Blueberry Sonkers

Blueberry Sonkers

This recipe comes from Ashley English. It was found in a wonderful hippie magazine called Taproot.

I’ll post our alterations after the explanation on how to make them.
We made these a while ago but I'm updating my blog now as a way to become a brand new person!

The goods

Filling:

5 half-pints blueberries (6 ounces each)

1 cup sugar

¾ cup cornstarch

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

3 tablespoons butter, melted

Biscuit Topping:

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons butter, cubed

¾ cup buttermilk

The Deal

Preheat the oven to 435. Butter a 10-inch skillet

Combine the blueberries, sugar, cornstarch, flour and cinnamon in a medium-sized bowl.

Using a potato masher or your hands, give the mixture a good pressing, mashing some of the betties so that their juices release and all of the ingredients are fully combined.

Cover the bowl with a kitchen cloth and set aside for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare the biscuit topping.

Combine the dry ingredients in a medium-sided mixing bowl. Using a pastry cutter or fork, cut the butter cubes in until the mixture is crumbly and the butter is pea-sized or smaller.

Create a well in the center of the mixture. Pour in the buttermilk. Using a mixing spoon, gently incorporate the milk just until all of the dry ingredients are moistened. The mixture will look quite wet at this point, but that’s fine.

Place the blueberry mixture into the prepared skillet.

Using a spoon, dollop biscuit topping onto the blueberries, aiming for mounds about three tablespoons large. You needn’t be terribly specific on the biscuit amounts so long as the surface is dotted with small-sized biscuit mounds.

Pour the melted butter over the biscuit topping.

Bake at 425 for 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350 and continue baking for an additional 30 minutes.

Cool for at least 30 minutes before serving. Serve with vanilla ice cream.

Ok, here is how we actually made them.

Instead of a skillet we used a 8x6x2 pyrex dish.

The [frozen] blueberries were roughly measured using a half-pint jar.

All the flour was whole-wheat flour.

The buttermilk was a homemade concoction of 1 tablespoon of white vinegar and 1 cup less 1 tablespoon of milk.

We didn’t use ice cream.

Krave....a ridiculous thing.

Krave.
Krave is a new cereal product from Kelloggs. It is ridiculous. It has a regular cereal outer layer with milk chocolate on the inside. I guess they created it to make it easier to sell cereal to children. The thing is though, cereal is already delicious and amazing, there's no need to make it more desirable. What do they think will happen here, do they think people will stop buying dessert products in order to buy this cereal? This is a sick thought. This will disrupt the whole natural order of food and desserts. Kelloggs is crazy and I think a little evil. Imagine giving this cereal to kids. They will think this is what cereal is. They will base their idea on food in general on this sick, twisted version of what was traditionally one of the most basic of food staples. It would be like replacing wheat with sugar...

Spoon!

Remember The Tick? Not the live action one, the cartoon. Ok, you probably don't remember the live action one too. Well The Tick was one of those shows that not many people remember but I end up thinking it about a couple times a week. In fact, every time someone says "spoon" I think of this cult-classic. Take a gander at this short clip:

After I start thinking about The Tick, I inevitably start thinking about The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs At Midnight. He is one of the greatest villains of all time...even if he never actually did much villainy and was disposed of in one night. Here's the whole glorious episode. Watch it and love it.

Why am I posting about The Tick only one post after I talked about my new baby boy Xavier? Well, because it's my blog and I can talk about whatever I want!
As I was putting the dishes away today I said to myself (as I say quite often) "...hmm...we use a lot of spoons." After thinking about spoons you can guess where my mind went next [to The Tick of course]. Luckily, today is a blog day and I am in the rare occasion were I actually get to blog about a though/idea/event that is still in my mind. Yay for me!

Here's another thing that happened today. I discovered a new ridiculous thing! It came while buying a well deserved spoil for someone else.

Have you been in the cookie isle at the grocery store lately? Have you been around the constantly increasing "oreo" section? Well, they have a new ridiculous thing: The triple-double!

No longer will kids think of basketball prowess when some utters triple-double. Nope, the sugar-food industry has hijacked that term and forever changed the future.

There are a couple reasons why this is ridiculous. The most obvious reason is the increase in sugar/fat that comes with this cookie.  But to that I say so what, it's not like the cookie was dancing the line between healthy snack and unhealthy indulgence, it's always been what it is. But what's really ridiculous about this cookie is that.....it's......nearly perfect! Every kid in this country has, at one point, disassembled a standard oreo and reassembled it to fit his/her needs. Nabisco has tapped into this desire and given us all sorts of goodies: double stuff, chocolate, fudge covered, golden, mint (yuck), etc. This new creation is just the natural evolution of that practice. Cudos nabisco, you may be producing delicious, slow acting poison, but at least your listening to our wants while you're doing it.

Have you tried this cookies yet? Did you watch the full episode of The Tick? Do you want more pictures of cute Xavier? I know the answer to one of those so here you go.

He weighs over 9 lbs now!

So tired & so cute.

Keep an eye our for a future post on music. I'm in the process of creating a play-list for a friend who is moving away. I'm going to fill it with songs that remind me of transition times in my life. Do you have any songs that come from a transition time in your life? Tell me about it.

JFK Day

Let's start this entry off like my Saturday started off, with blueberry sonkers! What are blueberry sonkers?  They're sort of like a blueberry pie flipped over, only instead of thin flaky crust, you have thick chewy biscuits. And instead of only getting to have a little because it’s dessert, you get to have a lot because it’s breakfast! And instead of saying “pie” you get to try to say “sonker” while trying not to say “zonker.” 

This is just a picture from the web. I don’t think I can in good conscience be one of those people who post pictures of the food they make on their blog. I'm trying to blog, not lose all my dignity.

After an amazing breakfast we headed out to the JFK Library and Museum. We reserved library passes, which didn't make it free, but $3 instead of $12 is good enough for us. And then we realized that we had forgotten the passes as we were pulling into the parking lot. After weighing the cost of driving the 12 miles back to the library to pick them up against the cost of paying full price (and factoring in what a nice day it was), we decided on the drive. One hour later we were sitting in an air-conditioned theater (air conditioning being the real reason we were there) listening to JFK himself describe his childhood. An great start to the day, all considered.

The museum was nice, but doesn’t make for good picture taking. Here’s a smattering of pics.

Remember when you had to be 21 to vote? ...me neither! Being young is awesome!

Kennedy's famous "I am a doughnut" declaration.

JFK was the first president to have awesome space PJ's

The inside.

The outside.

After the museum we went out for dinner. We can’t really afford to go to dinner, but my wonderful parents and their infinite generosity thought it necessary to make sure we were well cooled during our mini heat wave. My urbanspoon app chose a Senegalese please in the South End called Teranga. It was great on so many levels. It had a separate vegetarian menu (oh, btw, I’m trying to go vegetarian) delicious food, and was right down the road from a bakery called Flour. Besides its good food, one notable feature is that I have a cookbook with a recipe from the chef that runs/owns it.

After the bakery we headed over to our friends house in Watertown. I won’t name names or post any pictures of them in case they would frown upon being mentioned in my blog. Instead I’ll just use web pics to approximate them.

She reads a lot and is very smart and proper.

He is awesome and has too many powers.

I know Bambi and Thumper are both male, but this is the most accurate way to portray their two adorable daughters.

We enjoyed homemade jam on yummy bread while talking about all sorts of things...yet all I recall right now is the surprising news that my wife has mammary glands and is not a unicorn. 


The day was perfect. Someone else and I had such a good day filled with U.S. history, good food, good weather, dance dance revolution, and great friends.

This post is a rather plain, informative post. For this I am sorry. But while at our friends’ house we watched a TED talk that might be the catalyst I need to go about making some character changes I’ve been dreaming about.

Because of our [soon to be] new edition I feel the need and desire to better myself. I would like to:

1.  Exercise more regularly and without excuse.

2.  Devote slightly more time to scholarly things like curriculum development or casual reading.

3.  Be a stronger member of my church.

4.  Blog more.

5.  Be a better husband.

6.  Be kinder towards people and less cynical in my brain.

7.  Help out others.

8.  Eat healthier.

9.  Play music.

I have ideas on how to do most of these, but I always seem to find some excuse to put it off or not dive into it wholeheartedly. The TED talk’s theme on positivity might be the push I needed. If you have any desire to join me on some character building experiments, reach out to me. Otherwise stay tuned for more developments…