October 12, 2020
What is your favorite fruit dish? Can you share a recipe for it? Do you include food in your stories? While we’re talking about food, pumpkin, yea or nay?
Throw a bunch of different kinds of fresh melons (cut up in chunks) into a big bowl. Add some blueberries and a sliced-up banana. Skip the grapes. Scoop out enough to fill an average cereal bowl. There you go. We’re done.
Oh, You were looking for an actual recipe? Well, I was going to reveal the secret to this great ‘pie’ made with blueberry and cherry pie fillings, and cream cheese and a other goodies, but it’s been a few years since I made it and I can’t find the recipe.
So, let me tell you about Mrs. Sherman’s Berry Cobbler.
Mrs. Sherman was this sweet little old lady my hubby and I rented from for a few years. None of her kids lived nearby, and we kind of adopted each other. We helped her with her yard work, she’d give us a break on rent. We helped her with her vegetable garden, she gave us space to grow our own veggies. We maintained her apple trees and got to share in the fruit. Come harvest time, we swapped the results of our efforts. Sometimes, we’d invite her for supper and she’d fall asleep on our couch watching TV. Anyway, this was a recipe she shared.
Image by Beverly Buckley from Pixabay
Mrs. Sherman’s Berry Cobbler (Best made with the wild blackberries that grew alongside the edge of the garden)
preheat oven to 350°F
1/4 cup soft butter (Can use shortening but the butter is better)
1/2 cup sugar
Cream together until light and fluffy.
1 cup sifted flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
Sift together and stir into butter/sugar mixture, alternating with 1/2 cup milk. Beat until smooth and pour into a greased oblong pan.
Over this batter, spoon 1 1/2 cups washed and drained berries of your choice. (or more, if you want, depending upon the size of your pan.) Sprinkle 1/2 cup sugar over the berries, then pour 1 cup berry juice over the whole thing. Bake about 45 minutes or until top springs back when lightly touched. Enjoy!
Now, do I include food in my stories? Absolutely. I haven’t shared any recipes, but so much of my dialogue occurs over meals or snacks, it’s only natural. That, and Harmony, my main character in the Harmony Duprie Mysteries. does a lot of cooking for herself to save money. The food she had pre-made and frozen for her meals became a minor plot point in Her Ladyship’s Ring.
Almost cheerful after talking to Eli, I headed home. My stomach growled as I unlocked the door to my apartment and pushed it open, reminding me the only thing I’d eaten at the Flamingo were peanuts. The package of frozen lasagna thawing in the fridge awaited me. Although leftover lasagna always tasted better when I rewarmed it in the oven, the microwave would have to do for once.
After flipping on the light, tossing my purse on the easy chair and hanging my coat on the coat tree, I headed towards the kitchen. As I filled a glass with water from the pitcher I kept in the refrigerator, I hesitated. Where did the package of lasagna go? I was sure I’d put it on the second shelf, right under the water.
“I must be losing my ‘friggin mind,” I muttered and set the glass on the cupboard to free my hands. Either that, or I was still asleep and dreamed the whole thing. Not like I believed either one. Still, I moved aside everything from the front of the shelves and opened every drawer, and didn’t find what I was looking for. I did find an out-of-date yogurt container, which I promptly tossed in the garbage, but no lasagna.
Puzzled, I opened up the freezer. Maybe it had been just my imagination. But no, there was an empty spot right where the package had been.
I considered the mystery as I warmed up a can of tomato soup, even checking the garbage to make sure I hadn’t accidentally put the lasagna there. Sitting on top of the cereal box I’d emptied at breakfast, I spotted the balled up foil, all that remained of my lasagna.
While my soup cooled off, I rushed through the apartment, looking for something, anything, out of place or missing. I should have called 911 but experience told me they would find nothing. I certainly did. Even the ring was untouched and it was in plain view on my dresser.
Although I wasn’t hungry anymore, I couldn’t waste the soup. After reheating it, I sat at my kitchen table and ate the soup straight from the pot. No sense in dirtying another dish. Whoever had been inconsiderate enough to eat my supper had been considerate enough to wash their own dishes. The contradiction puzzled and annoyed me.
Find out more about Her Ladyships Ring here: https://www.pjmaclayne.com/?page_id=245
As for pumpkin? Sure, in small amounts. It gets old fast.
Now, let’s go check what everyone has to say. Just follow the links below.
Until next time, stay safe!
October 12,2020
What is your favorite fruit dish? Can you share a recipe for it? Do you include food in your stories? While we’re talking about food, pumpkin, yea or nay?
Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.
I don’t think I’ve ever eaten pumpkin. It doesn’t appeal somehow.
What!? He said, incredulous. No pumpkin? Ever? I thought i lived a sheltered life…;)
I just don’t fancy eating it. Don’t know why. In fact in the UK, I’ve never known or seen anybody eating it. They just cut out the middle and a pattern on the outside skin, then put tea lights inside for Hallowe’en.
There it is. But the right pumpkin spice cake (I buy them made by professionals) or pumpkin pie? Yep. Pumpkin pie is better cold. Weird, huh?
Andorra Pett runs a bakery in her first adventure. As a huge fan of baked goods, and a baker of bread, it gave me an excuse to add knowledge and depth to the plot. My lunch (at least twice a week) is a bowl of cut fruit, with nothing added.
The high elevation here makes baking bread a challenge
I had to give up berries. Some sort of texture issue that happened with age. But the recipe rocked. I’d bust you for the lengthy strings of -ing up there in the excerpt but this is not the venue. I see it, and it’s perfectly acceptable, but like berries, it makes my teeth itch!
Baking bread has been a mystery ever since those bread kneader things were hot for Christmas for a few years. Why? When professionals will do it for your for less money, mess and grief… An hell, at your altitude walking up a flight of three stairs is a challenge, forget bread baking.
Before a certain plague, when I worked from the office, I use to climb 6 stories daily to help me stay in shape. Why 6? Because then I ran out of building!
I love the addition of food in stories. It just adds that little bit of fun that makes me feel like I’m right there, too.
This recipe is an interesting one, Patricia. I think it is natural to include food in books, it comprises a big part of our lives. A lovely extract.
It’s very old-fashioned. I think Mrs. Sherman may have gotten it from her mother.
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I’m going to have to try that recipe with frozen berries. It’s never quite the same, but one does what one must to make recipes work.
It sounds delicious.
It should work fine with frozen berries. The tricky part will be the juice.
Yeah, that’s always the tricky part. My usual fallback is to thicken it with sugar and corn starch.