Cobbler and Comfort Food

This time of year there would be a flurry of activity in my kitchen.  It's the perfect time of year for baking with pumpkins, fruits and zucchini.  Last year I was busy baking pumpkin gnocchi, soups, bread puddings and one of my favorites, a pear cobbler crisp!  Oh, how I miss the baking and inventing new recipes.    When I can't work in the kitchen I'll go out to the garden.

One thing I managed to do before the snow hit the other day was to harvest some of my herbs.  With our short growing season (and this year was especially brief), I keep with mostly perennial herbs, like lavender, thyme, and oregano.   A welcome addition to my garden this summer was lemon balm.  Unfortunately, it does not winter very well, so I pulled it, hung it upside down to dry,  and harvested the leaves for that summer flavor  in the dead of winter.  It goes well in recipes for fish, chicken, pastas and desserts.  I'll be planting it again next season!

To celebrate this year's harvest, I'm re-posting my pear cobbler crisp.  Make some and enjoy!  It can also be made with peaches, just as good!

Ingredients:

2 large ripe pears, peeled and sliced
1 T sugar
2/3 c oats
1 tsp cinnamon
2 T crystallized ginger pieces
3/4 c flour
1/2 c sugar
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 c milk
dash of cinnamon on top

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Grease a 9 x 9 glass baking pan.  In a bowl mix the pears, sugar, oats, cinnamon and ginger.  Pour into the pan.  Then mix the remaining ingredients and place over the pears.  Stir only slightly.  Add a few drops of butter and a dash of cinnamon.  Bake for 40 minutes or so.  This is better as it gets cold in the refrigerator, but hard to resist when it comes out of the oven.  The warmth of the ginger makes it a perfect and simple snack cake.