From My Pinterest Recipe Board: Tried It & Liked It

Moroccan Meatball Stew. So yummy!

I love Middle Eastern food and Moroccan food. When I saw this recipe on Pinterest, I knew I had to try it.

Moroccan Meatball Stew with a Christine Twist

Serves 4 - 6

Soak together:

• 1/2 cup bread crumbs (I used Planko crumbs)
• 1/4 cup milk (I used skim milk)

Add:

• 2 lbs ground lamb (or beef)--I used Costco's ground turkey
  
  
• 1 tsp dry oregano
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 beaten egg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Turkey Plops--Note the missing Plop. Feline naughtiness.

Mix well and form into 1 1/2 inch balls. Fry the meatballs in in olive oil to brown on all sides. Remove meatballs to a covered, oven safe pan.

Note:  I didn't make balls, the turkey was too soft. Plus I decided to bake the meat rather than fry it. So I basically had to drop plops of the turkey onto a lightly oil sprayed cookie sheet. I baked them for 35 minutes at 350 degrees, the brought them out to cool. Only one went missing because a naughty cat likes spicy food, too. Who knew?

Then I took my Dutch oven and put a little olive oil into it and cooked the following ingredients.

• 1 diced carrot
• 1 stalk diced celery
• 4 cloves chopped garlic
• 1 diced red onion



Cooking the veggies. 

• 
  

Saute together until the onions soften, then add this mixture to the pan with the meatballs along with:

• 6 cups diced canned tomatoes
• 3/4 cup currents -- my local Alabama grocery store didn't have currents, so I got golden raisins and regular raisins instead. Still yummy, but would love to have currents in my pantry.
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground cardamom
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 small red chile minced or 1 tbsp chili paste
• 2 tbsp brown sugar



All the delicious ingredients combined. 

• salt and pepper to season

Place in a 350 degree oven, covered for about and hour, then add:

• 2 cups cooked or canned chickpeas, rinsed

Return to the oven for an additional hour at 325 degrees F. In the last 10 minutes of cooking time you can add:

• 1 cup olives (optional) I left out the olives. I didn't think they were necessary and might have overpowered the meal. Had I added olives, I would have added black pitted ones.

Serve over couscous.

I LOVED this recipe. So aromatic and delicious. And really easy to make. I might try to make it with lamb next time, but I liked the ground turkey plops just fine. Hope you try it and while you're waiting for the stew to cook through, check out my heroes on my Pinterest board here.

From My Pinterest Recipe Board: Tried It & Liked It

The Physicist and I are on a "life transformation" plan. This means we're trying a lot of new recipes, eating less red meat, and exercising more. I wish I could say the pounds are sliding off, but they aren't. However, I feel so much better and part of the reason is the great new recipes I've found and tried on Pinterest.

Here's recipe I pinned on my recipe board that was wonderfully created by the Shugary Sweets blog.

Santa Fe Peppers

Ingredients

3/4 lb ground turkey breast (I used a pound and it came from the 4 pack at COSTCO--love it!)

1 1/2 Tbsp. cumin

1 tsp. salt (optional)

I can (28 oz) Crushed Peppers

1 can (15.25 oz) black beans, rinsed and drained

1 can (15.5 oz) sweet corn, rinsed and drained

3 cups Jasmine Rice cooked (I made 2 cups brown rice and only used 1 cup)

8 fresh Sweet Red Peppers (I had the 6 pepper multi-colored red/yellow/orange pack from COSTCO and they were awesome--had leftover stuffing)

1 cup reduced fat Colby Jack cheese (I used reduced fat Mexican blend cheese shredded)

2 green onions, sliced

Instructions/Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

1. Wash peppers and slice the tops of each pepper, remove the seeds. Stand each pepper up next to each other in a large baking dish (13x9 if you have 8--slightly smaller if you have 6)

2. In a large skillet brown ground turkey until fully cooked, drain and return to skillet. Add cumin, salt, tomatoes, black beans and corn. Simmer about 15 minutes.

3. Meanwhile cook rice (I cooked mine first--it would also be a great way to use leftover rice).

4. Add cooked rice to skillet (start with a half cup and go from there--this recipe makes loads of filling) and combine completely. Remove from heat and fill each pepper with the mixture. Cover dish with foil and bake for about 40-45 minutes. Remove foil and top with cheese. Bake an additional five minutes until melted. Remove from oven and sprinkle with green onion pieces. Serve and enjoy.

Man, y'all this stuffed pepper recipe was A HUGE HIT and I absolutely will make it again. I think it is good for when company's coming and it's easy on the wallet. Give it a try and let me know what you think about it. And check out the Shugary Sweets blog for more recipes. This gal can cook!!

Oh, and after you're finished eating this yummy meal, come see me on Pinterest and check out my favorite heroes and heroines over here.

I Hope You Dance

If you've been following me on Twitter or Facebook, you'll know a bit of this past weekend's romp. The Physicist and I played hooky from life and drove to Chattanooga. We'd booked a hotel, THE CHATTANOOGAN via a Groupon for only $79 versus the regular night cost of $179. We weren't sure what to expect, but when we arrived, we were very pleased with our choice.

The hotel's lobby was beautiful and well lit with a double glass see through fire place. The front desk and service when we checked in was top notch. And the best part was that we were told about a Date Night Special. We booked a reservation, then went out to explore the area around the Aquarium and eat lunch. We walked a lot, ate Mediterranean food, and explored the bluff artist district. Then we rode the free shuttle back to the hotel and chilled out. We both needed it. We've been dealing with a lot of external stressors since before Christmas and the Physicist had been overseas on a stressful test run of systems which kept him busy for 3.5 weeks. (That's when I truly become feral and give up on wearing makeup. You can read about that here.)

After we lounged around and did NOTHING for a couple of hours, we went down to eat our dinner. Date Night Dinner for 2, 4 courses, a bottle of GOOD wine (Francis Coppola) for only $65. Can't beat that price. Though I'm usually leery about the menu choices in a fixed price meal, this menu didn't disappoint. We had 4 choices of appetizers, 4 choices of salads, 4 choices of entrees and a flight of shot glass filled dessert bites afterward. The wine was a very good Cabernet, but if we had wanted, we could have had a wonderful white wine.

We ordered two different appetizers: duck and a bison meat loaf slider and shared them. They were excellent. Then we ordered our salads which were well, you know, salad. Then we had very good sirloin steaks with excellent side dishes. The steaks were thick, cooked to perfection, and delicious. Dessert was decent. And just right to cap off the dinner. And the wine was worth the meal cost alone. And the service was top notch. Our waiter was gracious and accommodating.

They do this EVERY WEEKEND!! Talk about a steal of a deal.

After dinner, we went to the hotel's martini/speciality drink bar. The FOUNDRY. A jazz group & singer played music while we sipped on designer drinks which were very reasonably priced. And then we danced. Yup. We danced and we had fun and the little floor filled up and it felt so right. You know after all these years of marriage, there just aren't many places to go where we can dance unless someone gets married. And then the mix of music can be iffy. But this was our music, our generation, our time. And we had a blast.

Time slipped and we were young again. Still crazy in love. Still wanting to dance. And still not caring what anyone thought about our movin' and groovin' on the dance floor.

And that's what makes my personal romance world a little brighter. When you are out and about with your personal hero, I hope you still want to dance.

What brings back the romance in your life?

Real Men Don't Act Like Book Heroes

I was watching a television show a few weeks ago when my darling husband sat down in his Archie Bunker chair and whipped out his TOENAIL CLIPPERS. I sat, dumbfounded, as he proceeded to carefully clip his toenails and place them in a nice little pile on the table next to his red chair.

Note to future guests: I do clean on a regular basis so all toenail clippings have been removed.

My reaction was sheer and utter amazed grossed out disgust. I believe I screamed. I was horrified. To which my darling husband said, "You are overreacting and ridiculous. This is not a big deal." Now he might have meant to say, "I'm sorry for grossing you out. Thank you for pointing out to me that this habit is horrifying. I will never do it again." However, I was so freaked out I just googled disgusting habits of husbands on my laptop and sent him link after link of other wives who were equally freaked out by their husbands' sheer gross behavior in front of them.

Here are a few of the common nasty habits:

*leaving wet towels on the floor (could be a teenager's bad habit as well)
*burping
*using a fork as a back scratcher
*passing gas
*refusing to replace an empty toilet paper roll
*putting feet on furniture
*taking forever to get to the point of the conversation
*inability to read a map correctly & refusing to ask for directions
*blowing nose at the table
*flossing teeth in the living room

One consolation in discovering the myriad of complaints on the Internet was that I wasn't alone. But as a romance writer, I got to thinking about my heroes. My heroes NEVER do these things. In fact, I don't think my darling hubby did these things till after we got married. My heroes may act like Alpha men who always get their way, but I have never read about a hero in any romance book doing the things on the list I posted or in the Internet sites I found online. 

And these wives, for the most part, continue to remain married to their husbands despite their nasty habits. Another consolation, right? After all, this is real life. I'm not writing about real life. I'm writing fiction. And what woman with a husband who clips his toenails in the living room while she's trying to watch Toddlers and Tiaras wants to read a romance novel about a hero who is equally as disgusting? Can't think of one example. She wants the fantasy as much as I do. 

And that's why I write romance novels about sexy heroes with magically perfect feet that require no toenail clipping at all. 

Doghouses, Husbands and Heroes

While creating Husbands, God promised Women that good and ideal Husbands would be found in all corners of the world. And then he made the earth round.

News Flash: There's been a recent surge of husbands being kenneled in the proverbial doghouse. Perhaps it is the darkening skies, and the earlier nights, that are contributing to this problem. Or it could be the recent election results which are spurring heated debates in (no wait, that's a different news item). Or maybe football season is the culprit. Who knows? The unfortunate fact is that many husbands, good men all of them, here and all over the world are routinely sent to the doghouse. What is most disturbing is that they often don't know why they are in the doghouse. The only thing they are sure of is the knowledge of who put them in the doghouse. Their wives. Even sadder is the fact that they don't always know if they are in the doghouse or not. One husband I spoke with said he thought he was out of the doghouse because his wife was speaking to him again. However, her clipped tone and civil tongue belied the truth. He was still in the doghouse. But don't despair. Men are also guaranteed a ticket out of the doghouse for good behavior. The shape of that ticket and form of that release varies from household to household, but rest assured it will probably be impractical and beautiful. After all, husbands are really heroes. And heroes know how to fix anything: even a heroine's broken heart. Once they've learned how to do that, they've learned how to get out of the doghouse for the rest of their lives.

Silence of the Man

A real hero speaks less and acts more. True. But in our stories, our heroes have to talk a bit more than our dudes in real life. And that adds a layer of complication to writing if one is a female. Let's face it, I'm not a boy. I don't think like a boy or a man. I don't speak in one word sentences (okay, my darling husband would love it if that were true!). Yet, my heroes must say more than, "Honey, where's my last pair of clean underwear?" Or better yet, "Huh? Grunt? Pass the beer nuts. Cowboys are playing. Pass the beer."

My dudes have to be sensitive and strong. Alpha and beta rolled into one amazing, finely chiseled man who is ultra cool and looks great in jeans, tuxes, nothing at all.

As Austin Powers would say, "Yeah baby."

But this is fiction so I get to play a bit with my heroes. I can layer a bit of internal dialogue into their interactions with my heroines. So even if they aren't talking to my heroines, the reader knows that the guy really does like, want, care, have an "oh man, I am in love and now I am freaked" feeling for my heroine.

Hard to finesse. Hard to write. I usually have to run my "guy speak" through a male filter (which ironically is a female writer who knows how to write "guy speak"). I also like to sit around and listen to the dudes in the real world talk. Where can I hear what they have to say? Well, hang around a bunch of retired military men and you'll get some good intel on "guy speak." Or spend an hour at any male dominated event like a football game, a hockey game.

Go to a bar. Don't go alone. But go and sit and listen. I once spent an hour every Monday at the local Holiday Inn Express bar writing and listening. The bartenders knew me and left me alone. I was relatively safe cause the local regulars knew I was married and had shown up there with my darling husband on occasion. Why? Well, it was close to my darling daughter's dance studio. I'd rather sit in a bar filled with business travelers and grizzled construction workers than at a dance studio with a bunch of moms discussing their daughters' varying dance talents.

But that's just me. Plus, I got to drink a glass of wine. All good. And all in the name of "research."

Where do you go to understand "guy speak?" Books? Bars? Games? Did you have lots of brothers? A great father image? Are your real life heroes alpha or beta or a combo of both? And how do you limit the guy's talk without limiting the romance sizzle?

The Heroes in Our Lives--Real World Version vs. Romance

I decided today that turnabout is fair play. Yesterday I blogged about real world women vs. our heroines. Today I'll take a peek at the men we know vs. the men we write about, fantasize about, try to bring to life for our readers.

Men. Oh. Glorious. Men.

Let's see the fictional hero is flawed internally, but he will change and grow along with the heroine. He's usually an incredible male specimen with gloriously perfect abs, legs, thighs... *all parts working well* ahem ahem ahem. And, as many of you know, they often resemble darling and handsome men like Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale and more.

It is delightful to have collages of these guys in my office and not one member of my family bats an eye. In fact, they took me to see WOLVERINE for Mother's Day (the ultimate mom fantasy aaaaahhhhh Hugh naked jumping down a huge waterfall .... aaaahhhh).

But what about the real heroes? You know, the flawed dudes we know and love be they fathers, boyfriends, brothers, lovers or husbands? Well, let's see--what makes my personal hero a hero in my eyes? It's not his physique (anymore LOL). He's in need of a hip replacement, perpetually in pain, mildly set in his ways, and he loves to read aloud FB entries to us (much to our great displeasure meh). He is always reading math books (very very scary) and he doesn't have a problem emitting gas or blowing his nose loudly in front of us (me and DD).

But he's still my hero? Why? Here's a list of an ordinary man who acts like a hero by doing these tasks:

*cleans litter box
*helps clean up any illness residue from me or DD
*limps to work every day despite his pain
*has long lengthy discussions with DD about math, chemistry and other oddities I know nothing about
*loves his family
*brings home the bacon
*supports my writing despite the lack of money
*isn't jealous of Hugh Jackman
*folds laundry (when asked -- he's not clairvoyant)
*cries when sad things happen
*makes beds and cleans toilets (when asked LOL)
*wants to give me the moon and the stars and the sun even if he can't always deliver

So there are some points about my hero.

How about you? Can you add to the list?

Come Find a Hero with Me at Romance Magicians

http://romancemagicians.blogspot.com/2009/09/i-need-hero.html