keen for peaches

Griddlelicker’s last saucy post set me to thinking.  I am indeed thankful for the intarwebs for assistance in putting good things on my table that are recreations of other good things that I have put in my mouth, but so far mainly it’s been work towards teh yum from my kidhood that my mother produced.  I’ve already mentioned that the payoff in my quest for mom’s mac-n-cheese was finding the Pattie LaBelle recipe which I found in a search years ago.  The fried chicken started out as a quest for hers, but because I’m curious, I’ve found a process that works better for my taste now via the printed and electronic word.  Now, I all but challenged myself in that post when I said

But I tell you now that she’s gone, her peach cobbler has gone with her because I’m not sure I can duplicate that ambrosia, no matter what.

But peach season is nigh upon us, y’all. Now that I’ve been successful in working the fresh strawberries, my mind turns to the fuzzy butt fruit (seriously, if you’ve ever seen this, you can’t help but think of a butt when you see a peach).  My lasting memory of picking our own as a child is both triumphant and miserable.  The peaches that my mother wanted most lived at the top of the trees.  So, being the smallest, I happily volunteered to swing my way to the top and lob them down.  Do you know what happens when that soft fuzz gets on sweat-covered skin?  ‘Tis as if you are being lightly pricked by a thousand pins.  Keep that on the down low, otherwise it’ll end up in the torture handbook if it isn’t already.  Writhing in misery on the nearly hour ride back home, I could only dream of the relief a shower would bring.  Alas, once that business is on you, it is all but in you and takes practically an act of god to get it off.  In spite of all this, my love of a juicy peach has never waned.

Mom did all sorts of things with what felt like a bushel of peaches we’d picked.  Cakes. Pickled in a jar.  Jam and preserves.  Simply sliced over cereal.  Frozen in pints and half-pints.  But the one thing that I couldn’t wait for was the peach cobbler. Now that I have a better grasp of the tenets of cooking (but certainly not a mastery thereof, not by a country mile at least), I know now that what she produced was a deep-dish peach pie as opposed to a cobbler.  Which matters not to me because no matter what it was called, I could not.  Stop.  Eating it.  I espoused the pie’s fabulosity to Man Unit for years and I’m sure he was just humoring me, thinking that the first blush of the peach from my childhood caused me to exaggerate.  Until he sampled it for himself during our first visit together to my mom’s which fortunately occurred in the middle of peach season.  Every time I had to go back without him, he begged for portions to make the journey back with me.

So now, the taste is back in my mind and mouth and I want it again. Currently, I have four tabs open in my browser that have yielded recipes that bear hallmarks of what I remember.  Once I get it together and we get a little further into peach season, I’ll post a step-by-step photo editorial of what happens, success or FAIL.

Oooooweeeee, I cannot WAIT.  *smekdrool*