Classic Summer Cobbler

A fresh, healthy take on one of Grandma’s beloved recipes.

- JONNY BOWDEN, PHD, CNS, AND JEANNETTE BESSINGER, CHHC

Before I introduce this month’s recipe let me say a bit about a component of eating that’s almost as important as its nutritional content. See, many foods have an entire emotional history in our memories, foods that we associate with certain people or places or times in our lives. There’s a reason they’re called “comfort foods”—they’re comforting, for all the reasons just mentioned. Unfortunately, those same “comfort foods” aren’t always the healthiest.

Chef Jeannette and I tackled this issue when we wrote The 150 Best Comfort Foods on Earth. We took all the usual suspects and tried to give them a health upgrade while still providing all the happy memories of the original. Which is exactly what Chef has done here with one of the great grandmother-inspired comfort foods of all time: cobbler.

In fact, the original recipe for this amazing cobbler came from Chef Jeannette’s own grandmother, who—a child of her times—used Crisco for the shortening. We now know a few things we didn’t back then, one of which is that butter—when it comes from grass-fed, pasture-raised cows—can be a health food (see “Featured Ingredient,” p. 41).