July 28, 2025

Cobbler, Crumble, Buckle, Slump

Niles brought home a ridiculous amount of blueberries from the neighborhood farmer’s market. I was thinking about what to do with them, when I realized I didn’t really know the difference between all of these American fruit bake desserts. So I did a deep dive!

It was lots more complicated and confusing than I thought! I cross referenced several sources, including the Washington Post, the Joy of Cooking, and the Oxford Companion to Food. There’s a lot of conflicting information, which makes sense for what were originally very informal folk recipes. I found four different articles that said “sonker” originally came from a Scots-Gaelic word, but all four articles disagreed on what the original word meant!

An interesting note: what my family called “cobbler” when I was little was actually a buckle! I was in my late 20s before I encountered the biscuit-drop version of cobbler.

While I was puzzling over this this week, between the two of us, we ended up just eating all the blueberries. So I didn’t even make any of these! But now I’m in the mood for baking one, and berries are still extremely in season. Time to go raid the farmers market! The next newsletter might need to be a good berry crisp recipe. (^_^)

How’s the book going, Sarah:

I have 154/192 pages done!!! I only have 38 pages left to color!!! I’ll spend the next two weeks coloring (on a much more relaxed schedule), and then I’ll have a week or so to drop all the art into the final layout. I can’t believe how close I am to the finish line!

What I’m into lately:

I picked up the audiobook of William by Mason Coile recently and I’m really loving it. I’m only halfway in, but it’s deliciously tense and creepy and has me very much on the edge of my seat. It’s a great motivator to keep me working on the book if I can only listen to this audiobook while I’m working.

Also! my book club LOVED Bury Your Gays! It made for a really excellent discussion, too. It was such a great chat that I went back and re-read Camp Damascus, too. Bury Your Gays had some well-placed references to the events of Camp Damascus, which didn’t surprise me. But rereading Camp Damascus, there were also some references to the films and tv shows mentioned in Bury Your Gays, which was published later! Now I’m wondering if there’s a planned Extended Tingleverse in the works.

What Toki’s into lately:

Being a perfect and precious blameless little angel.

LOL, just kidding. His latest obsession is trying to lick the hell out of my arms after I’ve put lotion on them. Apparently some cats really love Aquaphor? The lotion is for my arms! Not for cats to eat!