk) ass. So, I cut back on the excess, buckled down, and soon, most of my class marks had morphed into semi-respectable Bs and B-minuses.

Except Basic Musicianship.

Though the class was taught by the sweetest man alive, I didn’t understand a damn thing. Nor did I make any effort to, whatsoever. I missed a bare minimum of one class per week, never read the material, and probably took a combined total of three pages of notes. In retrospect, I’m surprised the professor didn’t hurl me out a window, smug attitude first.

By the end of the semester, I somehow pulled a C-minus out of the air (note: my butt). It was better than I deserved, but still brought my overall GPA down to a grand ol’ 2.99. (Seriously! A 2.99! I didn’t even know that was possible!) When my parents saw, I expected them to gush, “2.99! But that’s SO CLOSE to a 3.0! We’ll pay your tuition FOREVER.” To my then-consternation and their never-ending credit, that didn’t happen.

“Kid,” they said, “we asked for a 3.0. Here’s the bill.”

My callowness (and let’s be honest - newfound love of cheap beer) cost me upwards of $4,000, which I finally finished paying off last year, after more than a decade of interest had accrued. (P.S. I never got below a 3.3 again.)

But you know what? I’m glad it happened. I’m glad Ma and Pa stuck to their guns, because it taught me the three of the most valuable things I’ve ever learned:

1) There are no second chances with real world money.
2) There are no second chances with real world expectations.
3) My parents don’t mess around, ever.

Thanks to that inglorious 2.99, I pay bills on time. I don’t miss deadlines. I try to exceed what people ask of me. Sure, most of it’s out of sheer terror of the consequences, but I like to think I learned a microscopic smattering of responsibility along the way. (Note: It’s mostly the terror.)

Readers, how about you? Whether you went to college, your own apartment, or a marriage, what food/health/economic things did you wish you knew before leaving home? Bring on dem stories (and I promise next week, there’ll be an article with real research and actual learny-type things).

~~~

If you like this article, you might also dig:

• Cheap, Healthy College Food: Tips for Frugal, Nutritious Dining in the Dorm and Beyond
• 20 Cheap, Healthy Dishes Made From Ten Pantry Staples
• Frugal Food Hacks: 10 Tips to Simplifying Online Recipe Searches

(Photos courtesy of generalsarmory and lizblog.)