In that post-dinner trance, sitting on the edge of the dock, my toes gently dragged through the blue water as the sun prepared to dip below the surface. A faint yell that dessert was ready woke me from my trance of watching endless ripples extend across the sea. I skipped down the dock, the wind blowing in my hair; as I approached I could smell each ingredient one at a time: the sweet batter that I would always beg to lick off the spoon, the syrupy peaches from a freshly-opened can (we never used fresh peaches, they were less reliable), and of course the secret ingredient: cinnamon sugar generously sprinkled over the top.
Inside, the hastily-handwritten note cards and ideas formed on scraps of paper culminated in one book and a small overstuffed box. As the recipes were passed down generation to generation, the recipes marinated even more with the additional food, water, and pen ink stains, with new tips, tricks, and love added to each one.
On the table sat the bubbling cobbler, fresh from the oven that had been filled with love for the past 70 years. Knowing this would be one of the home cooked dishes I’d ever eat in this house, the bittersweet flavors were unexpected; while it was important for my grandparents to move closer to the town so that they could be more connected, the serenity of literally being at the land’s end with absolutely nothing around, seeing the stars in the night sky, laying under a mossy tree or resting on a bobbing dock without a single other noise in the world to interrupt you, genuinely comforted and reassured everyone, no matter what happened.
In the new house, everything was shiny and new. The oven hadn’t had layers of lowcountry cooking to season it; the stovetop had never been splashed with hearty soup. Yet, the first thing that we carried into the house was that sacred recipe book that is so essential to our family’s history. That night, when we once again sprinkled the cinnamon sugar on a familiar dish, the first dish to be made in the new, strange house with the foreign oven, the reassuring crunchy crust with the soft, melty center took us back to the swaying Spanish moss trees, the sandy beach that everyone in the family had taken walks on whenever we’d visit.
Cinnamon sugar is exchangeable - there’s always going to be a tastier, fancier cobbler recipe out there. That being said, the love we tasted in the dish every single time transported each one of us back to the memories we had with home cooked food; for me, that remains the house at land’s end.