S is for Sunset Vegetarian Cookbook

 

The real title of today's keeper selection is: Sunset Menus & Recipes for Vegetarian Cooking; Entertaining Specialties, International Favorites. But to keep life simple, I just call  it the "Sunset Vegetarian Book."

It's the only cookbook I own, and I've had it for years and years. I don't think there's a recipe  in it that I haven't changed, altered, substituted, rewritten . . . whatever works, right? After all, you can't really go wrong with vegetables! 

But the real reason I've kept the book so long is for a recipe that isn't even part of the book. Instead, it's one I've handwritten onto the inside front cover, and its a recipe I do follow (pretty much) to the letter. And that is for:

THE COLONEL'S MUESLI!

This is a recipe I got from my late father-in-law, a larger-than-life character straight from the pages of any runaway bestseller of a novel. Heck, they could make an entire mini-series from his life: hunting tigers in India for his 21st birthday (yes, yes--it was a different world back then); fighting with distinction in the second World War and being highly honored for his service; continuing to serve in Libya and Malaysia (where he took my husband and his siblings into the Malaysian jungle to meet with headhunters) . . . 

Eventually he moved to New Zealand where he became a strict vegetarian, one of the reasons he could go on yearly European skiing vacations well into his eighties. (He was also very kind to cats of all shapes and sizes.)

One of his daily rituals was to eat a bowl of his own homemade muesli every morning. He gave me the recipe when he was staying with my husband and me in California one year, and I wasn't able to find ANY kind of muesli for him to eat. I could find Fruit Loops, Coco Pops, cornflakes--but noooo muesli. 

After searching every store in my area, I realized I was going to need help and just make some myself, hence the need for a recipe. The Colonel scribbled one down for me, and guess what? It was so good, I've continued making it to this day:

The Colonel’s Muesli

4 cups of oatmeal

3 cups of bran

3 cups of wheatgerm

1½ cups coconut

1 cup brown sugar

½ cup sesame seed

1 cup stoneground wheat flour

2/3 cup honey

1/3 cup vegetable oil

Melt the oil and honey together in a saucepan over low heat. 

Mix the remaining ingredients in a deep oven-proof casserole dish. 

Add the honey and oil. Stir well.

Bake at 350 degrees for half an hour, checking occasionally, 

stirring to rotate the ingredients.  

When cool, place into a large lidded container.

 Lastly, add 1-2 bags of your favorite trail mix. (You have to open the lid for this.)

Note: be careful not to overcook. This isn't granola

so you don't want it too dark or crunchy.

"Lightly-toasted" is what you're going for.

And there you are! Now just keep an eye out for those tigers . . . 

R is for River Bones

Mary Deal is one of my favorite authors. I own four of her books, all keepers, but the only one that starts with "R" is River Bones, so that's the title I'm featuring today. River Bones is an exciting page-turner of a mystery set in California's Sacramento River Delta area.

It has a bone-chilling book trailer:

And I want to re-read it RIGHT NOW! Except I can't. I'm at work.

One of the main reasons I enjoy Mary's work so much is her voice. When I read (and re-read) her books, it's hard to remember I'm reading about fictional characters. Instead, all of her story people feel like real people to me--people I'd like to invite to dinner one day--well, the good guys, at least! Mary is an expert at portraying villains, and I would never want to know any of them in person.

Exactly four years ago (almost to the day, where does the time go??) I wrote a post about Mary's book, The Tropics. Since then, Mary has come out with a completely new version of that book, titled Legacy of the Tropics, available on Kindle. Whichever version you read, though, I think that first post sums up my thoughts on River Bones, too.

Mary also teaches writing, and she has a great website full of excellent tips for writers at all stages of their careers. For more on Mary and her books, plus invaluable writing info, please check out writeanygenre.com. 

In the meantime, I hope your week is off to a great start and you've been inspired to start searching through all your own bookshelves, discovering which are keepers and what titles you might want to pass on to friends of the library. See you tomorrow with the letter "S"!

Q is for Quick & Clever Drawing

Street Scene, Barcelona

Participating in the A-Z Blogging Challenge has been fun, no two ways about it--but it's also been very, very time consuming. I've had to give up a few of my daily routines and practices, and one of these has been sitting down to draw or paint every day. Which is why it's good to have a nifty keeper book like Quick & Clever Drawing by Michael Sanders.

I haven't owned the book for more than a year, but it's been a handy reference guide for when I'm feeling lost and falling behind in my artwork, like right now. Originally, I purchased the book to help me gain some pointers with my travel journal and sketchbook when I went to Barcelona last summer (oh, no, not Barcelona again, I can hear you thinking. Apologies for bringing it up so often, but it's a very interesting place!).

La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

But back to Quick & Creative Drawing. Basically, the book encourages artists at all levels to just go for it. My favorite quote from page 5 is: "Drawing is simply making marks on paper." Yay! That's the spirit!

Sanders encourages his readers to keep those initial "marks on paper" simple and uncluttered, in other words, be quick; be clever--e.g., if you need to use a cardboard template to get the angle of a roof right, don't be shy, go get the scissors. And be very willing and open to "make mistakes" while you're experimenting. As he also states, rather than tell yourself, "I can't draw," say, "I can LEARN to draw."

Good advice--and what we all need to keep in mind about every creative endeavor we pursue, whether it's painting, writing, or learning to sew. And because it's the weekend and we get Sunday off from the challenge, I'm setting aside everything else in my life to grab my paper and pencils and go learn some more drawing tips. See you on Monday, and have a wonderful weekend. Eat chocolate!

P is for Past Recall

Happy Friday! Today's keeper book is Past Recall, When Love and Wisdom Transcend Time, a time-traveling, paranormal romance set in the south of France by author Nita Hughes:

Past Recall was published as an indie book before it was cool to publish an indie book, and has always been an inspiring and fascinating book for me to read. I met Nita through my writer’s group back in Carrollton, Georgia, and the most exciting thing I remember from that meeting was Nita’s deep love and dedication to her theme and subject of the Cathars, a small but powerful movement throughout southern Europe; people who were considered heretics by the Catholic Church. The Cathars were the victims of the only Crusade into Europe, with thousands of people killed and tortured as a result, culminating in the final destruction of the sect.

When Nita was ready to publish her book, I had the privilege of writing a short blurb for the back cover. I wrote: “A haunting blend of metaphysics and historical romance at its best. Past Recall is filled with rich characterization and a great sense of style.” Still rings true for me today!

Nita is a wonderful writer, with a special gift for bringing her characters and settings to life. Her high-tension storytelling combined with spirituality and historical information is particularly impressive. I thoroughly enjoyed Past Recall when it was published, and I enjoy it to this day. A sequel, The Cathar Legacy, is equally compelling, and it shares keeper shelf-space right next to PR.  

A few years ago I asked Nita some questions for my blog just before she was about to leave for France to teach a writing workshop in Cathar country: 

Q. When did you first decide to become a writer?
A. I always loved to write since age 4, holding a pencil. And to speak-- communicating, stirring passions and prompting thought via words seemed miraculous.

Q. How did you become interested in the Cathars?
A. Cathar interest hit me out of the blue, literally, as I sat in the corner on a stool in a Melbourne bookstore, perusing books to buy. A book fell above me, landing in my lap, and opened to Cathars. Never heard of them and from that moment felt duty bound to bring them back to life.

Q. Do you have a writing schedule and if so, what is it?
A. 3 hours-between breakfast and lunch.

Q. What is your favorite book?
A. Many, but loved Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera (heavy on passions and magic realism).

Q. Any writing advice to share?
A. Write from your passion(s) –whether fiction or non-fiction.

Nita’s advice is invaluable. Are you writing from your passion?  

Altogether Nita has published three books, with Safe Haven, a romantic thriller set in the Philippines, being her most recent. To learn more about Nita and her books, please visit NitaHughes.com. See you tomorrow!

O is for Overtaken--and a Free Giveaway

My recent novel, Overtaken, is a keeper because--I wrote it! Better yet, I want you to have a copy too! 

From now until the end of the 2014 A-Z Challenge on April 30, all you have to do is leave a comment on any of my posts and you'll be entered into a random drawing on May 1, 2014 to win your very own copy. This goes for everyone who's already commented on earlier posts as well. And if you're a follower of my blog who leaves a comment, it gets even better--I'll throw in a bonus prize! This is to thank all of you wonderful people for taking the time to visit, comment, and join. "O" is for overjoyed to meet you!

In the meantime, here's a little more about the book: Published in 2012, Overtaken is a literary Gothic fairy tale centering on Sara Elliott Bergsen, a portrait artist living in London. You can watch the book trailer here, and get some idea of the story settings from my Pinterest board here. 

I started writing the book as part of an exercise in a workshop I took at the International Women's Writing Guild Summer Conference at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. We were meant to try a visualization process to invite a story in that we could write about. We closed our eyes, sat in deep silence and meditation, and asked a character to visit us. That's when Sara appeared, climbing the stone steps to a mysterious mansion, on her way to being . . . Overtaken. I was equally overtaken, and for the next several years I wrote every day in my spare time to find out what happened to Sara and why she was at the mansion in the first place. I was as surprised at what I found as she was.

Now Sara and her story are so much a part of my life I can't think of what my world would be without her. One of the strangest things about writing, to me, is how our characters become real--imaginary friends that change our lives as much as we create theirs. What is real, what is illusion?, the exact dilemma Sara faces throughout the book, and questions I still love to explore.

How about you? Looking forward to hearing from you so we can discuss these questions together! See you tomorrow with the letter "P."

N is for The Natural House Book

It's been one of those days: up out of bed as early as possible, speed shower, quick trip to a French bakery to buy a pastry and latte, get to work to be greeted with a stack of typing, rush to Home Depot to buy paint for the bathroom so my husband can paint the bathroom tonight, followed by a trip to the post office--which turns out to be closed--then home for a late lunch, back to the post office, now open, but I have so many foreign parcels to mail that when I get to the counter the people in the line behind me are sighing and groaning and tapping their feet, off to the grocery store because I haven't been in two weeks and we are living on pastry and latte, get home with badly packed groceries, and there is a giant cockroach in the middle of my living room. 

And of course I haven't blogged yet.  I'd rather be reading.

Which is why The Natural House Book, Creating a Healthy, Harmonious, and Ecologically Sound Home Environment by David Pearson is a little oasis of sanity in a busy, hectic, crazy world. My copy is a bit on the old side, 1989, and there have been more recent editions published, but I'm happy with the one I have. The book was gifted to me in the mid-90s by a lovely friend on the eve of her move to Maui when she was clearing the last of her own bookshelves. I was delighted to receive it, especially as my husband and I were in the middle of building a tiny little house and workspace in the Georgia countryside, and we needed all the help we could get.

The Natural House book has stayed with me ever since we built that house, lived in it very happily, added on to it, sold it, and then moved to Albuquerque where we have since moved three more times already. What I love about it in particular is it's sincere naturalness. All the photos are of real houses for real people with sweet, uncluttered rooms of airy grace and personal idiosyncrasy--exactly the type of house I try to create for myself. The book belongs to a time and mindset where people didn't enter a home and wail, "No granite countertops?? I can't LIVE without stainless steel! Oh, my God, CARPET! Tear it out before I vomit!"

Instead, the book illustrates and suggests ways to make your home fresh and charming on the smallest of budgets: white curtains, house plants, baskets, minimal inexpensive furniture, and lots of open windows to let the breeze in and the day's woes out. If there's any kind of "message" in the text, it's simply this: seven bathrooms and an industrial kitchen do not a home make. A happy home can be as small as a yert and as plain as a white-washed room. It really is the thought that counts.

So on that thought I'm off to put up my feet, have a glass of white wine, and finish reading Daughter of Smoke & Bone. Oh, and if you're wondering about the cockroach, I captured him with a piece of cardboard and put him in the back yard. I'm sure he has a home to go to somewhere.
 

 

M is for Masquerade in Venice

My favorite romance novel, Masquerade in Venice, written by Velda Johnston, copyright 1973,  is a keeper because it inspired me to join up and write my first NaNoWriMo manuscript. I still have that draft, and one day I might even clean it up and submit it somewhere, but for now it's fine "resting" in my filing cabinet. I'm not a romance writer, but it's nice to dream.

I first came across this sweet and lovely book one winter when I had the flu but was just well enough to go to the library for some much-needed reading material. I'd been in bed for days and had been too sick to read anyway, but I was at the point where the only thing I had energy for was reading, so off to the library I went. Except when I got there, nothing appealed to me. 

Rows and rows of new books and all I could say was, "Bleh." Then I saw an old-fashioned, plain blue "library bound" copy of Masquerade in Venice and knew this was exactly what I wanted. I took it home, read it, and loved every word. Then I had to give it back. (The big problem with library books, in my opinion!) A few months later, I wanted to read it again, and when I went to the library--it wasn't there! No one knew what had happened to it--it was gone. Stolen, lost, vanished into the ether. It no longer existed. Time passed and something worse happened: I forgot both the name of the author as well as the title, so I couldn't even buy a copy. I gave up.

Then one fortuitous day at a writer's group meeting, the group was holding a second-hand book sale, and bingo, there it was in paperback: Masquerade in Venice. My book! Mine, mine, mine. The original price printed on the cover was $1.25 and I got it for .25 cents. Good deal? You bet.

It had been a few years since I'd read it, and it was a joy to re-read. Then a good friend suggested we sign up for NaNoWriMo and I thought, if I could write a book like Masquerade in Venice, that would be time well-spent. And it was, even if the one thing I learned was that I'm not a romance writer. Which is okay. We can't write in every genre, but it's good to explore, learn, and discover what is, and is not, our true calling. The key is to have the courage to take the journey: nothing ventured, nothing gained. Seeing Masquerade in Venice on my keeper shelf reminds me of that maxim every day. 

How about you? What book(s) keep you on the journey? Let me know, and I'll see you tomorrow with the letter "N."