A Recipe and a Thank You

        Here is an easy recipe that I got from Pearl.  If you want to find the "official" version, check out her blog. I am simplying the steps.  It's not a hard recipe at all--sinfully easy and delicious--but I am lazy, and usually cook by the seat of my pants, so the amounts (in my version) depend upon your taste.

       I think Pearl calls it Hidden Valley Torte, but I call it Layers of Heaven...

• 16 oz. of cream cheese, softened   (see the note about possible danger)
• 1 envelope of Hidden Valley dip mix
• roasted red peppers
• artichoke hearts (canned or in jars)
• fresh parsley

1.  Take a large-sized cereal bowl and line it with plastic wrap.
2.  Take some of the red pepper and cut it into strips, and lay it in whatever pattern/design you would like. (This step is optional.)  Pearl inadvertently ended up with a swastika, after the cream cheese shifted the pepper around.  I made sure to NOT end up with that same design...(This is going to be the "top" of your cream cheese mold. If you don't want to make it pretty, skip this step.)
3.  Mix the cream cheese and the Hidden Valley dip powder together. Put some on top of the red pepper/in the bottom of the bowl, and mash it down so that it takes on the shape of the bowl.
4.  Mince up the red pepper, the artichokes, and the parsley.  (Stick with the leaves of the parsley.  Throw away the spriggy-twiggy parts.)  Mix together.
5.  Spoon some of the tri-colored mixture onto the cream cheese stuff. Make sure you spread it all the way to the sides of the bowl...It will look pretty if you do it.
6.  Put some more cream cheese yumminess on top of the vegetable layer.  It will take a few moments to try and cajole the veggies into staying put, and make sure the cream cheese goes to the sides of the bowl.  Remember: pretty!
7.  You might have room for only three layers of cream cheese and two of veggies.  Whatever.  
8.  Let it sit for a few hours in the refrigerator.  Invert it onto a plate.  Surround it with crackers.  Enjoy.

Danger:  You might have some cream cheese mixture left over.  You can eat it with a spoon, or put it on a sandwich along with some turkey, or just stick your head into the bowl and...

Okay, so it's not "pretty" but it's the best I could do...

          And here are more thank yous for more followers...

Jenifer
Smaragda Vamvakari
Cecilia Krug---I don't know too much about Jenifer, other than, from assumptions made by the blogs she follows, that she is a mom.  Smaragda lives in another country, or at least speaks a different language that is gorgeous to look at, but is unrecognizable to me. Cecilia lives (or lived) and works in Brazil, and most of you are too young to remember the Simon and Garfunkle song called "Cecilia."  A great song...

Donna Volkenannt at http://donnasbookpub.blogspot.com.  Donna regularly posts news about contests and calls for submissions.  When she's not posting about that, she is writing about life and the writing process.

Jennee at http://jenneethompson.blogspot.com.  Jennee writes with  sharp sense of humor.

Jeff Campbell at http://tennesseemudbug.blogspot.com.  Jeff is a gifted photographer as well as a writer, making him a double threat.

Rohin Kallat at http://yrv-whovr.blogspot.com.  Rohin writes from India, is acutely observant of people and cats and occasionally forays into cooking adventures.  He has the ability to take a simple, everyday experience and make it extraordinary.

Thanks, for making the last half of 2010 more productive (writing-wise) and more enjoyable.  I hope 2011 will prove to be a great year for you...

Spying On People, For the Sake of a Story

        Writers often are observing their surroundings, the people around them, always ready to jot something down to use later.  Sometimes the gems they take home are exactly what they saw and heard and smelled.  Other times, the story only exists in their head.  A face, a gesture is all it takes, and the imagination takes the wheel...

photo by Jay Rajamanickam

        A blogger friend of mine, Rohin Kallat, has a post on December 15 called "Imagining Life and Love, In a Moment" that begins on a train.  Since I have never traveled through India, much less on a train, that alone made it interesting.  As the train rolls along--or not--the story also unfurls.  Writers make ordinary moments extraordinary.  Rohin does this.  He freezes a moment in time, and really gets into his own head as a writer.

photo by Jay Rajamanickam

        If you have time, check out his post and make a comment.  We are all hungry for an audience!

          

Where Have All the Tigers Gone?

     Imagine a guitarist strumming along...

Where have all the tigers gone?
Long time passing...
Where have all the tigers gone?
Long time ago...
Where have all the tigers gone?
Poachers extinguished them,
One by one.
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn? *

      A blogger friend of mine, Rohin Kallat, has a marvelous post about the plight of the tigers. The picture he paints should cause everyone to go to the zoo and drink in the sight of these gorgeous beasts, because they probably won't be around for too much longer.

     And in case you want to enjoy some delicacies from the plundering and poaching of these big cats, here is how much you need to stuff into your wallet:

   pair of tiger eyes  $175-250
   raw tiger bone $140-370 per kg.
   powdered tiger bone $3,000-4,000 per kg. (so, order the
     raw tiger bone--it's a bargain!)
   tiger skin $15,000
   and the piece de resistance:  tps $320 a bowl (tiger penis soup)


     Choose your tiger from the following photos. You pick 'em and we'll poach 'em.  But hurry. Don't spend too much time on your appetizer. Soon they'll be extinct...

photo by ianmichaelthoms

photo by Swamibu

photo by law_keven
(Note:  If you want the ground-up bones of both the mother AND the cub, that'll cost you extra.)

photo by digitalART2
(Note:  The eyeballs of the tiger cub are the most succulent.  Those'll cost you extra.)



photo by Firdaus



*For those who are not 300 years old, you won't have any idea of the melody, and if you are old enough to have heard the folk song Where Have All the Flowers Gone but were a conservative, you'll still be clueless. Sorry.