Mining Freezer for Summer Goodness

Summer's berries about to star in a cobbler. These are fresh from the freezer, part of the 2012 garden harvest. 

Winter months are pay-off time for all the garden and kitchen grunt work that occurs August thru October. I whine about toiling to harvest and process food. But dang, it is so satisfying to thaw a quart of ratatouille, crack open a pint of salsa, or dump a frozen rectangle of marinara sauce into the spaghetti pot. We have a large pantry in an unheated porch to stash canned sauces and salsas and winter squash,  and the pump house protects potatoes from freezing.

An old refrigerator in the garage holds apples and onions, and its freezer, once loaded with berries, now keeps pork that was raised nearby. A small upright freezer in our back porch stores chard, kale, berries, corn, peppers, eggplant, green beans, tomatillos, whole Roma tomatoes, pesto, chili verde, walnuts, and chipotle cubes. Ditto the kitchen refrigerator/freezer. Whew. It was a lot of work, but winter meals are a breeze.

About to dive into berry cobbler with vanilla ice cream.

Here's one of my favorites—a delectable melange of summer berries in a relatively low-carb cobbler. This recipe evolved from a berry concoction that used yellow cake mix as the topping. My low-carbing sister, Monette Johnson, ditched the cake mix and substituted oatmeal and a bit of flour. I tweaked further to include almond meal and oat flour. As you can tell, there's a lot of leeway with the topping! It always gets rave reviews. I make this when company is coming. In this case, son Chris, is due home today!

Just out of the oven. Looks like I baked it a bit  too long, but it still tasted great.

Mixed Berry Cobbler
For the fruit layer:
Four to five cups of berries, fresh or frozen: blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries
One 3-ounce package of sugar-free JELL-O, raspberry
One cup of water

For the topping
3/4 stick butter, melted
1/4 cup oat flour
1/4 cup almond flour (or 1/2 cup almond flour and omit the oat flour)
1 1/4 cup old-fashioned oatmeal*
3/4 cup Splenda or equivalent non-sugar sweetner
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

*I've been meaning to eliminate all but a quarter cup of oats and instead mix an equivalent amount of almond and coconut flours with the butter and Splenda for a lower-carb count. If you try that, let me know, please, how it turned out.

Directions
Spread the berries in a 9X13 inch baking dish. Distribute the J-ello powder on the berries, then drizzle with water. Mix the butter, oats, flours, Splenda and walnuts. Sprinkle atop the berries.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes. Serve warm or cool with ice cream or half and half or unadorned.