Summer, Don't Go!

I hate to see summer leave. It's one of my favorite seasons, filled with freedom, and leisure, and all kinds of delights I wait all year to enjoy.

Technically we still have a couple more weeks before autumn comes in and forces summer to depart. To distract myself from that sad moment, I decided to make a peach cobbler, a treat I always associate with this time of year.

I had some fresh peaches I'd bought at a favorite farm stand, and it seemed like a good idea to use them before they morphed into fruit leather. (My fridge is some kind of vampire, sucking out the essence of produce behind closed doors. You should see what it did to some oranges recently. They ended up looking like Yoda. Well, without the big ears. And if Yoda had used an orange-ish spray tan for a week straight.)

But I digress.

Cooking is not a simple thing for me. I may be a pantser when I write, but I don't wing it when it comes to food. It doesn't make sense to experiment with stuff that I plan to eat. There's not really an effective delete key with food either.

Which is why I love cookbooks. Someone else has already done all the experimentation and come up with the final list of ingredients, in the right measured amounts, and then provided a roadmap that can be followed to a culinary HEA.

After a little online searching, I finally found a peach cobbler recipe that closely matched the ingredients I had on hand. I rejected one candidate because I wasn't about to make a trip to the store for self-rising flour. If I did that, I could just buy ice cream and let the fridge do its dehydration thing on the peaches, and we'd both be sated.

Still, there was a little glitch. I didn't have 4 cups of peaches. I had 2. So I checked to see if I could easily cut the recipe in half, meaning I wouldn't have to do anything fancy with fractions. Whew. Yes, I could cut it in half, without scrambling my brain over a half of a half teaspoon.

Crisis averted.

Another potential issue was when I belatedly realized the peaches were supposed to be mixed in the same pan as the melted butter. The wording of that section of the recipe could use a revision/edit, for clarification purposes, which just goes to show that ALL writing can be improved.

At last it was time to sample my culinary masterpiece, and I gobbled it up quickly, with only a smidge left over for today. (It was half a cobbler, if you remember.) It was delicious, evoking memories of summers past, while erasing the dread of winters-to-come.

The funny thing is today is absolutely wonderful and sunny, not too hot -- as if Mother Nature wants to trick me into thinking she has no intentions of sending summer away for another year. Maybe she viewed my culinary endeavors as some sort of peace offering. If that's the case, I'll be tempting her soon with my favorite autumn recipe, a cinnamon apple cake.

Anything to stave off those dreary, cold, snowy nine months of winter.

Comments

[Skip Bins Now]

It's never a fun time when you see the warmer season start to go!

[Donna Cummings]

Exactly! Especially since winter doesn't seem to realize it's not supposed to stay around for 9 months at a time. LOL

[Mae Clair]

I'm lamenting the demise of summer *sob* Although, it has hung around a little longer this year. I even got to enjoy my pool again last night, but it looks like we will be closing it up this weekend *wail*

Maybe I should attempt to make peach cobbler and see if Mother Nature will allow all that warm sunshine a bit longer. Hey, maybe Endora could talk to her for us, LOL!

[Donna Cummings]

I think summer is trying a new way to make me less weepy about it leaving -- yesterday was unbearably hot, and I finally thought, "okay, maybe it's time for you to start sneaking out of here." LOL

I also tried a new peach cobbler recipe, which was not quite like the one I remember my mom making. But hey, it'll be great with my coffee this morning! (Endora's holding out a plate for me to fill now. LOL)

I'm glad you got to enjoy your pool a little longer. Only another 9 months or so until time to open it again!