Tedz Imagination: Cherry Cobbler

A few weeks ago I wanted to try my hand at stuffed peppers. Yes, the title of this post is Cherry Cobbler, and we'll get to that, but it all starts with stuffed peppers. I have no recollection of ever eating stuffed peppers before. Not at the dinner table as a kid. Not at Grandmas. Not at the local smorgasbord that seems to have every food imaginable. For some reason I consider stuffed peppers to be a food from the'70's. Is that when they were invented? Were they a popular dinner party item? Maybe I'm remembering a commercial featuring them?

I was curious about stuffed peppers so I went to my trusty source for all information-Google. And from Google I learned that I have much to learn. Stuffed peppers have been around since the 1800's. So yeah, way before the 70's, lol. Anyway, I invited the family over for dinner. They are generally my willing taste testers in my cooking/ baking endeavors. In addition to the peppers, I wanted to make a desert but didn't want anything too sweet to go with the spicy peppers. And that's how we arrive at the Cherry Cobbler.

Cherries. Not a fruit that's generally found in my fruit basket, but this recipe sounded too good to pass by. The recipe I used was from Brown Eyed Baker. The same blog that brought those amazing bread and butter pickles from last weeks post. You can find the full recipe HERE.

I found a large selection of beautiful, ripe cherries at my local grocery store. I have to say though, I didn't put much thought into how I was going to get the pits out of the cherries. So what's an inquiring mind to do? Google. I swear between Google and Siri I look at least one thing up every day! But Back to the cherry pits. Google provided several solutions to my delima but I didn't want to purchase some little kitchen gadget just for cherries -although that seems to be a booming business- and tweezers seemed kinda wrong. I thought both the toothpick and straw options had promise so I started with those. First up, toothpicks. Oh my word. It was like digging to China with the smallest shovel ever. I did not have the patience, or desire, to work my way through 2 pounds of cherry pits with a toothpick. Next option. A straw. Whoever figured this out is a genius! Insert a straw in the middle of the cherry and push the pit right out the other end. The end of the straw was just sharp enough to slices right through the cherry and the pit slides right into the middle of the straw. Then you blow the pit out into a container if it doesn't fall out on it's own. It all depends on the diameter of the straw and ideally you want to use a smaller straw so you save most of the cherry interior. Note: I would recommend covering the drain in your sink so you don't lose any stray pits down the disposal. I had a stray pit make it's way unknowing into there and oh the racket that one little pit made when the disposal was eventually turned on. Yikes!

Caution: Wear old clothes that you don't mind getting cherry stains on because if you're using fresh cherries, you will end up with juice everywhere. Seriously. My kitchen sink looked like I'd had a cherry killing party.