Dazed and Confused

I want my cuppa tea!

Three months ago I had a violent stomach bug.  I never spent a night puking for so long and so hard in my life.  The next day, I lay on the couch eating (saltless) Saltines and watching old movies because my stomach was so upset.

I figured it would go away in a day or two.  And it didn't.  And didn't.

For weeks, I kept discovering foods I dared not eat for getting killer heartburn.  Anything with tomatoes.  Anything with vinegar.  

Cutting out tomatoes was tough.  A lot of what I eat has tomatoes as a base.  So I ate my spaghetti with Parmesian cheese and herbs (as my friend Lee Rowan used to make--and probably still does).  I had no Indian food for two l-o-n-g months.  Nothing seemed to work for me, despite the bottles of Malox I drank, and the hundreds of antacid tablets I downed, until I found Prelief.  (I should take out stock in the company.)  I'd down a couple (okay, maybe as many as five) of these little white pills and it neutralized the acid.  Gradually, my stomach healed enough to reintroduce these acidic foods.

Except for one thing:  tea.

Now, for as long as I can remember, I have started my day with a cup (or pot) of tea.  I had to give up caffeine back in the 1980s, and learned to love decaf tea.  (Okay, ENGLISH decaf tea.  There's a big difference in taste.  American teas are pretty wimpy.)  Even with seven Prelief tablets, nothing seemed to help.  To add insult to injury, I'd purchased 11 boxes of my favorite Typhoo tea (that's 880 tea bags) just about the time this all started.

I was letting myself have one cup of tea a week to see if the old stomach could handle it.  Usually I choose Mondays, figuring I'd have the rest of the week to recover before I tried again.  It was only a week ago that I had a cup of tea and didn't get heartburn.  That made me braver.  I tried again (only that time I didn't have anything to eat with the tea).  Ugh.  Heartburn.  So I tried with food (and Prelief) again.  Ah, success!  Yesterday, I had tea with just Prelief.  Yea!  No heartburn.  And I've done it again today.  (Okay, it's kind of early, but I've got my fingers crossed.)

I can't tell you how wonderful it has been to have that one cup of tea most mornings for the last week.  Oh how I've missed it.  But it's only one cup.  I can't wait until I can get back to drinking a whole pot of tea and without taking Prelief first.  On that day I will celebrate--with another cup of tea.

Have you had to give up something you love to eat or drink, and how did you handle it?

PET PEEVE THURSDAY--Sodium in processed food

One of the good things our government has actually done for us is mandate nutrition labels on our food. The problem is--is anybody reading that material besides me? I know members of my family don't because they haven't got a clue about the amount of sodium they're ingesting.

On one of my diets, low these many years ago, I learned to substitute pepper for salt. They told us (was it Diet Workshop, or Nutrisystem . . . one of them, anyway) that SALT MAKES YOU RETAIN WATER, and water is heavy. Fine. I got used to skim milk and dumping half a shaker of pepper on my food and learned to actually love it. I don't cook with salt. I even cut the amount of salt in the recipes I include in my books because YOU DON'T NEED AS MUCH AS EVERYONE SEEMS TO THINK YOU DO.  

That's why I'm really rather horrified by the amount of salt in any processed food. I used to eat curried beans. I'd buy a generic can of black beans or black-eyed peas, dump them in a saucepan, add some curry paste, heat through, serve on rice--and voila! A quick lunch.  Not anymore.  Now I buy dried beans and cook them in the crock pot (without adding any salt).  Of course I have enough to feed an army, but luckily I like beans.

And have you noticed that low-sodium canned foods (soup, in particular) is usually DOUBLE the price of "regular" canned food?  (It is at my grocery store.) How does this encourage the population at large (especially in these economic times) to lower their sodium intake?

I keep seeing articles in the newspaper Living section about the need to cut sodium in our diets because it's killing us.  An enormous amount of our population--including children--is on meds to lower their blood pressure.  And why?  Because of the amount of sodium they're ingesting.

A big part of the problem is fast food.  For instance, according to Wikipedia, a Big Mac has 42% of your daily requirement of sodium. (There's a reason I stay away from these places.)  What about the fries and the rest of the food someone typically ingests on any given day?  I've also given up eating any restaurant soup, too.  Why?  Too salty!

The government seems to want to regulate everything else in our lives--why not the amount of sodium food processors are allowed to add to food?  

Salt, salt, salt, salt, S-A-L-T!!!

I know one thing--I don't want to have a stroke, so I watch my sodium intake.  Everybody should.

And what's bugging YOU today?

It's ALIVE!!!

I’ve had to do a lot of cooking and baking while testing the recipes I include in my Booktown Mystery series. For the most part, it’s fun. (Okay, maybe not that time I had to make and remake the savory muffins until my husband pleaded with me to STOP ALREADY!!!) But there’s one thing I have never attempted: anything with yeast.

Well, sort of.

Years ago, I attempted to make homemade pizza. I didn’t want to bother with yeast, so I bought a roll of frozen bread dough, which the recipe’s author assured me was A-OK with her. I followed the package directions, added my sauce, pepperoni, and vegetables on top and popped it in the oven. Some 20 minutes later I was horrified to open the oven and find that my pizza dough had risen to about three inches high, knocking off most of my toppings. And that’s when I realized it: the yeast in the dough was ALIVE and probably had been out to get me.

Gulp.

One of my favorite coffee table books is The Romance of Country Inns by Gail Grecco. In it, she includes a recipe for cinnamon rolls. She has included a gorgeous photograph (of not only the cinnamon rolls, but of Sedona, AZ as a backdrop. (Gail’s husband Tom Bagley is a professional photographer and has taken photos for most of her cookbooks.) I must have had that book for a decade (or more) and looked at that lovely photo and longed to make those cinnamon buns, except . . . they’re made with yeast.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to assemble the ingredients to make bread, right? Then why does the thought of adding that little yeast packet to warm water terrify me so? Is it because it’s a living thing, or that it might go out of control – or is my mother’s not-so-great results at breadmaking. (If you ask her, she’ll say every loaf was a success—okay, they were, if you ate it right out of the oven and spread with a lovely layer of butter, but otherwise– Sorry, Mum.)

I’m determined to make those darn cinnamon buns one day. In fact, I’ve assembled at least ten different versions of the recipe in hopes that one day I’ll gather up my courage and JUST DO IT.

But not just yet. I have to find the courage to do so.

And what are you afraid to cook?

Poached!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen pears or salmon poached on various cooking shows. (About ten years ago, you couldn’t open a cookbook or a magazine without some poor pear being scalded to death.)

About the only thing I’ve ever eaten poached is eggs. I didn’t even realize I liked them until I made them a few years ago for my parents when we were all at the family’s summer cottage. Of course, this was the first time I’d ever made them and I realized why I’d never liked them before. My folks like theirs runny so that they have something to soak into their toast. I like my eggs poached HARD. (I also eat my fried eggs broken and cooked hard.)

They (and the cottage they outfitted) had special pans with rings and little poaching cups. The problem was, they were made for four eggs. I have seen plastic poaching cups you can use in the microwave, but to tell you the truth, I don’t trust them. Hey, look at the plastic baby bottles the government okay’d and now they’re saying—hold it! Don’t heat the milk in those bottles, because potentially hazardous chemicals leach out of the plastic and into the milk.

Therefore, I figured poached eggs were only for larger gatherings (my husband won’t eat them) or cook one or two and waste all that energy on the stove. I voiced that opinion and Mom casually said, “Why don’t you just poach an egg in a coffee mug in the microwave?”

Hello! Can you say breakfast in a jiffy?

Okay, it did take me a few tries before I got it right—and heaven forbid if you forget to prick the yoke before you nuke it. KABOOM! Exploded egg all over the microwave.  (I found that poking it with a fork did a good job.) 

I use a standard coffee mug, fill it with about an inch of boiling water right out of the kettle, drop in an egg or two (depending on how hungry I am) and zap it for about 90  seconds, drain off the water, and pop my little poached egg onto a plate with a dollop of butter, a generous shake of pepper, and a side of toast. Mmmm. Nice hot breakfast.

What’s your favorite quick, hot breakfast?

Soup's on

The other day on Writers Plot, my friend Kate Flora waxed poetically about how the onset of falls makes her yearn for hot breads and muffins.  It must be that snap in the air that arrived rather suddenly this week that makes us want to ditch the picnic food (well, I could eat a little more potato salad) and start cooking up cold-weather comfort food.

But as much as I like quick breaks an d muffins, when fall rolls around, I want my soup.  Homemade preferred.

It wasn't so long ago that when I went to a diner, I almost always ordered the soup.  I'm especially fond of vegetable soup and New England clam chowder.  But it seemed to me that more than soup I was getting brine.  Way WAY too much salt in the soup.  So I've had to give up ordering the soup.  (Except for Chinese hot and sour soup--so far that seems to have escaped excessive sodium, and how long will that last?)

Canned soups have always been too salty for me.  Lately I've taken to buying the reduced sodium versions.  Why is it if they leave out the salt the store feels they need to charge twice as much for the product?  And, unfortunately, too often if they skimp on the salt, they double up the high-fructose corn syrup.  I don't want sweet soup.

So, more often than not, I make my own soup.  I'm sure it costs triple what a can of soup costs, but it tastes great, it fills the house with a wonderful aroma, and it's good for me.

I like to make chicken soup (I prefer turkey soup, but we only cook a bird once a year--not my choice, mind you, I could eat it year round.  Too bad others in the family don't feel the same).  We buy roasted chicken from the local grocery store, which gives us four meals and then soup.  Okay, only two servings of soup, but that makes a fine lunch.

I don't have a recipe.  I boil the chicken bones for an hour or so, strain off the broth, toss the bones, throw in an onion, celery, and some frozen mixed vegetables, and in 20 minute--voila!  Lunch.  For seasoning, I toss in some ground pepper and maybe one or two shakes of salt, but nothing like what comes in processed soups.  I'll break out the bread and butter or saltines (which aren't very salty these days--must have used all that salt in the processed soup), and what a great meal.

Okay, I'm off to the kitchen.  I've got that chicken carcass to pick and soup on the menu.

Want to share your favorite soup recipe?

Back in the saddle again

A week or so ago, I sent my work in progress out to three first readers and yesterday I received the last of the comments.  Overall, they liked it.  (Whew!) Now I'm working on the rewrite.

I wish I could say I have a nice, leasurely amount of time to turn this puppy around, but I don't.  It has to arrive on my editor's desk on September 7th.  Last time around, I pushed the envelope and didn't get the manuscript ready to go until the day before the deadline.  No problem, I said, and moseyed on down to the local UPS Store.  I hearly hemmoraged (or at least my wallet did) when I learned that to overnight the manuscript was going to cost me a whopping $40.  That ain't gonna happen again.

The rewrite is going well, and I might even finish up later today.  The thing that's holding me back?  Testing those recipes.  I have a feeling I'll be cooking my butt off this weekend as I make several different versions of each dish until I'm satisfied.  (Including a coconut cake--but wait, it's my birthday.  What's wrong with having three birthday cakes, right?)  

Rewrites are either a pain in the butt or a lot of fun.  This one is fun because so far my first readers haven't found too much wrong.  And I love it that they've (hopfully) found all the typos and glitches.  That makes me look good.  I want to please my editor and if he enjoys reading the ms. and is happy he doesn't have to do much work on it--we're both very happy.

But in the meantime, it's back to those recipes.

Oh, let me eat cake!

How I eat green beans

Since I blogged about my garden the other day, especially about how much I love green beans, I thought I might share how I cook them.

I first ate these beans at a Chinese Buffet.  In those day, they added almonds.  I haven't seen them cooked that way in quite some time, but that doesn't stop me from fixing them that way.

First, I get out a skillet and put in an inch or so of water.  Plop the washed beans in the water (I like them whole, but you can cut them in segments or French style) and bring to a boil.  Cook until tender.  Drain the water and toss in a tablespoon or two of olive oil, and a tablespoon (or more) of either slivered or sliced almonds.  Cook until the almonds are browned.  

We also eat the beans boiled with dried onion and rosemary.  I put in a tablespoon or two of dried onion, and a couple of pinches of dried rosemary (fresh is always better) and boil until your preferred level of tenderness.

As you can see, I'm not big about measuring for these recipes.  

(Oh, and how do I eat my green beans?  With a fork, of course!)

How do you cook your green beans?

Ode to a cauliflower

One of the things I love most about summer is FRESH VEGETABLES.  The yard sales have been a huge disappointment this year, so is it any wonder that sometimes the best thing I can find is a vegetable?

Last week, after wasting too much gas and not finding anything fun at the yard sales, we stopped at a farm stand and found the world's most perfect cauliflower.  Even better--it was only a dollar!

I LOVE cauliflower and I have a really easy recipe that uses only three ingredients.

Boil as much cauliflower as your family can eat.  When it's almost done, remove it from the boiling water and place in an oven proof dish.  Sprinkle (or dump on) it with your favorite cheese.  (I've used Parmesan, cheddar and mozzarella), and then sprinkle (or dump on) seasoned (or unseasoned--depending on your preference) breadcrumbs.  Bake at 360 until the cheese melts and the breadcrumbs are golden brown (10-15 minutes).

Yum!

TEA PARTY?

There's nothing more soothing than a cup of tea.  At least to me.  I make tea first thing in the morning.  I'm not really awake until I have at least one cup inside me.  There's nothing better with a cookie, slice of cake, or piece of chocolate than a wonderful cup of tea.

And I'm running out of tea.

Not a problem--go to the store, right?

Uh, no.  You see, I drink Typhoo decaf and have been buying it from Canda (or bringing it back from England--last trip was in 2001) for years.  My aunt gave me two boxes for Christmas and boy was I happy to get them.  My brother used to make many trips to Canada, but not so much lately.  

A week ago, I opened my last box and now I'm starting to get nervous.  I cannot be without my tea.

I don't see making it to Canada any time soon (even though it's only about 80 miles away).  I do have a passport, so it's not that I can't go to Canada (hey, that's not the problem -- it's getting back into THIS country that's the problem.  And when did Homeland Security start training immigration officers to act like storm troopers?)  So my only option is going to be the Internet.  

The cost of tea online isn't the problem.  It's the cost of shipping that irks me.  Why is it that companies advertise decent prices for products, and then crank up the shipping to an indecent level?  I mean, people sell used copies of my first book on Amazon for a penny--and then charge $3.99 for shipping.  I don't mind a reasonable profit, but reasonable seems to be an unreasonable expection.

But, I am a slave to my tea addiction and I will pay through the nose to get it.

I just don't have to like it.

White Bakery Bags

Yesterday, we made an emergency trip to the grocery store for ice. (Hey, you can't have happy hour without ice, right.)  On the spur of the moment, I decided to grab a couple of bagels for breakfast.  Some branches of this store have clear, plastic bags for their bagels--this particular store had white bakery bags.

Ever since I was a kid, there's been something mysterious about a white bakery bag.  You can't see inside.  It came from a bakery.  Bakeries have all KINDS of wonderful things.  Cookies, Danish, white mountain rolls, bagels, turnovers, cream horns, little cakes, cupcakes . . . the list goes on and on.

I used to come home from work for lunch several days a week.  Not my home, my parents' home.  And often there'd be a white bakery bag sitting on the counter.  More often than not, there'd be one of Jackson Bakery's little white cakes inside.  They were my favorite, and my Dad knew it.  Oh, what a delight after one of Dad's chicken salad sandwiches to have that little cake with a cup of tea.  I'd eat it in teeny tiny bites just to prolong the ecstacy. 

Jackson's Bakery is still around and they still sell those little cakes.  Our wedding anniversary is next week and I predict one of Jackson's little coconut cakes.  (This is last year's model.)  Okay, it doesn't come in a bakery bag.  No, it comes in a white bakery box tied with string.  Oh, the wonders that can be contained in one of those bakery boxes.  A dozen cookies.  Half a dozen Danish or apple turnovers.  Cakes.  Pies.  And the list goes on and on.

Ya think I have a sweet tooth?

Much too sweet

Friday night I had guests for dinner and committed a cardinal sin:  I made a recipe without testing it first. 

The recipe was for peach crisp.  Apple crisp is an old favorite of mine, but did I use my tried and true recipe and just substitute peaches?  Nooooooooooo!  Instead, I took this one from a 1997 Taste of Home annual.  Now, granted, food from the heartland isn't known for being the most healthy -- but peaches, for goodness sake!  They're good for you.

As I was making the dessert, I frowned at the amounts of sugar the recipe called for.  In fact, I used one quarter less sugar in the filling, and a quarter less in the topping (1/2 cup less sugar), and since the filling called for the syrup from the canned peaches (and I made the mistake of buying peaches in heavy syrup, I dumped half of said syrup down the drain and substituted water.  The result -- a dessert that was still far too sweet for me to really enjoy. 

Mind, you, I LOVE dessert -- and it shows.  (I've got a conference to go to in a month, and starting today, I've hit the treadmill in an effort to lose a few pounds.)  The truth is, we rarely eat dessert just because we eat too much of everything else.  (And, in fact, my favorite "dessert" is actually a graham cracker.)

It's doubtful I'll ever make this recipe again.  But if I should -- I'd knock out at least another 1/2 cup of the sugar -- and ditch the heavy (made lighter) syrup.  No wonder there's a diabetes epidemic in this country.

Eating Healthy

A member of my family was recently diagnosed with "pre-diabetes" and told to lose weight and eat healthy.  That got me thinking about how we eat, which isn't healthy enough.

For the past year, I've been trying to make changes.  First up, I've pitched several of our non-stick pans.  I'll be looking to replace them with Revereware or Farberware.  (I've already replaced the pots--now to get another skillet or two.) 

But what about food?

We eat far too much processed food.  I've been switching over to lower fat and lower sodium soups, etc., and when I went to look for a can of black beans yesterday morning, I realized I'd used the last one up. It was time to break out the bag of real, dried beans.

According to the Idaho Bean Commission:

• Each half-cup serving of dry beans provides six to seven grams of protein, meets at least 10% of the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for protein, yet costs about 20 cents per serving. 

• A single half-cup serving of cooked dry beans counts as one, one-ounce serving of lean meat in the USDA Food Pyramid Meat and Beans group, and as a full serving of vegetables in the Vegetables group.  (And there are LOTS of other fascinating facts up there, too.)

I've never cooked dried beans before.  Who has time to watch a pot on the stove?  Instead, I rinsed and picked through the beans, like the package said, and tossed them into a girl's best friend:  my crockpot. 

Once the beans were cooked (on high for about three hours), I figured I was ready to go.  Now to make them palatable--and that means curry paste.  Okay, that's processed, too, but there's no added sodium, and I know exactly what's in today's lunch. 

We need to eat more real fruits and vegetables.  That would be easy for me -- not so easy for my husband.  But he's agreed to try. 

It's a start.

P.S. Anybody got a good black bean recipe?

Delightful Leftovers

It must be something in my genes that makes me cook gargantuan amounts of food.  There's just the two of us (and our four cats, and they prefer Friskees -- go figure!), but you'd think by the amount of food we prepare that we were contemplating feeding an army.

I've got a couple of really good crockpot recipes that I got from my Writers Plot friends Leann Sweeney and Jeanne Munn Bracken.  Hubby makes a mean chili, and a fantastic sausage/pasta/cheese/broccoli rabe concoction that is out of this world.  The problem is, these dishes also make tons of leftovers.  Now I happen to like leftovers.  I like them for lunch, dinner -- and a time or two, I've even eaten them for breakfast.  Hubby will eat leftovers once, then it's up to me to finish them off.  Hey, I'm brave and strong.  I can handle that.

Last week I had a hankering for lasagna.  This time, I made it in two separate pans so that I could give a third of it to my parents (so they wouldn't have to cook), and we had two dinners ourselves.  And we froze two more.  Ahhh, nothing like homemade lasagna.

I love it when we have roasted rotisserie chicken, because you can make so many second and third meals out of it.  There's just plain cold chicken; chicken pot pie; tika masala, and my favorite, chicken salad on a bed of lettuce for lunch.  We have had chicken tacos, but not often enough.  (Note to self ...)

And of course, my favorite leftover of all is turkey.  Since my family members aren't big turkey fans, every Thanksgiving I can count on getting the carcass.  I can make all the same food I can with leftover chicken, plus the added bonus of turkey soup.  (And have you ever had turkey waldorf salad?  Yum!)

You won't find me ever trying a recipe for just one or two people.  Nope, bring on the chuck wagon, folks -- I'm making enough for everybody.

From the test kitchen of . . . Lorna Barrett

My publisher likes to add a little something extra to books.  Recipes for food the characters eat.  A pattern for a scarf a knitting heroine might make, etc.

Yesterday work came to a screeching halt on the Bookplate Special rewrite so I could test recipes for this next exciting adventure in the Booktown Mystery series. This is either a joyous occasion or a reason to run and hide-–at least my husband, the recipient of all this cooking, feels this way. If something doesn’t work well, I’ll make it until I get it right. Hubby has to help eat it–-good or bad.

I’ve had a couple of real clunkers. He assures me he will NEVER eat another sausage/cheese muffin again.  Remember these?

But that wasn't the case with the Spinach Mini Quiches.  Yea!  Success! 

The thing with these recipes is, much as you would just like to swipe a recipe from somewhere and reprint it, there's this little problem of copyright infringement.  So you have to take a basic recipe and make it your own.  I read about five million mini quiche recipes and swipe this from there and that from somewhere else.  Then I started tinkering.  And how do you tinker?  By making more than one batch.  Oh yes, liked this--but added more of that and liked it better.

By the time the third version came out of the oven, we had to waddle away from the kitchen. These things are definitely NOT diet food.  But man, were they good.  I'm glad these books only come out twice a year--because with all this fattening baking, my cholesterol would skyrocket.  (How does Paula Deen do it?)

What's the most dangerous part of your job?

I'm over on Writers Plot

Yes, I am.  And I'm talking about Thanksgiving leftovers.  Yum!  Check it out.

Hors D'oeuvres

It's odd how something you've read decades ago can stick with you your whole life. 

When I was a teenager, I read a book by memoir (and children's) author Betty MacDonald (author of The Egg And I ... this book was titled Onions In The Stew) where she recounted a moonlight yacht ride with friends.  This was a huge sailboat tooling around Puget Sound and the hostess came up with hot hors d'oeuvres for her guests on a regular basis.

Since that day, I've had a fascination with hot hors d'oeuvres.  Stuffed mushrooms, water chestnuts wrapped in bacon, mini quiches ... the list goes on and on. 

The problem is ... I seldom get these delightful little appetizers, despite the fact I've collected five or more books on the subject.  (Let's face it, they're a bit time consuming to make.  But oh how heavenly to eat.)

Last week we were supposed to go to Frank's annual map conference, but we canceled rather than board our sick kitty.  One of the highlights of the conference is their cocktail party.  Wow--they've often had really wonderful hot hors d'oeuvres.  Oddly enough, I remember the places rather than the individual food, except that the sites were enhanced BY the hot hors d'oeuvres.  For instance, the Boeing Museum in Seattle (where we got to tour an ex-Air Force One); an art gallery (where we saw a collection of Rodin sculptures) in Portland, ME; the science museum in Denver (where we also saw an IMAX movie); the wonderful Museum of Civilization in Ottawa, Canada, and the one that blew everything else away was just a reception in a hotel in Washington, where they had hot food stations.  Wow!

Lots of times we'll be sitting in our porch at our cottage and watch the boats go by.  If they're BIG boats, I like to speculate if they have a cuddy big enough for a small galley.  If they do ... what kind of hot hors d'oeuvres is the host/hostess preparing for their guests?  Do party barges have microwaves?  If not, should the owner pack an insulated hamper filled with succulent goodies?

I'm feeling the urge to hit the Sam's Club frozen section to see what they've got that I could pop into the toaster oven.  It's the only way I'm going to get any hot hors d'oeuvres any time soon.

"The Crockpot Is An Author's Best Friend"

I cannot take credit for the title of today's post.  It was something my friend, author Leann Sweeney, told me not so long ago.  She and another of my Writers Plot cohorts, librarian/author Jeanne Munn Bracken, are fighting over the title of "crockpot queen."  I don't care who wins, they both have given me great recipes.

Mind you, I've tried quite a number of crock pot recipes over the years (and have at least three crock pot recipe books), but everything tended to come out pretty tasteless and not at all satisfying.  I knew that there were people who swore by cooking in the damn things, so I asked my Writers Plot chums to help me out.  Boy did they.

Leann told me to get some round steak (or roast--which can be cut into little steaks), toss in a can of stewed tomatoes (she recommends DelMonte original), 1 tablespoon brown sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoona dried mustard, 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce.  Add onions and/or green pepper (your call).  Serve over rice or noodles and it is divine.

Jeanne gave me the recipe for a pseudo-Mexican recipe she made up one day (she says she likes to just toss stuff in the crockpot).  No definable amounts here, just toss in some chicken breasts (I prefer thighs), an onion, a can of green chilies, a can of (or frozen) corn, a jar of salsa and, if you like it hot, some jalapenos.  Throw it all in the crock post and cook for 8+ hours.  Oooooh!  Is this ever GOOD.  (We've made it twice--and scarfed up all the leftovers.  Yum!)

Another Leann suggestion we like is a chuck roast (or pork chops), over three sliced onions, with a can of mushroom soup (cut with a little milk) dumped over the top.  Again, 8+ hours later, you have one damn fine meal.

I really don't like to cook, but with these easy, essentially one-pot, meals I could get very used to several crockpot treats a week.

Extra bonus:  very little clean up. 

Now that's my kind of dinner!

My favorite meal

I love lunch.  Not just going out to eat lunch, but lunch in general.  I think I spend more time each day planning my meals than actually enjoying them.

Lunch is so full of possibilities.  Sandwiches and soup?  And which sandwiches; ham and cheese on rye with loads of lettuce?  Tuna with celery and onion with tons of lettuce on multi-grain bread?  Chicken salad with onion, celery and lots of lettuce on white?  BTL with lots of mayo and loads of lettuce on toast?  (Did I mention how much I like lettuce on a sandwich?)  And subs.  We have a great little sub shop down the road that gives you an small assorted sub with tons of meat, cheese, peppers, onions, and lettuce for $3.00.  Toss a (very small) bag of chips, and you've got yourself one mighty fine lunch--for two, even!

I love leftovers.  Give me leftover curried chicken any day.  (Leftover curried ANYTHING is on my top ten list.)  Leftover potato salad with any above-mentioned sandwich (and baby dill pickle) is also marvelous.

When I go out to lunch, I like to have something I wouldn't have at home.  Like...Indian food I can't (or am too lazy) to make myself.  (Goat anyone?)  I also love Greens and Beans, which I have made for myself, but it's labor intensive.  And fish fries.  Yeah--at the Globe Hotel in East Aurora.  (Who wants the smell of fried fish hanging around the kitchen for a couple of days....) 

Unless hubby is feeling creative in the kitchen, we tend to eat a lot of the same stuff for supper.  (Who wants to cook when it's hot?)  That amounts to:  lamb shoulder steaks; hot dogs, hamburgers, ribs (with my mother's wonderful home-made barbeque sauce).  Or at least that seems to be our summer fare.  (With a (shudder) TV dinner tossed in on the nights I work at the co-op.)

Today's lunch is curried beans and rice.  Ahhhh...that's nice.

Cupcakes and garlic bread

Okay, so I'm waltzing into week three of the diet.  So far I've lost 3.5 lbs.  Not great, but encouraging.  (And since my pants are already looser, that makes me very happy.)

It's all portion control you know, because I've barely done any exercise.  Too busy.  Most of that business is on the computer.  Okay, yesterday I did walk a million miles as I visited three neighborhood sales.  There was nowhere to park on the first, so we walked for four hours straight.  Up the street.  Down the street.  Up the driveways, down the driveways.  (Okay, I went up the driveways, Frank didn't bother.)  But then we had lunch at Wendy's and giant tacos for supper, which completely blew the day for dieting, but I figured I walked enough of it off.

But I can't stop thinking about food.  I had a couple of fun hours this week inviting all kinds of food to be my friends on MySpace.  So far I've got several cupcakes, garlic bread, toast, burritos, Mexican Food, Sesame Chicken, bacon, a BLT, a ham sandwich, and a bunch more I can't remember.   I even went on Frank's MySpace page and ordered up friendships with some of his favorites (like a grilled cheese sandwich).

Some of the MySpace pages have the most gorgeous photos of food, but for some reason none of the pizza pictures I saw was at all appetizing.  (So although I love pizza in real live, so far I have not befriended any slices on MySpace.)

The beauty of Weight Watchers is you can eat whatever you like, as long as you keep your points under control.  I'm dreaming of that garlic bread hot from the oven.  Yum! 

To bake or not to bake...

It's no secret that I like to eat.  Especially sweet stuff.  Cookies, cake, candy, I like it all.  The problem is, I eat it, I wear it, and who wants that.

But tis the holidays!  You're supposed to overeat.  You're supposed to bake, Bake, BAKE!  (The Pop-n-Fresh Doughboy said so!)

My excuse this year NOT to bake (and I'm really clinging to it) is I HAVE NO TIME.  Now, we all know this is a lie.  I used to work 40 hours a week, write AND put in my time at the co-op and I still managed to find time to bake for the holidays.  I'm desperately trying NOT to find time to bake because I keep seeing my butt in the full-length mirror and thinking, "I really need to go on a diet."  (Can you say New Year's Resolution?)

There's a box of brownie mix on the counter that's saying, "Bake, me, Bake me!" I recently found Eva Wiley's (God bless her soul) peanut butter fudge recipe--the BEST in the universe.  And I came across Ruth Megan's peanut butter cookie recipe that I thought was lost forever.  *Sigh*  in the same league as the fudge recipe. 

Cut-out cookies are just too much work, what with decorating and all...so the above are my choices for Christmas goodies.  Then again, Gail at Grammy G's Cafe at the Craft Antique Co-Op makes the best cookies so maybe I should just buy them. 

But that doesn't solve the butt problem.

(Part of last year's production.)

Buffalo Fish Fry

It's a tradition (well, for the past 4-5 years) that the day before Thanksgiving we take my parents to Buffalo with us when we pick up Frank's mother, who stays with us for the weekend.  On the way home (well, not really, it's quite a long way out of our way) we always stop at the Globe Hotel in East Aurora (where there's a copy of MURDER ON THE MIND at their library!) for a fish fry.

This year my mum is staying home to get ready for Thanksgiving, so it's just Frank, me, Dad and Mary.  We'll have a drink (martinis for Dad and Me, wine for Mary and a Manhattan for Frank), and chow down on fresh (local) rye bread and fish and chips.

Ahhhhhhh...nothing like it.

The Sauce

I finally got off my duff and took a picture of the Anchor Bar wing sauce and a copy of MURDER ON THE MIND for my web site.  Boy, you'd think this would be easy, but the glossy cover kept giving me "flare" with the flash (and even without it).  I must've taken 10-12 shots and wouldn't you know the first one was the best.  (Gotta love those digital cameras.)  Luckily Frank could downplay some of the flare (wish I knew how to use Photoshop.)

Later today the first bottle of wing sauce will be "winging" its way (completely) across the country to the first winner of the wing sauce contest.  I've had a promise of a "funny" picture of the winner with the bottle.  Boy, I'm looking forward to that.

The new brochures are half printed. (Woo-hoo!  Now for the color side.)

Why do I get so hyped about this stuff?  I guess it's hope.  I gotta keep MURDER ON THE MIND alive so that the chances of DEAD IN RED being bought will increase. 

Keep your fingers crossed!

Recipes

Oh boy!  No sooner do I post about adding recipes to my web site, than PooF!  There they are. (Thanks, Dee!)  Click here!

Next time I make these recipes (maybe later this week), I'll take a picture and put it up there, too.

Meanwhile, the brochure is almost finished.  Next up, printing it.

After that:  getting back to work on the WIP.

Tea, anyone?

Last week we had dinner with my aunt and uncle, who'd recently returned from a trip to England.  (Oh, the steak-and-ale pie was divine, as were the parsnip cakes.  Yum!) 

While in England, my aunt searched for and finally found a place that sells tea cozies.  These are a necessity if, like us, you like to drink your tea HOT!  When she asked why they were so scarce, she was told that people in England don't make tea by the pot much anymore.  And more people now drink coffee than tea.

Is this sacrilege or what?

I recently replaced my tea cozy (of 30 years) with one I found at a garage sale.  And my aunt brought me back two packets of my favorite English tea, which you can't get here. (Well, maybe somewhere, but I haven't found an outlet.) So here I was thinking I was sitting pretty for tea for quite some time.  And then tragedy struck. 

I broke my teapot!!!

I've had this pot for at least five years (garage sale find), and it has served me well.  It was brown, which is wonderful since you can't see the tea stains.  I loved my medium-sized tea-pot.  Tea is the first thing I have in the morning and often the last thing at night.  I look forward to my multiple cups of tea throughout the day.  Now what?

Well, I do have a few teapots sitting in my co-op booth, but I don't think any of them are large enough.  This may mean a trip to Target; and if that doesn't work out, perhaps to Macy's Home Store.

Mind you, I'm not without teapots.  I have two gorgeous bone china pots, but don't think I'm going to let someone as careless as me use them!  They're so beautiful I just like to admire them from behind glass doors.  (Along with my chintz cups and saucers.  Again, put behind glass to protect them from me!)  I also have a couple of one-cup teapots, which are useless for someone like me.  (But they are very cute.)

Getting a new "work horse" teapot is something that can't wait.  I need my cuppa--NOW!

Leftover City

When I learned to cook, I was a part of a family of five.  Therefore, I usually make enough food to feed an army.  Unfortunately, we're just two people with a small fridge.  When we replaced our refrigerator several years ago we figured, hey, what do we need a full-sized one for? 

What were we thinking?

Right now there are about seven hundred bottles and jars of condiments in our refrigerator.  When you're maintaining two households, you have to have double everything.  The problem is when the summer ends all those doubles end up back in the main fridge.  I also keep my oatmeal (by the sack) and and flour in the fridge, because that keeps it from sprouting bugs.  (You know they're there--but why invite them to hatch?)  Then there's the BIG vat of Frank's coffee.  And now there're leftovers balanced on top of everything else.  Leftover chili, leftover chicken, leftover impossible pie, leftover pasta, leftover meatloaf.

When we first got married, Frank refused to eat any leftovers.  He's changed his mind.  (And I didn't even have to beat him senseless for him to adapt to this new way of thinking.) 

I happen to LOVE leftovers.  Usually the flavors are enhanced by the aging process.  I love going weeks and weeks eating leftovers for lunch.  I can go for months, even years, without resorting to peanut butter and jelly.

Last night we ate leftover chili (I froze a huge amount, but we've got at least one more lunch of it). Tonight I think I'll take the chicken and smother it in tikka masala sauce.  Yum!  Tomorrow it'll be meatloaf sandwiches for lunch.  Frank will probably eat the leftover pasta for lunch today, clearing a small space on the bottom shelf.  (Why do I always keep stuff in the serving bowl when it would take up less space in a smaller container?) 

What will I have for lunch today?  It won't be leftovers.  I'm going out to lunch with my critique partners!

I wonder if I'll be able to bring the leftovers home....

Road Food

I'm a person who makes lists.  Things to do...things to buy...things to read...if it needs to be done, it'll get included on one of my lists.

One list I've got going is for the road trip to Bouchercon (leaving on Wednesday).  I asked my critique partners, Liz and Gwen, who have kids, what kind of road food I should take.  I wanted healthy, but apparently it's not available (unless I want to get some MREs from a sports store).  Liz thinks I should hit the snack food aisle at Weggies.  I hate to do that because ... well, I'd like to lose weight, not pack more on.  Gwen suggested the MREs. 

We usually take crackers, pretzels, smoked almonds and bridge mix.  (The four main food groups for travel.)  Traveling with my Mum is a joy because although she packs light, she always had stuff like cheese and pate and fruit.  Where does she hide it?

I have lots of opportunities to have meals with members of my Sisters In Crime chapter, but it seems that there aren't a lot of restaurants in the area where the hotel is located, and we're not staying at the hotel where the conference is located, so running upstairs to the room for a snack isn't an option.  (Frank will be on his own on those occasions, and he'll have the car so he can go off and find food. I'm sure he'll come back with tales of gourmet meals while I've had to choke down a dry Skippy snack bar, already packed and ready to go.)

I'm going to take some individual servings of apple sauce and maybe pudding.  I'm going to the store tomorrow to figure out what else I need.  (Besides whiskey and club soda.) 

Any suggestions?

DEATH to Bunnies!!!

(You might not want to read this entry, Rae....)

I have had it!!! Three times I’ve planted beans next to our (EXTEMELY EXPENSIVE) arbor. The one we bought to nurture our two fledgling clematis plants. We thought Frank’s clematis had died of natural causes, but it turns out it, and mine, were viciously BITTEN!!! I know this because my little guy started to climb for a second time, only to be cut down once again by rodent teeth!!!!--just like the tiny pole bean seedlings I’ve been nurturing. Not once, not twice, but THREE times I planted beans in that same spot and they’ve been munched for lunch.

I figured once the beans started to climb they’d be safe, but no. Mr. Savage Bunny struck just hours after I’d lovingly stroked my struggling little plants.

Now, it’s all out war! Okay, I don’t have a gun. I don’t even have a baseball bat to beat their furry little rodent heads in. But I do have the power of Mr. Stick! Mr. Stick and his many siblings!

My folks have always surrounded their bean seedlings with artfully woven stick fortresses so that Mr. and Mrs. Bunny cannot get at the tiny tender seedlings. I didn’t think I’d need them here in the suburbs. (Yes, I was in serious denial.)  Nothing nibbled last year’s crop (which was nearly destroyed by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina--but that’s another story). Sure the rural bunnies out in Wayne County have always made a fine meal out of the seedlings at the cottage, and I’ve dutifully put sticks out to protect those little guys. But once the beans started to climb the fence the rural bunnies seemed to lose interest in the beans.

Not so their suburban cousins.

Well, no more Mrs. Nice Person! Not only did I put a few sticks out there--I but an excrement-load of sticks out there to thwart those nefarious bunnies! It will have to be a microscopic bunny to can get near to my beautiful bean crop!

I shall keep you posted....