If you can't stand the HEAT...make sorbet

It is Houston in the summer time.  I was talking to myself the other day when I realized two things...1. I was talking out loud and 2. I noticed I was saying, 'What on earth possessed me to move to Houston?'  I don't regret this move.  I was able to become a teacher, live in a great city with amazing food, atmosphere and culture but the heat 9 months out of the year is too much for me.  I have decided that I will spend as much of the remainder of this summer laying on the couch, reading books, and eating lemon sorbet.  Its yummy and even yummier when mixed with vodka or rum, whichever you happen to have an abundance of for a nice afternoon refresher. 

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/lemon-sorbet-recipe/index.html

Check out Emeril's great recipe.  Mine is in the ice cream maker right now!

Add another one to the list

I have to keep a list of the books I've read.  Otherwise, I see a book in the store, the jacket blurb really holds my interest, I pay for the book, get 30 pages into it and realize that it seems very familiar.  I did this with several books over the years before I started keeping a list.  It gives me a great sense of accomplishment to add another title to the list.  The list is arranged alphabetically by author's last name of course.  Does anyone else do this or have other quirky reading habits?  I can't be alone in my reading eccentricities. 

Last night while my boyfriend was in surgery for the largest hemorrhoids this side of the Mississippi I finished Nightwoods by Charles Frazier.  It was short for him, only 250something pages.  Good, not bad, not nearly as good as Cold Mountain, which took me ten years to love, but man do I love it now.  If you like Frazier's writing style and don't want to invest 500 pages of your life, this is a good read with all of his classic Carolina woods scenery. 

Sugar!

I was tired of being punished so I put down Crime and Punishment for a bit.  It amazes me how many times I start reading a book before I actually get through it.  I started Cold Mountain at least 5 times over the course of 10 years before I made it all the way through.

Trying to find something a little more entertaining and still on my summer reading list.  Poisonwood Bible here I come!  The first few chapters are poetic enough.  Kingsolver uses beautiful prose to describe the lives of her characters in rather vague and ambiguous terms.  This novel was about to have the same fate as C & R until she mentioned bringing boxed cake mixes to the Congo.  Funny enough...I had a boxed cake mix in my pantry! Oh how my mind wandered.  Lemon Supreme.  So instead of reading this afternoon I have been baking lemon cupcakes with strawberry butter cream icing!!!!  Ahhh.  Life is worth living once more but I promise you don't want to be here when I come down from this sugar high.  Don't you just love how literature can inspire?

Crime and Punishment all right

I'm reading Crime and Punishment.  I have to.  I'm supposed to teach it in the fall with some sense of authority.  I've owned the copy I'm currently reading for YEARS.  But why does reading about crime and punishment feel like I have committed a crime and am being punished for it?  The good news is I am getting in some really great naps.  Please send words of encouragement or if you've read it, give me a teaser, something to look forward to so I can not look like a dolt in front of my students.  Please and thank you!