Labour Day - Cooking up a storm

Yesterday may have been a day off work - but Ruth and I worked hard.  We cooked up a storm: four different salads, two soups, two casseroles and two desserts.  Then in the evening, while I was doing up dishes and cleaning up, I baked two different types of muffins.  Also did laundry - and hung it out on the line. All in all, it was a very productive day.

Today after work I started processing crab apples.  Ruth and I had picked two ice cream pails full and I cooked them up and made a bit of applesauce to go with supper tonight.  They were bright red crabs and so the applesauce and apple juice is a beautiful pink colour; it looks like it must have been artificially sweetened, but it's all natural.

I had purchased some discounted peaches on the weekend and Bram had kindly gone through them and cut out the bad spots.  I was too tired last night to use them all up; I made a pie but still had lots left, so I just mixed up some fruit fresh and put them in the fridge.  Tonight I made fresh peach cobbler for dessert - very nice.  I used my great-grandmother Head's recipe; which is really one of the nicest recipes for cobbler I've ever made; it doesn't use too much sugar either.  Here it is:

Great Grandmother Head's Fruit Cobbler

1 quart fruit, sweetened (this is the really large can, 128 oz) or a quart jar of whatever fruit you want

1/2 cup sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1 cup flour

1 cup milk

1/2 cup butter

pinch of salt

1 tsp vanilla

Use a 9x 13" pan.  Put the oven on to pre-heat and put the butter in the pan to melt.  (This also greases the pan.  Obviously Great-grandma wasn't one to waste any effort).  I find this recipe works best if you preheat the fruit, so while I'm mixing up the batter, I usually put the fruit in a glass bowl and heat it in the microwave.

Mix everything except for the fruit into a batter.  Put it in your pre-greased pan.  Pour fruit over batter.  The batter will rise to the top when it's cooked.

Bake at 350 until done (about 1/2 hour).