I have just polished off—with considerable help from children doing their finest ravenous-baby-bird impersonations—the remnants of the cherry cobbler I baked for teatime last week. We will pause here while people who know me well digest this news. Yes. I BAKED. From scratch. Well, the cherries were canned but I did actually have to crack an egg. And measure things. And—are you ready for this?—”cut in butter.” Oh sure, most of you out there probably cut butter into a flour mixture as easily as breathing, but SOME of us find these things a lot more complicated than, say, writing novels or using HTML code. To be fair, I must disclose that Jane did most of the actual cutting-in. But I put the cobbler in the oven and took it out when it was done. Not burned. Not still gooey in places. Really truly perfectly done. Also, I whipped cream. (Gasps arise from my friends.)

Anyway, I have decided that cherry cobbler is the world’s most perfect food. (Well, right after dark-chocolate-and-marzipan bars. And my mom’s fried okra.) The cherries, not too tart, not too sweet, bursting with antioxidants, so the can assures me. The biscuity cobbler topping, only slightly sweet, with a lovely cake-like texture. And then of course the whipped cream, which, now that I think about it, really might be God’s most awesome invention. And so foolproof that even I can’t mess it up.

I have informed my children that we’re going to be eating lots and lots of cobbler from now on. They appear to be amenable to this plan. I will now share the recipe so you know what to serve for dessert next time you have me over.

Fruit Cobbler for the Incompetent Cook

Ingredients:

1 can cherry pie filling (or blueberry, apple, whatever)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional–I didn’t use it)
3 tablespoons margarine or butter
1 beaten egg
3 tablespoons milk

Preheat oven to 400. Dump pie filling in an ungreased 8×8 baking dish and stick in oven to warm up while you mix the topping. (Cookbook will prattle on about how to make fruit filling from scratch, but you know your limits.)

In bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, and if desired, cinnamon. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Do not panic if you have no idea what that means. Google can offer a ready explanation. Or ask your oldest child, who seems to have an innate knack for these things. Better yet, let her do it. You can still claim credit with your friends because after all, YOU made her.

In another bowl, combine egg and milk. Add to flour mixture, stirring just to moisten.

Take baking dish out of oven. Drop topping into 6 mounds atop filling. Do not forget that the baking dish is HOT. When you do forget, drop spoon into filling and rush to sink to put burned hand under cold water. Allow oldest child to gingerly fish spoon out of filling and resume dropping mounds of topping into dish (which child will not forget is hot, because 1) you are yowling at sink and 2) she has more than half a brain). Assure younger children that your burn is not serious. Resolve to yowl under your breath next time, so as not to alarm small children.

Turn off cold water, dry burned hand, stifling scream when towel touches burned part, and resume impersonation of capable, domestically skilled mother. Start to pick up baking dish and thank children for alerting you with frantic shrieks that you are about to touch hot dish once again. Pick up potholders, which are lying on counter right next to hot baking dish and which were custom-made for you on a potholder loom in colors so garish it is surprising that you failed to notice them when you reached for the scalding-hot dish in the first place. USING POTHOLDERS, place dish in oven. Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in topping comes out clean. Possibly entrust this task to your oldest child, as you are sure to burn yourself again if you attempt it.

Serve warm with freshly made whipped cream, which (thank heavens) even you cannot mess up.

To celebrate, eat three servings. But save enough for tomorrow’s breakfast.

A tiny postscript to my Halloween post: early this morning, painfully early, as I was stumbling around trying to get the garbage out and just blearily noticing I was wearing two different socks, Beanie hit me a question.

“Mommy, what do you think I should be for Halloween NEXT year?”

And so it begins. Again.

I get so many emails asking about what books & materials we use for math, science, history, and so forth that I decided to add some “favorites” lists to the sidebar. Hard not to get carried away, though—the “Favorite Fiction & Poetry” list alone could be a mile long! I’ll have to stick to a dozen or so gems at a time, and change it up now and then. So far we’ve concocted our lists of math, science, and lit favorites…other areas to come. The kids are thoroughly enjoying compiling their share of the lists. Scroll down and check them out!

***

On another note. The dragon mask I was panicking about on Saturday: thank goodness for Google. Found this link, just what the doctor ordered. Unbeknownst to me, Jane had spent the morning crafting this fabulous tail, so here’s what we came up with. Beanie was pleased, and that’s what counts.

But we still haven’t tackled the pumpkin.

Forget Scrooge, forget the Grinch—what I really need is an iconic literary character to represent the curmudgeon I become in late October every year. What’s the matter with me? I’m only thirty-six! My own deliriously blissful Halloweens are not so terribly far behind me. How vividly I still recall the triumph of the perfect costume, the inimitable joy of that sackful of candy! The deep satisfaction of foisting the annual pile of lollipops (bleh) on my sisters in exchange for real treasure: Special Dark bars, Sweetarts, Twizzlers…

So it’s not that I’m unsympathetic to the thrill of Halloween. I guess I just haven’t successfully made the transition to the mom’s role in this particular celebration and all that that entails.

Yes, now that I think about it, it comes down to two major shortcomings in my motherhood qualifications:

1) I don’t sew.

2) I don’t shop.

You can see how this might pose a challenge to the whole costume-assembly process.

I do have some interest in learning to sew; I even treated myself to a sewing machine nine years ago upon receiving my first advance for a novel. To date, I have used it to make: some beanbags (cute if clumsy), one and a half cloth dolls (actually quite charming—the finished one, at least; the other one’s head lolls freakishly on its insufficiently stuffed neck, and its legs are different sizes); and two baby blankets (one for a friend, and since it was my first effort in the flannel blanket field, I have worried ever since that it has slowly unraveled with each wash because I failed to properly, um, what do you call it where you zigzag stitch along the raw edge of the fabric to keep it from unraveling in the wash).

Obviously, Halloween costumes are still a bit beyond my reach.

As for the shopping thing, well, I just hate it. I have no better excuse than that. The driving, the parking, the aisle after aisle of decision-making, the fretting over price, the waiting in lines, the package-lugging—I hate every single stressful, expensive minute of it. And yes, online shopping is a breeze, but you can’t easily buy bits-and-pieces of costume ingredients over the internet; and my inner curmudgeon has a prejudice against buying ready-made costumes outright. Inheriting them from neighbors, fine. But actually paying for them? Bah!

My kids start planning their costumes in July, a display of forethought which the chronic procrastinator in me finds intensely irritating. Frenzied last-minute effort has served me well my entire life—at least, it has for the trivial things like grad school papers and income taxes. But those things are tic tac toe compared to the 3-D timed chess tournament that is the dreaded Halloween costume.

So here it is the morning of the neighborhood Fall Festival, the high point of which, naturally, is the costume parade. And I still have to concoct a dragon mask for Beanie and locate appropriately fringy Native American pants for Jane to wear under the authentic red polyester beaded tunic her beloved piano teacher loaned her. (And thanks a million, Wendi, for rescuing me from the terrors of having to provide the TOP half of her costume!) Meanwhile, the ever-practical Rose rummaged through my closet and assembled a Wendy (the Peter Pan heroine, not the piano teacher) costume that 1) looks nothing like anything Wendy would actually wear and 2) pleases her immensely. So whew. One satisfying if unrecognizable costume down, two half-costumes to go.

So of course, procrastinator/curmudgeon that I am, I quite sensibly chose to begin the frantic morning by sitting down and writing a grumpy post about how the panic clock is ticking down the minutes to impending costume doom.

And don’t even get me started on the whole pumpkin-carving thing. We still have tomorrow, right?