Tag Archives: cobbler

She Who Watches

Posted on June 23, 2014 | 10 comments

Last week, I did a quick camping overnight at Washington’s Maryhill State Park. It’s about 2 hours from home, on the other side of the Cascade Mountains. I drove through that area a couple months ago; you may remember my fascination with wind turbines.

Still fascinated.

Here’s the daylight view, with knitting.

I met up with my friend Vickie so we could visit Tsagaglalal, She Who Watches.

She’s a Native American petroglyph that was etched and painted into the rock perhaps 250 to 300 years ago. She Who Watches is located in what is now Columbia Hills State Park in Washington, and is only viewable through a guided walk with the park.

Along the way, one can also see other pictographs (rock paintings, as opposed to etchings or carvings).

Salmon Shaman

She Who Watches is at the end of this guided walk. Very cool! There are also some petroglyphs that have been relocated to this park from Petroglyph Canyon, which was flooded when the Dalles Dam was built.

The knitting? It’s the second knitting of the Lantern Moon Indochine, this time in the color Viridian. This piece is done and blocking. On to the companion piece! All will be revealed, soon.

In other news, the blueberries are early this year! Ripe and ready for picking. I made my first cobbler of the season from my favorite recipe that I’ve been using since 1986. You can find the recipe here.

It was deiicious, as usual. We had it a la mode, in the back yard, as a belated Father’s Day celebration.

What did you knit this weekend? Did you go to Black Sheep Gathering? I’ve never been, but some day…

10 Comments

Posted in Knit, travel, yarn

Tagged cobbler, petroglyphs, She Who Watches, Tsagaglalal

Desserts, tried and true

Posted on June 26, 2013 | 5 comments

I hosted a going away party for our outgoing pastor last Monday. Who knew you could get 40 people in my house? There were six of us on the committee; we were each charged to supply a dessert and two bottles of wine. Being an overachiever, I made two desserts. The recipes have been here on the blog before, but I’m posting them again as things that are simple and that can go on a picnic or sit out on a buffet for a while and still look good! (This is not the time for homemade ice cream.) I like to experiment and try new things, but sometimes you need to go for the reliable old standards.

I baked a blueberry cobbler, which actually works well for a picnic dessert, too. Although I like it best with vanilla ice cream, a can of aerosol whipped cream will do in a pinch.

These are not blueberries from my garden. Mine are close, but they’ll be ripe in the next week or two. Store bought was the next best thing.

This is my favorite cobbler recipe. It’s fabulous with fresh berries, but I also make it with frozen berries from my garden throughout the year. If you use frozen berries, it will take an extra 10 minutes or so to bake. (Shout out to my friend Vickie, who sent me this recipe in 1986, when we still wrote letters via snail mail. I had just moved away to New York. I showed her the letter last month, and it really startled her that I still have it. It’s on my fridge.):

Berry Cobbler

For the batter:
1 1/4 cups flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
4 TBSP butter (I admit that I misread her 4 as a 9, and have been using 8 TBSP, or 1/2 cup, of butter. Yum. 6 is a good compromise.)
3/4 cup sugar (I reduce to 2/3 cup)
1 tsp vanilla
1 large egg
1/2 cup milk
3 cups berries

Stir together flour, baking powder, salt. Cream butter, sugar, vanilla; beat in egg until blended. Add flour mixure and milk–beat only until smooth. Spread in buttered 8 inch square baking dish; scatter berries on top.

TOPPING:
1/4 cup soft butter
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour

Combine topping ingredients and beat until smooth. Drop teaspoonsful of topping over berries. Bake @ 350 degrees for one hour–toothpick should come out without batter, and top is golden. Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream, or both. Yields 9 servings, because I cut things in grid patterns. I can’t help myself.

I also made chocolate chip shortbread and cut it into 36 bite sized pieces. This is an old picture, so these are not the 36 squares!

Chocolate Chip Shortbread

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 and 1/4 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips or butterscotch chips (I used mini chocolate, but I’ve also used butterscotch)

Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla. Combine flour and salt, and then beat these with the butter/sugar mixture. Stir in chips. Press into an ungreased 9 inch square pan.

Bake 18-20 minutes or until edges are golden. Cool 20-30 minutes in pan on wire rack.

Score shortbread with sharp knife into desired size servings, but do not cut all the way through. Invert onto rack and cool completely. Break into pieces.

What are your go-to dessert recipes?

Obligatory knit content: Still knitting away on my Garland shawl. Repeat 12!

5 Comments

Posted in foodies!, recipe

Tagged cobbler, recipe, shortbread

My Cheating Heart

Posted on July 8, 2008 | 8 comments

That French blue Riverstone? Beautiful yarn. Lovely to work with. But when knitting yards and yards and yards of garter stitch? Just a tad bit…boring.

The gals at Twisted sent out a twitter (do you know about Twitter?) that they received new Dream in Color Classy. Lots of it. That was enough to make me go look. Only looking, you understand. Just to make sure I had made the right choice for my February Lady.

Somehow this followed me home.

The pictures don’t do it justice. Sure, it’s blue yarn. But it has green, purple, brown…everything. It’s amazing. The colorway is called Night Watch. It will be fun to watch the color changes as I’m knitting all that garter yoke.

You’ll note that I’m a cautious knitter. I only had one skein of the Riverstone wound up into a ball. It will make a lovely something, later. The rest of it was exchanged for this Classy. And you’ll note that there’s only one ball so far, too. But I don’t think there will be any more exchanges. It’s too lovely.

And it still fits my blueberry theme!

Here’s the cobbler recipe we’ve been using (shout out to my friend Vickie, who sent me this recipe in 1987 or so, when we still wrote letters via snailmail):