. . from the very serious kid on your left arm.

Cobbler is a traditional dish in both the United States and the United Kingdom, although the meaning of the term is quite different in each country. In the United States, it is usually a dessert consisting of a fruit filling poured into a large baking dish and covered with a rolled pastry dough, then baked in an oven. In the United Kingdom it is usually a savoury meat dish, typically a lamb casserole, which is covered with a savoury scone-like topping—each scone (or biscuit) forming a separable cobbler. Fruit-based versions are also increasingly popular in the United Kingdom—although they still retain the separate cobbler (or biscuit) topping of the meat version—and savoury or meat versions are not unknown in the United States.

Chocolate cobbler is an old Maine dish that I had previously only seen in restaurants along the coast. I  couldn’t imagine the recipe that would make this combination of cake – crust – softness but today I traded a few oatmeal raisin cookies for a co-worker’s notes from her Mom and, voila!

Chocolate Cobbler!

1 C all purpose flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt

7 Tbs cocoa – divided and  1 1/4 C white sugar divided

1/2 C milk, 1/3 C melted butter, 1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 C brown sugar, packed

1 1/2 C hot tap water

Preheat oven to 350.

Stir together the flour, baking powder, salt and 3 Tbs of the cocoa and 3/4 C of the white sugar. Reserve the remaining cocoa and sugar.

Stir in the milk, melted butter and vanilla and mix until smooth.

Pour the mixture into an ungreased 8 x 8 baking dish. In a separate small bowl, mix the remaining 1/2 C white sugar, the brown sugar and remaining 4 Tbs of cocoa. Sprinkle this mixture evenly over the batter.

Now, here’s where it gets weird: pour the hot tap water over the top and DON’T STIR!

Bake for 40 minutes, or until the center is set and doesn’t “jiggle”.

Serve warm (the top will be a goey sauce) or cooled. We like it cool and fairly solid, served with strawberries. This is a wonderful treat.

The Wikipedia entry also includes my all-time favorite cookbook title: Practical Sanitary and Economic Cooking Adapted to Persons of Moderate and Small Means. I can’t wait to find a copy.

Computer dinner requires something fast and easy to prepare and clean up. If there’s going to be an informal dinner it should also be a break for the cook.  Tonight I chose our vegetarian version of Spanish Rice. Brace yourself, this is a narrative recipe:

To serve about 3

Make about 2 C of white rice. I use a rice cooker. I find that brown rice turns an unfortunate color when you add the tomatoes, but maybe that’s just me.

Add 2 Tbs olive oil to a large frying pan and saute 1/2 a large onion, 1/2 C celery and, if your household considers bacon to be a vegetable, about 1/4 C chopped bacon slices. Um, we’re Baconarians? Cook the mixture, stirring occasionally, until the bacon is browned. Stir in 1/2 tsp cumin (optional). Add 1/4 C white wine and deglace. Add the rice and mash around with the back of a wooden spoon until it incorporates the olive oil and veggies, then add a can of Ro*Tel, and a small can of kidney beans. Lower heat and cook for a few minutes until every thing is heated through. Add salt if you didn’t use bacon.  We like to grate a little cheddar cheese over the top, and serve with green salad and corn tortilla strips. I have been known to squeeze a lime wedge over the whole mess, when I had one handy.

This is a dependable, easy meal that won’t spill all over anyone’s keyboard. For maximum effect, make sure you’re all in the same room so you can share random tidbits of information (hello, Joshua Slocum’s entry on Wikipedia) or listen to your son strategize with four of his closest long-distance best friends.

These are the best of times.

I am beginning work on a illustrated collection of excerpts from my family’s letters. My son and I talked about the examples I’ve used so far and found that his recollection (of my communications with him) is vastly different than the advice I heard from my parents. This is a partial list for Mother’s Day 201o: amusing, and not a little weird.

In no particular order, although I suspect the examples that he remembers most vividly come first:

Baba Yaga eats people. Always has. Always will.

Never play cards for money in a place you can’t leave.

Always trade up.

There’s nothing that can’t be fixed with the  judicious amount of accellerant.

Sleep is a weapon.

Never fall in love with  someone with more problems than you. And, there are a lot of people out there with more problems than you. (I should add that this rule has been flung down and danced on in our household.)

Dress like you had to walk home.

If you get to salt water, turn around.

If you don’t know what color it is, it isn’t purple.

That’s higher than it looks from down here.

The Rent-a-cop won’t think it’s funny. Don’t take it personally.

Remember where you parked.

Wish my mom had told me the one about Baba Yaga. . .

Dad has planted all the early things: peas, carrots, lettuce, beets, onions, turnips, cabbages and parsnip. The rest of the garden is still to be spaded up. The little daffodils are up under the lilacs out front, and by the back door, but only the ones near the back door have bloomed.

We went to mother’s. Aunt C. was there too. Uncle Bert was bowling in the a.m. We had delicious leg of lamb, mint jelly, tossed salad, peas, mashed potato, gravy, mashed turnips, rolls and ginger bread with whipped cream. Also had toffee-crunch and heavenly hash ice cream.

You’ll need a potato ricer and: 1/2 pound white fish (I use haddock); 4 medium or 5 small boiling potatoes (I like Yukon or Caribe); 4 C chopped spinach (about 1/2 pound fresh); 3 green onions, chopped; scant 1/2 C matzoh meal; 2 large eggs, beaten;  salt and pepper, oil and butter for frying. This amount serves 2, generously.

Peel and cut the potatoes into chunks and cook until done – you’ll want them uniformly soft for ease of ricing.  Drain them in a colander so that they cool a little and won’t cook the eggs when you add them later. In a 10″ skillet poach the fish in water with a little white wine and lemon juice until opaque and flaky. I like to drain and cool the fish on a cake rack so that it doesn’t add too much additional water to the mix. In another large skillet saute the green onions until soft and add the spinach and cook until quite done.  You can add a 1/2 tsp sesame oil at this point if you like. I”m pretty sure my ancestors did not. Dump the spinach and green onions into a large bowl.

Clean up all the dishes and pans and let everything sit and cool off for a minute.  Now rice the potatoes into a another large bowl and let them stand. Flake the fish off the cake rack into the bowl of spinach (nicely cooled so that it doesn’t overcook the fish. My ancestors were a patient people, at least when it came to fishcakes). Add the beaten eggs and mix gently and not too thoroughly, add the matzoh meal the same way. Season with a 1/2 tsp salt. Add this mixture to the riced potatoes and mix until you can pick up spoonfuls of more or less cohesive batter on a large spoon.

Heat the large skillet with oil and 1 Tbsp of butter. Drop large spoonfuls (about 1/4 C) of the mixture in the pan, fry until browned, flip over and squash with the flat of the spatula. Repeat until done. I remember meals of just fishcakes – vegetable, starch and protein all-in-one – but I like these with a green salad and a piece of soda bread full of whiskey-soaked currants and caraway seeds. And the new Betterbee catalog. Paradise!

My family wrote hundreds of letters when I went away to college. Going away to college was new, but they’d had experience with going away to war and that’s how they approached it. Hundreds of letters about food. About their lives back home, actually – but I’d never realized that food was so much the overarching motif of those lives. I’m working the letters up into a collection. The Old World sent food, but the New sent a facsimile – a Jerusalem Airlift.

Mary came back to the Firehouse after, and we arranged platters of meats, breads and salads for 100. They gave us much more and also sent a beautiful whole ham for Mother and Ben. Dad cut it in chunks last night with the big knife so it could be divided easily. Mother froze the bone for soup later on. PS Thought I’d send nuts – maybe you can use a hammer and something for a pick.

It is supposed to snow this afternoon 2 – 8″ stopping around midnight. I am working overtime tomorrow, then on Sunday we are having your father’s birthday party. He wants that coconut pineapple cake of Doris Watkins’. It always falls apart, but he always asks for it.

I have plenty of excerpts to work with, and hope to begin setting up material to draw as illustrations. (I’m going to skip the ham.) A perfect frontspiece for the book, I think, will be a picture of me standing ghostly in the back yard, holding a layer cake.

Louis Harrison Barnard’s Japanese Tea Set, with cosmos and calendula blossoms.

Here is a photo of my grandmother’s dog. She took the picture, so I imagine that shadow at the front of the photo is my grandmother. Her dog was known to be fiercely protective and not dependably obedient but he sits here for his picture – perhaps distracted by something over her shoulder. He looks like he might be a really good dog.

This is one of my favorite pictures in our vast collection of family snapshots. Together with the one below they were held in a tiny, fragile wooden frame with glass wired in, like they might have belonged to a young girl for a very long time.

I wish someone had written his name on the back one of these. No one knows it now.