Month: February 2020

Somehow my mind refuses to accept that Maxwell House is the end-all, be-all for coffee, but I loved this story about Tom Petty and brewing the perfect cup.

This story is about a granddaughter uncovering her Jewish grandmother’s past is haunting.  (And was compelling enough that I put in a request at my library to order the author’s book when it comes out.)

I actually have my rubber ducky from childhood (and live in constant threat that my younger cousin is going to break into my house and liberate it.)  Funny to think that Ernie’s iconic song about his bathtime buddy is 50 years old.

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Listening: Tom Petty left us too soon:

Reading: Thirteen books later, I’ve finished Chloe Neill’s Chicagoland Vampires series.  And it was goooooooood.

Writing Life: I’m gonna use this GIF again! As I mentioned before, I’m working towards an April 1st deadline.  And as prepared as I feel that my Work-In-Progress (WIP) is, I’m still doing some last minute tinkering.  I’ve established a reasonable (tho admittedly aggressive) schedule to get me to my deadline and I’m crushing it. 🙂

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What is Friday Fare? As a recap, on Fridays I post link love to the various bits of arcane shiz I discover on the Interwebs.  I liken it to a glimpse into my mind, but without the 80s song lyrics or mental cobwebs.

I’m hoping that this Friday finds you well!  I’m taking a bit of a mom vacation overnight.  Up to a 1990s dance party with my BFF from high school (she’s already assured me that her other mom friends are going to adore me) and then coffee with a fellow writer on Saturday.

I got to have a fun adventure earlier this week … some writer friends and I went to our local “micro-cinema” and watched a vintage Mary Pickford silent film.  This was my first time watching a silent film and I sincerely hope it isn’t my last.  It takes a different level of concentration to read the body language as the actors tell a story … it was so fun. And PS – Happy book birthday to Meg Hafdahl (center in picture below) and Kelly Florence for The Science of Women in Horror!

So proud to see my friend Jessica Laine featured in Bolo Books!

I finally found a cornbread recipe that’s a “go-to.” Here’s another recipe that I’ve made a few times in the past that’s also a good “reminiscent of spring” recipe.

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Listening: I had lunch with a dear friend the other day and happened to cruise past a country music station that was playing “the classics.”  Usually when you say “classic”, my mind goes to the holy trinity known as Waylon, Willie, and Johnny, but they were playing 1990s country music which is its own sweet vintage.  I wasn’t sad to rediscover this wonderful voice:

Reading: I am still going strong with Chloe Neill and her Chicagoland Vampires. So good.

Writing Life: I’ve used this GIF before, but it’s still accurate:

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What is Friday Fare? As a recap, on Fridays I post link love to the various bits of arcane shiz I discover on the Interwebs.  I liken it to a glimpse into my mind, but without the 80s song lyrics or mental cobwebs.

I’m just ducking in here to wish folks a Happy Valentine’s Day!  I’m something of a romantic – I adore chocolate and flowers, but considering that my husband and I are in the thick of parenting small kiddos, I’m content and geekily excited about the heart-shaped cake pan I recently bought and that we’ll be eating heart-shaped pizza tonight for our dinner. (And I would like some praise for actually having my kids’ class Valentines done WELL in advance of the due date, versus my usual night-before rush.) Here’s the cake that I may be making.  And here are the cookies that I wanted to make, but am holding off on until I know that I’m going to see friends.  I may have done a great job of getting my kids’ Valentines squared away in record time, but I have almost zero self-control when it comes to cookies in my household.

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Reading: I recently discovered Chloe Neill and her Vampires of Chicagoland series.  Oooof.  I don’t know why I love vampires as much as I do, but man these books are devour-able and binge worthy.

Writing Life: Slow but steady …

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What is Friday Fare? As a recap, on Fridays I post link love to the various bits of arcane shiz I discover on the Interwebs.  I liken it to a glimpse into my mind, but without the 80s song lyrics or mental cobwebs.

Well, February seems like as good of a time as any to start writing Friday Fare. 🙂 I still have an “Annual Review” sketched out that takes a look at the good, the bad, and fugly of 2019, but in the meantime – the mental break I took from blogging last month was a good one.  So without further ado, here’s what’s been going on in the weird and random:

I think my love for libraries is pretty well known.  There’s the fact that there are THOUSANDS of books on shelves (and now in eBook form) that are free for people to borrow.  And then there are librarians – the keepers of information (and often the wonderful people who are making sure that my hellions aren’t totally destroying the children’s section of the library). So when my friend Brenda asked if I’d volunteer at the Rochester Public Library Foundation’s Wit, Wisdom & Wine, my answer was a swift “hell yes.”

I was honored to introduce Shari Mukherjee. Mukherjee is a local Rochester-ite who made it to the Top 5 contestants of MasterChef (Season 10).  As a mom, as a cook, and as a Gordon Ramsay fan – you can imagine how exciting it was to meet her.

I also got to introduce former Congressman Tim Penny.  Penny and Mukherjee were two of several interesting guests that the library foundation had speak at this annual fundraiser.  It was just a sincere honor to attend and thrill to be asked to help.

I’m a little obsessed with Tieghan Gerard’s blog Half-Baked Harvest (and own the first of her two cookbooks). It certainly doesn’t hurt that she lives in the mountains of Colorado and that she loves soup and cookies about as much as I do.  We had a dear friend over for dinner a couple of weeks ago and I made this Creamy Wild Rice Chicken Soup with Roasted Mushrooms. And man … I was sad when that soup was gone and not ashamed that I ate the majority of its leftovers.  It’s a very simple soup that’s made in a crockpot (crockpot = an immediate win for me.) But it’s the roasted mushrooms that boot this into another dimension.  (Two pounds of mixed mushrooms roasted in an oven with garlic.  In a stick of butter.)  In fact, I actually used the roasted mushroom trick on a different soup (beef with barley) and I think I basically just want to eat butter-roasted mushrooms for the rest of my existence.

I’ve always been a fan, but here’s how Mary Engelbreit burrowed a large(r) spot in my heart.

I’m not sure what it is with the recent proliferation of articles about GenX’ers, but here’s one that gave me a chuckle.

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Reading: While I still have the Instagram app on my smartphone, I took the Facebook and Twitter apps off.  A couple of reasons … first is the amount of time that I would spend mindlessly scrolling through feeds of comments, memes, political arguments, etc.  I never bothered to calculate how much time I spent on the socials, but I’m sure that it was ridiculous.  Second – I think it’s better overall for my emotional health.  For just lots of reasons.  And while I still get pulled into wormholes of reading through news articles and Wikipedia pages regarding the Royal Family, I’ve been trying to read more books.  And I’ve already read seven books this year.  Three this past week. (There may be a reason that my eyes are kind of tired.)

Here’s the one that I’m most excited about:

There are a million reasons that I adore Tracy Clark.  I used to serve on the MWA-Midwest board with her and I can attest that she is a walking master class in critiquing.  And if we would have gone to high school together, I’d want to sit at her cool kids table.  She’s just sincerely a wonderful person.  And she’s one HELL of a writer.  And I totally bargained a batch of homemade cookies to get my hands on an Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) of What You Don’t See (coming out on May 26, 2020). This is the third book in a series and her PI is a finely drawn character.  You can find my review here on Goodreads.

Writing Life: I am polishing Dragonfly for submission to this contest. Due April 1st and making good progress towards that goal.

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What is Friday Fare? As a recap, on Fridays I post link love to the various bits of arcane shiz I discover on the Interwebs.  I liken it to a glimpse into my mind, but without the 80s song lyrics or mental cobwebs.