book greed

i find myself seriously lacking in discipline. i started the blog in order to write about food, my favorite subject. but life has interrupted and i find myself lacking the time to cook the special things that i wanted to revisit from my childhood. so in an effort to be disciplined by at least posting something on the blog every month, i'm going to write about my book greed. i have an insatiable love of reading. reading is as essential to me as breathing. i always have books to read and always read before going to sleep at night. when i travel, i have to bring a book with me, lest i feel the need to read and don't have a book to read which would lead to me to stress out, believe me a bad thing when traveling.

so to me, the best thing ever, is the public library. what a deal! what a wondrous thing, to fill out a piece of paper, get a little card and boom, they let you into a a building filled with books of every imaginable sort and you get to choose any book you want and get this, they let you take it home with you, for free! my love of the public library comes from my mother, who took us religiously every three weeks during the summer, and we would spend a lazy afternoon there, looking for books, and inevitably i would end up with six or seven paperbacks, because, the book greed was even strong with me then, and i never wanted to be without a book to read.

i'm already reading 2 books, when my library books expired today. one book i was able to renew, the other one was requested, so i had to bring it back. when i walked in the library, i knew that i shouldn't check out another book, but the book greed over took me. leaving the library without looking at the books would have been akin to someone telling me not to breathe. so many books, so many words and thoughts that could enlighten me, or delight me, or thrill me, or humor me, or just make me awestruck at the beauty of the english language. how could i not take the time to browse through the books? what if i didn't browse through the books and i missed the one book that would make me marvel at the world we live in and somehow make me feel something that would in turn, make me a better person for just having read someone's carefully crafted prose? and so i go through the racks of new fiction and new non-fiction. my eye caught by the title or the cover art. and of course i find two more books to check out. i go to the counter and dutifully hand over my library card. and lo and behold, i walk out with two more treasures to savor. and now, it's time to read.

peach cobbler

my childhood summers meant, going to the library, swimming and eating summer fruits, like peaches, apricots, plums, the darker the better and strawberries. we had a garden in the backyard and the best breakfast ever, was to pick ruby red strawberries right from the garden, slice the still warm from the sun berries into a bowl of corn flakes, sprinkle with a little sugar and dive right in. no milk please, it would make the corn flakes soggy. the taste of warm sweet juicy berries, crunchy with the sugar and the crispy slightly savory corn flakes is unbeatable. alas, with strawberries available almost year round now, that divine breakfast is definitely a thing of the past, at least until i have a garden of my own. back in those days, we had never even heard of sunblock, so as i lay in the sun, taking a break from swimming, i'd pluck a sweet tiny cherry tomato that grew in containers on our patio. and if we were lucky, my mom would make peach cobbler. she always made it in the same dish, a 2 quart rectangular corningware dish, that i can't ever remember her using for anything else. out came the dish and out came the well used and loved better crocker cook book. we'd turn it to the peach cobbler page, warped and brown from drips of peach juice. a simple syrup was made on the stove and the luscious peeled peach slices dumped in with a dash of cinnamon. cooked just a bit, to insure perfect doneness when the topping was cooked. the peaches were transferred into the dish and dotted with butter. a simple drop biscuit topping was made and added to the top and into the oven it went. the smell of peach cobbler would make my mouth water and we had to be restrained from digging in as soon as it came out of the oven. finally the peach cobbler would be cool enough to eat, yet still warm enough so that when we spooned a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, it would instantly start to melt into the peachy sauce and create a sweet creamy peachy nectar that would soak into the fluffy biscuits...heaven and a true taste of summer sunshine. eat up!!!