Perfect Peach Cobbler for #thebookclubcookbookCC

Here we are at month two in #thebookclubcookbookCC, a year-long journey to explore - and cook from - The Book Club Cookbook, Revised Edition: Recipes and Food for Thought from Your Book Club's Favorite Books and Authors by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp.* Judy, Vicki, and their publisher, Tarcher-Penguin, have provided the hosting bloggers with copies of the book plus copies to giveaway each month of the project. Woohoo. Incredibly generous.

This month Andrea at Adventures in all Things Food has selected A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson.** Click to read her invitation: here. She asked us to 'come share a book and a slice of pie.' The recipe Judy and Vicki shared for the cook selection is a Very Yellow Lemon Meringue Pie.

On the Page...

Last month my family and I embarked on our annual 10-day camping trip. It's 10 days, 1200+ miles, 2 states, and 5 different campsites. It's dirty and glorious. And I get a lot of reading done. I brought A Walk in the Woods with me and finished it over the course of two days.

This is Bryson's account of his Appalachian Trail adventure. The AT stretches along the eastern seaboard from Georgia to Maine and thru-hikers traverse the obstacles during the more temperate months, e.g. not during the snow. There were parts of this book that made me laugh aloud. My husband would ask, "What's so funny?" And I'd read him passages that made us chuckle as we huddled around the firepit after the boys were tucked in their tents. Here's one passage where Bryson is asking his hiking pal, Katz, about the morning coffee; Katz had, in frustration and anger, lightened his pack load the day before.

"Is there a reason," I asked, "why you are filtering the coffee with toilet paper?"

"I, oh...I threw out the filter papers."

..."They couldn't have weighed two ounces."

"I know, but they were great for throwing. Fluttering all over." ..."The toilet paper seems to be working OK, though."

While this book hasn't inspired me to do any distance hiking - 11 miles is about my comfort level in a day - I thoroughly enjoyed his account of the trail and adventures and mis-adventures. 

On the Plate...

When looking for inspiration in the kitchen, I considered the Lemon Pie from The Book Club Cookbook. "...[A] vast, viscous, canary-yellow wedge of lemon pie. ...yellow enough to give you a headache, sweet enough to make your eyeballs roll up into your head - everything, in short, you could want in a pie so long as taste and quality didn't enter into your requirements." 

We do have a prolific Meyer lemon tree in the backyard. But I was more inspired by his account of MacKaye's original vision for the trail shelters: "if shelters along the trail were proper hostels, with hot showers...and a resident caretaker/cook to keep a cheery fire dancing in the grate and who would invite us, any minute now, to take our places at a long table for dinner of stew and dumplings, cornbread and, oh, let us say, peach cobbler." Sounds divine. He had me dreaming of peach cobbler for the rest of our camping trip.

As soon as we got home, I whipped up my version of a perfect dream-inspiring peach cobbler! I added in some tart rhubarb, too, for color and to cut the sometimes cloying summer peaches.

Perfect Peach Cobbler

Filling Ingredients

• 4 C sliced organic peaches
• 1 C sliced organic rhubarb
• 1 T ground cinnamon
• 1/2 C packed organic brown sugar
• 2 T flour
• 1 t ground nutmeg
• 1 T ground cinnamon
• dash of ground cardamom
• 2 T butter

Topping Ingredients

• 1 C white whole wheat flour
• 1/2 C packed organic brown sugar
• 3/4 t baking powder
• 3 to 4 T olive oil
• 1 T pure vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1 t ground nutmeg
• 1 T ground cinnamon
• dash of ground cardamom

Procedure

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and butter a baking dish.

With a wooden spoon mix all of the filling ingredients until thoroughly combined and the peaches and rhubarb are all coated with the other ingredients. Spoon the filling into the prepared pan and dot with 2 T butter that's been cubed.

For the topping...stir until all the ingredients are combined. The consistency will be like a crumble top. Spoon the topping over the fruit and use a spatula to spread it over the fruit. 

Bake the cobbler for 40-50 minutes, until the topping is golden brown and the filling is bubbly. Let cool for 5 minutes before serving. Serve hot.

Giveaway

This month Andrea at Adventures in all Things Food, this month's host, is giving away a copy of the book.* Enter to win a copy of the cookbook so you can join us in future months, if you wish!

One of our lucky readers - US and Canada only! - can enter to win a copy ofThe Book Club Cookbook, Revised Edition: Recipes and Food for Thought from Your Book Club's Favorite Books and Authors by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp, courtesy of Tarcher-Penguin. Giveaway runs from August 1st till August 31st at 6 o'clock PM, Pacific time. Please see terms and conditions in the rafflecopter widget below. Many thanks to Tarcher Books. You may find Tarcher: on the web, on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Pinterest.

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*Disclosure: Andrea received a complimentary copy of The Book Club Cookbook, Revised Edition: Recipes and Food for Thought from Your Book Club's Favorite Books and Authors by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp to use in this year-long project plus the opportunity to give a copy away. Opinions are our own. We received no further compensation for our posts.

**I've included an affiliate link below for this month's selection...if you would like to read it. If you are uncomfortable using the link, feel free to go to amazon and search "A Walk in the Woods" on your own!