AN UNFORGETTABLE NEW YEAR’S EVE

 

While the spirit is still upon us, author Anne Montgomery shares a spirited story about a New Year’s Eve she will never forget. This essay is the work of a writer skilled at her craft, and the way we know it is that she “shows” us rather than “tells” us the story. Enjoy!!! –Linda Lee Greene Author/Artist

 

AN UNFORGETTABLE NEW YEAR’S EVE

December 31, 2022

Every year for decades I have wondered whether the coming New Year’s Eve celebration could top the one I experienced in 1976. So far, nothing’s come close. So, in honor of that long ago evening, I will share the story again.

Vianden Castle is one of scores in Luxembourg, but it would be a castle in nearby France that would be the setting for an unforgettable New Year’s Eve.

 

Forty-seven years ago, I faced a young man I had just met.

“Come with me,” he said.

I had arrived in Luxembourg, that wee country squeezed by Germany, France and Belgium, just two days earlier, the beginning of a six-month stint abroad at my university’s branch campus. I had been placed with Kurt and Margareta Schroeder: Swedes, two of the loveliest people I have ever met. Lennart was their son.

“She’s an old friend,” he explained about the woman who owned the castle. “Every New Year’s Eve we go there and celebrate.”

I did not, at that point, sense there was something he wasn’t telling me. Sweet Margareta, who would, over the course of my stay, squeeze me orange juice and provide fresh-baked bread with honey and jam each morning, assured me that the short drive into France would be fun and that her blond, blue-eyed boy with the mass of unruly curls would take good care of me.

“Sure, I’ll go. What should I wear?”

“It’s a drafty, dirty old castle,” Lennart said. “Just wear jeans.”

Later, we drove past open fields and woodlands where trees stood naked and lacy, having long ago shed their leaves. Pewter clouds pressed from above. The chill made me glad to be wrapped in a turtleneck, heavy sweater, and ski jacket. My straight-legged Levi’s topped rugged hiking boots. As the countryside raced by, I wondered what a “dirty, old castle” might look like. I’d spent my life in New Jersey, a place pretty much devoid of castles of any kind.

Lennart turned onto a narrow road, like the rest, a quaint blend of forest and rolling pastures.

“This is part of the estate,” he said. “She inherited two thousand acres from her grandfather.”

 

A six-foot, white marble sculpture depicting this famous scene of Washington crossing the Delaware incongruously rested halfway up the castle’s front stairs.

 

When he pulled onto the circular drive, I stared at the massive, two-story stone structure that was maybe four-hundred years old. As we mounted a wide, white stairway, I considered the odd placement of a sculpture that appeared to be George Washington and his men on their fabled crossing of the Delaware. The piece rested halfway up the staircase. I would soon learn that the statue’s haphazard placement was a remnant of the castle’s World War II occupation by Nazi officers who were caught amidst their attempts to steal artwork. The sculpture was left on the stairs as the soldiers fled an attack by local French citizens and there it remained.

“The castle has sixty-four rooms,” Lennart said. “But we only use a few of them. It costs too much to keep the heat on.”

Marie greeted us in French and with two kisses, one on each check for Lennart. She eyed me quizzically. I couldn’t help but notice her modelesque frame squeezed into impossibly tight jeans. A scarlet, long-sleeved shirt similarly hugged her curves, revealing a hint of cleavage, and perfectly matching red lipstick highlighted her lips. Raven hair hung loose down her back. High, black heels clacked with each step.

My hiking boots suddenly felt heavy. My cuffed Levi’s a bit too rustic.

Marie chattered on with Lennart in French, one of five languages he conversed in fluently. “She doesn’t speak English,” he whispered.

My French was pathetic. I could read menus and road signs and order wine, if I had to. But I didn’t need to understand the language to see there was something between them.

Marie led us into a dining room where a long table was set with linens and crystal. A chandelier sparkled above, throwing shadowed light on 16^th century oil paintings. Over the course of the evening, eight other Parisians would join us, not one of whom spoke English.

Multiple bottles of wine and champagne were uncorked. When we were all seated, a silver tray appeared from the kitchen bearing a massive fish. I wondered if poisson was the traditional New Year’s Eve repast, as I requested another serving. I didn’t notice I was the only one asking for seconds.

I was surprised when the next platter appeared. And even more so when subsequent others arrived. I knew, without being told, that to decline an offering would be rude. As I needed a pause before the next course circled the table, I was greatly appreciative when we ran out of wine and Lennart explained we would have to trek to the cellar for more. One dark-haired, animated man—who I was told was a popular French comedian—led us through the castle’s murky halls and stairways. He started singing Gregorian chants, which seemed both fitting and a bit sacrilegious when we arrived at the family chapel, replete with alter and pews and cross. More than a bit tipsy, we joined him, our voices echoing off ancient stone walls.

 

We wound our way through the dark halls of the castle until we reached a wine cellar, where some bottles were over 100 years old.

 

We retrieved myriad dusty bottles of wine, some over 100 years old. As you might expect, much of the rest of the evening is a bit of a blur. But sometime later, I woke in a bedroom shrouded in shadow. I could hear the ticking of a grandfather clock and loud stomping. Boots hitting the floor over and over. But my wine-addled brain and warm covers precluded me from investigating.

The next morning, I asked Lennart if I could see the clock. He translated my request. Marie, tilted her head.

“The clock was removed from that room many years ago,” Lennart said.

I wondered if the Nazis were to blame, but I didn’t ask.

“And the stomping?” I waited while Lennart spoke with Marie.

“That is the German soldier,” he translated. “He was caught in the courtyard when the Nazis were fleeing. He was killed there. Later, Marie’s grandfather took the man’s skull and placed it in his library. The soldier has been marching around the castle at night ever since.”

I stared at Marie. Her shrug told me a stomping Nazi ghost was no big deal in an old French castle.

On the drive back to Luxembourg, Lennart would confess that he and Marie had dated for years. This was the first New Year’s Eve celebration they weren’t a couple. He knew she was seeing someone and didn’t want to go to the castle alone. He did not disuuade the others when they inquired if we were dating.

Over four-and-a-half decades of New Year’s Eve celebrations have passed since my trip into the French countryside, an evening filled with subterfuge, fabulous food, old wine, a stomping ghost, and an invisble grandfather clock.

I’m pretty sure nothing will ever top that.

 

The past and present collide when a tenacious reporter seeks information on an eleventh century magician…and uncovers more than she bargained for.

WOLF CATCHER

Anne Montgomery

Historical Fiction/Suspense

TouchPoint Press

February 2, 2022

 

In 1939, archeologists uncovered a tomb at the Northern Arizona site called Ridge Ruin. The man, bedecked in fine turquoise jewelry and intricate bead work, was surrounded by wooden swords with handles carved into animal hooves and human hands. The Hopi workers stepped back from the grave, knowing what the Moochiwimi sticks meant. This man, buried nine hundred years earlier, was a magician.

Former television journalist Kate Butler hangs on to her investigative reporting career by writing freelance magazine articles. Her research on The Magician shows he bore some European facial characteristics and physical qualities that made him different from the people who buried him. Her quest to discover The Magician’s origin carries her back to a time when the high desert world was shattered by the birth of a volcano and into the present-day dangers of archeological looting where black market sales of antiquities can lead to murder.

REVIEW COPIES OF WOLF CATCHER AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

Contact: Chelsea Pieper, Publicity Manager, Media Liaison

Review/interview requests: media@touchpointpress.com

Pre-orders available here.

 

** HOLIDAY PROMO ** FOR STELLA MAY'S RHAPSODY IN DREAMS

 

RHAPSODY IN DREAMS

** HOLIDAY PROMO **

He saved her life. She became his muse.

Transcending time, their love was absolute—and always out of reach.

Is it too late, or do they have one more chance?

"Rhapsody in Dreams" is a modern-day love story with a slight mystical twist.

You can read the excerpt on my blog: https://stellamayauthor.home.blog/.../19/rhapsody-in-dreams/

An ebook is available now at any digital bookseller of your choice:

https://books2read.com/u/bPx0P7

https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=dxclEAAAQBA

A SOLDIER GOES HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

From Linda Lee Greene, Author/Artist

Christmas Eve of 1941 in the mess hall of Ft. Knox, Kentucky Training Center was nothing like home for the young US Army recruits, but they decorated a tree and wolfed-down a traditional dinner of turkey, pie, cake, and all the trimmings. Early that morning, Buck Private Bob Gaffin had rummaged through the contents of the locker he had been assigned, trying to decide what to pack in anticipation of receiving a four-day pass. Jammed into the locker were bed clothes, overcoat, raincoat, two wool uniforms, two suntan shirts and tie, three wool suits, underwear, two pairs of shoes, one pair of overshoes, six pairs of socks, one combat suit, one pair of gloves, and toiletries, not to mention one tent, one first-aid kit, one shell belt, one mess kit, and more to come. This unsophisticated farm-boy, who owned far far fewer personal articles than this enormous cache, felt he had hit the jackpot. In a letter to his family he expressed a profound sense of stewardship for all the materiel issued to him by the military. I sure have to be careful with it, he wrote. In the end, he packed his haversack lightly—just enough to get him through a long weekend at his parent’s farm in tiny Peebles, Ohio. Stuffed inside were the clothes he had worn the day he was inducted into the Army at Ft. Thomas, Kentucky a month before. His mother and sisters would wash and iron them, brush his wool coat and hunting cap, wrap his scruffy old brogans in newspaper, and store them away for him in the locker at the foot of the bed at home he shared with his sixteen-year-old brother, Bussy. Bob was anxious to see his frail brother, ill with a serious bronchial condition he had developed at the age of ten.    

Although Bob told his family he had borrowed the money, in truth he had sold the stationery, the towel set, and other Christmas gifts he had received from his family and girlfriend. In that way he raised the money required of him by the Army to get a four-day pass. There was also enough to buy a bus ticket from Ft. Knox to Peebles and back, and he went home for Christmas, surprising his family.

                                                                         

            As his brother, Bussy’s new fighting rooster, Ranger, named after the Lone Ranger, Bussy’s favorite radio character, coaxed the sun to rising with his ringing five-note greeting, and the cows bawled in the field as if in welcome to him, the gravel on the road leading to his parent’s farm crunched beneath Bob’s boots. At that hour, only his mother would be up; his father and his many brothers and sisters would still be sleeping. He adjusted the haversack slung over the shoulder of his new wool overcoat and bent down to straighten the creases in the immaculate wool trousers of his spiffy new uniform.

His mother had been right in her latest letter to him: it was bleak in Southern Ohio. There was an eerie mist hovering over the land, a fuzzy band of fog like a shimmering boa hugging the neck of the earth. As far as the eye could reach, dense bare trees, their feet cloaked in the mist, seemed lonely and unsupported, their jagged and raw heads, unprotected, piercing the top of the mist. The silver conditions of the morning seemed to mirror a shift in Bob’s soul. It was an aloneness he was coming to know all too well, one in which clear colors and details formerly sharp and contrasting were fading to gray and merging, were transforming everything often to unrecognizable states. It was a wary feeling of exposure to a bizarre new life in which not only his surroundings but he was becoming unfamiliar to himself.

It had been difficult for him to articulate the issues that were needling him, and part of the problem was directly tied to the impossibility of finding that voice in the environment where he was being trained to be a killing machine. Although in the beginning he had spoken with such bravado about being ready to go to any lengths to protect his country and family, as well as Dot, the girl he loved, as the reality of the fighting approached, methods of killing and maiming and destroying that nobody on the outside of it could possibly anticipate or comprehend, his sense of purpose was becoming blurred, like that foggy landscape.

Bob had innocently played with the idea that he had a kind of affinity with the ways and means of war, for as a backcountry boy he was familiar with the natural cycles of birth and death of the animals on the farm, surrounding forests, and countryside. He had euthanized sick animals, shot hogs in the head in preparation for slaughter, and he knew guns, the feel of them in his hands, their kick against his shoulder, the real damage they did to animate and inanimate objects alike. Guns had long been a hobby for him, actually. In his creative mind, he had even begun to design guns. As a matter of fact, in his spare time at the training camp in Ft. Knox, he had made rudimentary sketches of a canny little gun he planned to someday fashion out of a Zippo cigarette lighter. 

Hunting had been nearly a daily activity for him since his adolescence, and he was learning that his experience in that regard gave him a decided advantage over many of the other boys at Ft. Knox, town and city boys whose experience with guns extended no further than toy guns, or perhaps B. B. guns, boys who had never held real guns in their hands, or tracked down living prey in their sights, and once positioned in the crosshairs, squeezing the trigger and killing that prey. But that nagging voice inside of him was urging him to pay attention to the fact that killing an animal was a whole other matter than bringing a human being to its death. Despite the fact of his believing in the necessity of the war, for after all Japan had attacked the United States, and Germany had aggressed against his country as well, his being away from Ft. Knox for only a few hours now helped him to see that he was wrestling with that very moral dilemma, the first and most serious moral dilemma of his life.

            His was a tender society that believed in goodwill toward all people. He had been taught that “Thou Shalt Not Kill” his fellow man and it constituted a basic tenet of his very soul. How am I going to kill another human being? he worried as he sauntered in his usual loping fashion toward the farmhouse. He decided to find time to talk to his favorite preacher, Harley Ward about it before he returned to camp. Perhaps that man of God could help to lift the mantle of confusion weighing so heavily on Bob’s soul. 

            Barely glowing from a moisture-streaked window in the kitchen of the farmhouse was a sole low light. In the thick mist, a plume of white smoke billowed delicately, charging the air with the scent of wood smoke, a scent of home. Sparks in the smoke twinkled like stardust shooting from the chimney at the top of the peaked roof. As he neared the back of the farmhouse, he took note of its slick moisture-sodden clapboards. It was a house weeping from the melting icicles along its eves, weeping like those damp and lonely trees, weeping like the boggy fields, as if in an act of complicity, they collectively wept, as if the whole of nature and his home grieved an inapprehensible and ill-omened fortune lying in wait for him, his family, his girl, his country, lying in wait like the hidden land mines he would encounter on the beaches of Southern, Italy in the not too distant future. Shuddering like a threatened animal in the few minutes that passed, he worked at shaking off his paranoia as he entered the perpetually unlocked back door that opened to the kitchen. 

At the cook stove, her back to him, his mother stood in the arc of light from a kerosene lamp, her body noticeably weary as she bent to her duties of stoking her cook stove with her poker.  At the sound of his footfalls that she knew so well, but dared not believe were real, and visibly shaking with fear that they would prove to be products of her imagination, she turned to him. Her empty hand flew to her mouth to stifle her cry, and tears spilled from her eyes.

The changes in his mother in just a few weeks took Bob’s breath away. It was as if the changes in him were manifestly reflected in her, as if by some means of osmosis beyond the natural connection between parent and child, his experiences and fears and bewilderments also were hers, only exaggerated and accelerated. She seemed already to have endured what he was facing; she seemed to have already passed through, and had been permanently altered by, the ravages of war: the superhuman demands on one’s body and heart and mind and conscience; the depleted stores of psychological reserves—the lifetime of recurring night terrors. In her rote movements as she had bent to stoke her stove, in her turning to him, and in her covering of her quivering mouth, a rigid choking anxiety afflicted her.

He lowered his bag to the linoleum-clad floor while concurrently she dropped her poker with a crash. That emptying of their hands was the prelude to the opening of their arms. As she swayed weakly in his embrace, Bob’s dilemma was erased from his mind. In that moment, his conscience split into two expedient parts, and in a reversal of roles, he became her personal protector. He knew then that to keep his mother safe, he would kill their enemies, and without hesitation, if not with relish—he would kill with the automatic precision of the professional soldier he was learning to be, and as grievous as they might be, he would live with whatever consequences his choice quickened in him…©

 

The above is an excerpt from multi-award-winning and Amazon best-selling author, Linda Lee Greene’s novel of historical fiction titled, GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS. An ambitious and thorough exploration of two families whose experiences are funneled through the pivotal early to middle decades of the twentieth century, this seamless blend of fiction and nonfiction renders an authentic slice of Americana at its most personal and profound. Based on actual events and oral history, and featuring transcriptions of dozens of authentic private letters written by the story’s principle characters, Greene delivers an insider’s view of the hearts and minds and day to day events of a singular group of people counted among history’s greatest generation. Powerful in its sweeping journalistic impact and at the same time tender in its novelistic prose, this highly rated book contributes greatly to the preservation efforts of the era it interprets.

 

The novel is available for purchase in eBook and paperback through Amazon.

Purchase Link of the book: http://goo.gl/imUwKO

Image: GAFFIN FARM IN WINTER, acrylic painting by Linda Lee Greene

#ChristmasEve, #Ft.KnoxKentucky, #ArmyTrainingCenter, #WorldWarII, #PeeblesOhio, #GuardiansAndOtherAngels, #LindaLeeGreene

Where Are the Little Critters?

 

There are no paw- or claw-prints in the snow that blankets my patio. This clean snow-slate makes me feel lonely for the furry and winged creatures that normally visit my place and keep me connected to Mother Nature’s little lifeforms. It also worries me for them…where are they? Are they hunkered down in safe and warm places? God, I pray it is so.

 

My first, early New Year’s resolution is to lay in a birdfeeder and seed as soon as it is safe to drive to a store that sells them. In the meantime, I don slacks and sweater, long down-filled coat and boots, headscarf and gloves and put out chunks of hardened bread on a plate for the critters. A prayer is on my lips that it will help to tide them over until I can do better for them. And then maybe they will come back to me. -Linda Lee Greene

#snowstorm, #FurryCreatures, #WingedCreatures, #Critters, #MotherNature, #BirdFeeders, #BirdSeed, #AuthorArtist, #LindaLeeGreene 

THIS IS YOUR LIFE!

 

From Linda Lee Greene Author/Artist

 

“The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down on these notes, [and] on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, for the future which is in store for him? ‘No, thank you’ he will think. ‘Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy’.” – Viktor E. Frankl, MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING, pg 124-125.

            December 8 – 10, 2018 was the date of my initial reading of Frankl’s iconic book, which chronicles his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi Concentration Camps during World War II. That December of 2018, I was at the lovely Palm Harbor, Florida home of my kid sister Susan (Suzee) attending to her however possible in the final days of her life. She passed twelve days after I closed the last page of Frankl’s book. I read the book again recently and was struck anew by the paragraph cited above. The paragraph strikes me not only because of the wisdom imparted in it, but also because it recalls to me one of Suzee’s most endearing qualities, and one of her most enduring qualities, as it turns out.

            Suzee was an avid writer of personal journals. Following her death, other members of my family and I sorted through her personal effects for their appropriate dissemination. For instance, as a voracious reader, over the years Suzee had amassed an impressive library, and one of our tasks was to annotate in her name dozens of her books, which we donated to the hospice facility that had seen her through her last hours. In addition, we were astounded to find journals dating from her teenage years right up to a month before her death. She had turned 63 only three months before. Alongside the journals tucked away in numerous trunks and boxes was every letter, card, and memento she had received dating from her childhood to her final days.  

            Currently, this written treasure trove of Suzee’s life is stored away in my sister Sherri’s garage. Sherri has been going through it and separating it into individual boxes for further distribution: a box for herself, one for me and other members of our family, as well as Suzee’s friends. In the process, Sherri is stopping to read much of it. “Oh, Linnie,” Sherri expresses to me over the phone. “Through Suzee’s journals and letters, I’m reliving so much of our family history and even world history that I had forgotten. What a legacy she has left us!” The exercise is turning out to be a “This is Your Life” experience for Sherri, as well.

As Frankl tells us, a look back on our personal history can fill us with pride and joy on all the richness and all the life we have already lived to the fullest, and as Suzee shows us, the ones we leave behind can also call to memory forgotten but nonetheless precious history we made together and shared. That is one beautiful gift.©

 

Image: Susan Renee Greene in the 1980s

 

#ViktorEFrankl, #Man’sSearchForMeaning, #Journaling, #Diaries, #FamilyHistory, #FamilySaga, #LifeAndDeath, #SusanReneeGreene

EASY CHRISTMAS BRUNCH

 

If your experience is anything like mine, the holidays have sneaked up on you. The cards haven’t yet been sent; there are gifts still to buy or make and wrap, decorations to put in place, and groceries to lay in. At times like this, I welcome any help I can get. Cookbook author Sloane Taylor comes to the rescue with a complete menu for a Christmas Day Brunch, complete with a special drink. She also introduces us to her latest cookbook, soon to be published. –Linda Lee Greene Author/Artist  

EASY CHRISTMAS BRUNCH

By Sloane Taylor

After we entertain Christmas Eve, we tear through the house cleaning up before the kids and grands come for brunch Christmas Day. This meal is wonderful because so much can be prepared well in advance and stored in the fridge until it’s time to cook.

                                                                                   
 

MENU 

Breakfast Soufflé 

Hash Browns 

Fresh Fruit Salad 

Mini Croissants 

Christmas Cookies & Leftover Desserts 

Mimosas 

 

 

Breakfast Soufflé 

1 lb. (½kg) ham, bacon, or breakfast sausage 

9 eggs, lightly beaten 

3 cups (750ml) milk 

1 tsp. (5ml) dry mustard 

Diced green, red, and/or yellow pepper to taste 

½ lb. (57g) sharp cheddar cheese, grated 

½ lb. (57g) Swiss or Gruyere cheese, or a combination of the two, grated 

Diced onion to taste 

Freshly ground black pepper to taste 

4 – 1 in. (2.54cm) slices Vienna or French bread, cubed 

 

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). 

 

Dice ham or bacon. If you use ham, set aside in the bowl you use for the eggs. Fry bacon to the crispness you prefer. Drain on paper towels. If you use breakfast sausage, fry meat until no longer pink. Be sure to break up any clumps. Drain meat in a colander while you continue to prepare the soufflé.

 

Add all ingredients, except bread, to eggs. Stir well. Gently stir in bread. 

 

Pour mixture into an ungreased 9 x 13-inch (33 x 22cm) glass baking dish. Bake 1 hour or until a knife inserted in the center has no egg clinging to it. 

 

This dish can be assembled one or two days ahead of time. On serving day allow the soufflé to sit on your counter 1 – 2 hours before you bake it. 

 

Leftovers are excellent from the microwave. 

 

Hash Browns 

If you need to increase the hash browns recipe for a larger group of people, it’s best to sparingly add more garlic powder. As is this recipe serves 6. Leftovers reheat beautifully. 

 

3 russet potatoes (about 1½ pounds), peeled 

1½ tsp. (7.5ml) garlic powder, not salt 

Freshly ground pepper, to taste 

¼ cup (60ml) extra virgin olive oil 

 

Shred potatoes on the large holes of a box grater or use the coarse grater disk on a food processor. Transfer them to a bowl of cold water. Allow them to soak for 2 minutes. Drain in a colander and then rinse under cold water. You do this to remove the starch that makes hash browns gummy. 

 

Transfer shreds to a kitchen towel. Gather together ends of towel and twist over sink, squeezing firmly to wring out as much liquid as possible. This step creates crisp hash browns. Transfer potatoes to a medium bowl and toss with garlic powder and pepper. Be sure to evenly distribute the seasonings. 

 

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add potatoes, press down to form a thin layer and cook for a minute or two. Stir and then press down again. Cook until a dark golden crust forms, about 5 minutes. 

 

Turn potatoes in sections. This is easier than trying to turn the food as a whole. Continue to fry until hash browns are crisp and browned all over, 5 minutes or so. Transfer to paper towels to absorb excess oil. 

 

Fresh Fruit Salad 

1 banana, peeled 

1 pear, cored 

1 tbsp. (15ml) lemon juice 

¼ pineapple, peeled, cored, and diced 

1 kiwi, peeled and sliced 

10 seedless red grapes, halved 

10 blueberries 

10 raspberries, optional 

 

Slice banana into bitesize pieces. Scoop into a medium-sized bowl. Dice pear and add to bowl. Sprinkle lemon juice over fruit to stop it from turning brown and mix well. 

 

Gently fold in remaining fruit. 

 

Spoon into a glass bowl, cover with cling wrap, and chill until time to serve. Leftovers are still good the next day.

 

Mimosas 

1 bottle sparking white wine or champagne, cold 

1 carton orange juice, cold 

Tall slender glasses 

 

Fill glasses half full with wine. Tip the glass slightly as you pour to retain the fizz. Top off with orange juice. Don’t stir. That will destroy the bubbles. 

 

May you enjoy all the days of your life filled with good friends, laughter, and seated around a well-laden table!

Sloane

***

Sloane’s New Cookbook:

 

HOT MEN WEAR APRONS

 

 

§  Over 130 mouthwatering recipes to try, from soups and salads to main dishes and sides. Dessert is up to you—if you have room!

§  Cuisines to satisfy any craving, from comfort food to looks-fancy-but-easy-as-pie delights. Raid your own pantry and get fresh (ingredients) at the grocery.

§  Prep can be done in advance, but why rush? Make the prep part of the fun with your honey! (Matching aprons optional. Clothing is recommended, especially for sautéing!)

§  Menu suggestions provided or get adventurous and create your own unique meal—and a memory to savor.

§  Wine and beverage selections make you an instant pairing expert.

§  Bonus: Tips/tricks that will make everyone think you’re a kitchen genius.

§  Extra bonus: Sloane’s secret recipe for Super Bowl Chili!

§  All recipes are indexed so you can find what you need in a snap.

§  And come on, who doesn’t like sausage? (For breakfast! What were you thinking?)

Lunch, dinner—or breakfast the next morning, Sloane has you covered! Because the best times always start in the kitchen.

 

 Sloane Taylor is an Award-Winning author with a second passion in her life. She is an avid cook and posts new recipes on her blog every Wednesday. The recipes are user-friendly, meaning easy.

To learn more about Taylor go to her website. Stay in touch on Blogger, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Taylor’s cookbooks, Date Night Dinners, Date Night Dinners Italian Style, Sizzling Summer, and Recipes to Create Holidays Extraordinaire are released by Toque & Dagger Publishing and available at all book vendors.

 

#ChristmasBrunch, #DateNightDinners, #DateNightDinnersItalianStyle, #SizzlingSummer, #RecipesToCreateHolidaysExtraordinaire, #HotMenWearAprons, #Toque&DaggerPublishing,  #SloaneTaylor, #LindaLeeGreene