Author: jelliotthhp
It’s easy to get distracted.It’s a Haint Blue Christmas!
Haint Blue needs a vacation. It looks like she’ll be alone for Christmas. Her relationship with Buster is in limbo. Why not slip off to the beach? She can almost taste the fish tacos and fried shrimp. But before she can make a motel reservation, psychic Aunt Moira calls. “I had a vivid dream this morning. There was a bright Christmas tree…children laughing…an empty deep freezer in a garage. You were wringing your hands in a red apron. Some weird nursery rhyme repeated ‘the larder was bare’. The dream tells me that you need to stock your pantry; you’re going to be a busy hostess this Christmas. Get your holiday cookbooks out, Sweetheart.”
Surely not.
As the 25th approaches, the phone calls begin.
“Haint? This is Yolanda, from Paco’s. Our restaurant stove–something is wrong. It’s gas. Sometimes it works and then suddenly nada. Sometimes I swear I smell gas. I’m not going to play with gas. I’m afraid of gas. We were wondering if you had a few cabins?”
“Haint? Max. Listen, my sister Nellavon thinks I’m dying. She’s got this hairbrained notion to get the family together. I can’t talk her out of it. I know business has been slow, and I was wondering, you gonna be open for the holidays?”
“We’re travelling with rescue alpacas… do you have space to exercise them?”
“We’re the Lame Brain Zombie LARPers…party of seven, do you have a cabin?”
“My client wants privacy.”
The calls keep coming. And odd little gifts keeping showing up and disappearing. What’s that about?
As the retreat fills to capacity, strangers become family for a Haint Blue Christmas.
Looking for a funny, feel-good holiday romp with a bit of mystery? This is the one.
Now available in paperback in full color (it’s chock full of pictures) or black and white and as an eBook.
Kindle book is free with Amazon unlimited:
Roasted Peppers with Sausage, Pineapple and Couscous
When I was little, I hated peppers. I could tolerate them chopped really small in spaghetti sauce, but a stuffed pepper? No way. Fortunately, taste buds can change. First it was thin slices on pizza, bits in omelets… and now I’m writing a recipe for roasted peppers.
This is not a vegetarian recipe as I’m (yes, pun intended) hog-wild for Jimmy Dean sausage, especially SAGE. But don’t run off, I’m sure you can substitute just about anything that behaves like sausage.
Preheat the oven to around 385 degrees. Wash the peppers, and with a sharp knife cut the tops off and then cut the stems out so each pepper is a little container with a hat with a hole at the top. Clean out the seeds. Set the peppers into a glass baking pan. They should have some wiggle room but be sitting up straight.
Put a couple pineapple chunks into the bottom of each pepper.
Note: I pulled the sausage out for the photo shoot, it’s still frozen. You’ll want it thawed and soft. For four peppers, I used a little less than half of the sausage–it’ll depend on how many peppers you are cooking and how big they are.
Cut an end off the sausage and squeeze/spoon out sausage into each pepper.
Add another pineapple or two on top of each — you’ll want the peppers to be about 3/4 full–save room to add the couscous later.
Put the tops on the peppers, drizzle with oil enough so they won’t dry out and the bottoms won’t burn. Bake in oven for about 40 minutes or until they look mostly cooked and the tops are a tad brown.
Meanwhile, cook your couscous following the package directions.
When the peppers are done-ish, pull them out, pull the hats off, and spoon in some couscous. You can stir carefully so the sausage and couscous are blended in the pepper. You might add another pineapple on top to peak out of the hat. This’ll keep it from getting dry and adds color.
Option: cover with a sheet of aluminum foil, especially if your oven runs hot. You want the sausage fully cooked but don’t want to burn the peppers. Bake for another 12ish minutes.
Serve over a bed of couscous.
Polish Borscht (Barszcz) Beet Borscht
https://www.facebook.com/anetabistro/
Visited Aneta’s Bistro in Ocala recently — best borscht ever! I’d never attempted borscht before, so I was excited to give it a go. I don’t know Aneta’s recipe, but it had a bit of vinegar to it. In recent, years, I’ve gotten addicted to the local specialty oil and vinegar shops where you can sample a wide assortment of flavored oils and vinegars… and hello, there’s a chocolate vinegar– lovely with fruit salads…
So I found a recipe for borscht in a lovely picture/recipe book called “from borshch to blinis: Traditional Cooking from Russia and Poland” by Catherine Atkinson, contributing editor, Lesley Chamberlain.
I modified the basic ingredients a little as I’m not wild about celery or parsley, but here is the original list of ingredients, to which I would add chocolate vinegar. (2 teaspoons) I did have celery salt on hand, (weird I like that more than celery, suspect it’s a remnant from my mother’s Bloody Mary days…) so I added celery salt.
I followed the instructions and the result was tasty but not quite right. Now, I did have more than 2 pounds of beets, I’m sure. For lunch the next day, I poured the leftovers into a blender until it was smooth. This did the trick! The flavors were blended nicely. It was so good, I didn’t even heat it up, it was lovely chilled!
Paranormals (2014)
Director: Evan Falbaum
Stars: Daniel Lachman, Kemerton Hargrove Jr., Mitch Landry
A charming bromance movie about Adam and Thomas, two best friends who’ve been ghost hunting together since childhood. As they enter adulthood, Thomas gets a “real job” at an office in Dallas with a double cubicle and his own little computer. Adam must find a new partner if he is going to start a ghost hunting business. But Adam’s new partner is a shady con artist and Thomas’s success is thwarted by an adversary in the office.
This isn’t a scary movie at all, so if you’re looking for a scare, this isn’t it. The film has the pace and indie feel of the series The Detectorists and one of my favorite films Safety Not Guaranteed. I recommend it for its originality and quirkiness. And if you work in a tedious job with a cubicle and a copier that seems to malfunction with regularity, this is a must see.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2018)
The book of the same name by Shirley Jackson, is one of my all-time favorites, and this film captures the feel of the book well. A common theme in Jackson’s work is the sense that “polite society” is just a thin veneer of gentility with an underbelly seething with judgement, hostility, and menace. At a glance, the two sisters seem peculiar but how did they get that way? Are they the frightening ones?
As a largish woman with red hair and glasses, Jackson did not align herself with the June Cleevers of the world or a society in which women were not expected to have intelligence and were expected to host cocktail parties to promote their husbands, enjoy housework and raise children.
This novel and film focus on two sisters, who live in a rambling mansion with their mentally-impaired uncle Julian. The rest of their family died in a poisoning accident at dinner. The older sister was the main suspect. Though she was acquitted–apparently along the lines of “a nice girl like that could never do such a thing” –the townspeople regards the two girls with fear and suspicion.
Mary Catherine, aka “Merricat” must foray into town once a week for food. As a nervous introvert, she dreads these encounters with the outside world. Her sister Constance and uncle Julian never leave the house.
When an estranged cousin arrives to “help”, he upsets the harmonious dynamic of the household. Constance, portrayed in the film as a Barbie-esque product of the 50’s, a submissive woman who will look to a male figure for guidance and smile her way through any unpleasantness and only see the good in people, welcomes him into their home. Merricat sees through his charming façade. A self-made witch, she works charms to protect them from his insinuating presence. Charles is strong. Merricat feels him turning her beloved Constance against her. Unlike her pliant sister, Merricat will fight back with all she’s got.
The film follows the novel well but took a liberty with the ending regarding cousin Charles. A pity that Shirley Jackson is no longer with us to interview regarding this departure from her story. Personally, I think it works logically and adds some tension cinematically though it does change the yin/yang dynamic between the male and female characters.
Trailer:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5952138/videoplayer/vi256359705?ref_=tt_ov_vi
Fun with Chocolate and It’s Sort of Healthy Too!
My favorite new thing:
I like hummus anyway, but THIS is the bomb, chocolate lovers! And dark chocolate has antioxidants, they say, right? I LOVE sweet potatoes, and this is a pretty nifty combo! The hummus is a bit pricey, so that limits the options somewhat, like I’m sure it’d be great swirled into a sweet potato pie and I might experiment with that.
Ooh… I tried a bacon, chocolate hummus and peanut butter sandwich today… was in a rush, didn’t get a photo, but that was mighty tasty too… kind of an Elvis sandwich — I just needed the ‘naner’s. {Elvis was fond of peanut butter and banana}.
Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)
This is not a supernatural film as you might expect; it’s a psychological thriller about a devoted husband, Billy Savage married to an unstable wife, Myra. She believes she can channel the spirit of her dead child. To validate her claims to be a powerful medium, She coerces her husband to kidnap a child. She will then help the family and the police to recover the child and thus validate her claim as powerful medium. Outstanding performances by Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough and a satisfying conclusion make this well worth watching. And for film buffs, a great study in music, atmosphere and camera work.
This is an old-school style gem that without relying on any gimmicks, computer graphics or special effects, is very effective.
More info on Internet Movie Database: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058557/?ref_=ttmi_ttWarren William (1894-1948)
I must confess that I watched Bel Ami and got Warren William and George Sanders mixed up… they look kind of similar. I first became aware of WW in two Lone Wolf movies… he’s suave, charming, and a bit of a cad to his love interest in much the same way that The Thin Man often led the lovely Nora down a wrong path to get her out of the way. Just got a Lone Wolf movie set — very excited!
Here’s a link to a nifty biography with some photos: https://warrenwilliam.com/biography/
Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947)
There are multiple movie versions of Bel Ami, based on the story by Guy de Maupassant, one of my favorite writers, but THIS one happens to have a young Angela Lansbury as the lovelorn Clothilde, and George Sanders as the status-and-power craving Bel Ami. Looking both handsome and a bit Snidely Whiplash, eh?
and one of my favorite actors of the era, Warren William in a small role as Laroche-Mathieu.
The plot is straightforward: Bel Ami moves himself up the social ladder by marriage and deceit. Callous and plotting to the point of psychopathy, he is loved faithfully by Clothilde. She sees his villainy and calls him out for it. His downfall (not a spoiler, we know it’s coming) arises when he attempts to buy what he believes is an available title of an aristocratic family. As noted in the plot synopsis on the Internet Movie Database page, “The moral, at the end, is it is okay to mess with French women, but trifling with French titles is going too far.”
Credit: Les Adams: <a href="http://http://<longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Haint's Retreat 