Anna Alexander's Blog, page 3

Goodreads Giveaway- Heroes of Saturn

Happy New Year!! a few days late

To celebrate the print release of Heroes of Saturn, I’m offering two autographed copies on Goodreads. This is my first Goodreads contest, so I’m hoping I did everything all right.

 

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Heroes of Saturn
by Anna Alexander

Giveaway ends February 20, 2014.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

 

Good luck!

Holiday Treat: Cranberry-Pistachio Biscotti

Biscotti. If the word makes you think of a crack your teeth hard cookie, then you’ve had bad biscotti. The slim, chunky cookie is a twice-baked confection that is usually eaten with tea or coffee, which is why they should be firm enough to dunk in your drink without melting, but never so hard as to echo in your head when bitten into.

One of my favorite holiday recipes is the Cranberry- Pistachio Biscotti from the Williams-Sonoma baking cookbook. Truthfully you can make these year round, but the red of the cranberry and green of the pistachios make it look so festive. I often make large batches and package them for gift baskets and hostess gifts. Wherever I take them, people will hunt me down and say, “You made these?! They are sooooo good.”

Cranberry-Pistachio Biscotti 

Ingredients:

2 cups AP Flour                          2 eggs

1 1/2 tsp baking powder           3/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt                                  1/2 cup melted unsalted butter

1 1/2 tsp orange zest                  1 tsp each of vanilla and almond extract

1 cup coarsely chopped pistachios and 1/2 cup dried cranberries

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

By hand or with a mixer beat the eggs and sugar together for 3 minutes. Beat in the butter, orange zest and extracts until blended. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add this to the wet ingredients a third at a time until combined. Add the pistachios and cranberries at the end.

Scoop half of the mixture onto a parchment lined baking sheet and form a long log shape. I find it easier if I dampen my hands first to prevent the dough from sticking to my hands. Scoop the other half onto the baking sheet and form a second log, leaving a three-inch gap between the two. Bake for about 20-25 minutes.

 

Take the sheet out of the oven and lower the temperature to 300 degrees. Let the logs cool for about 10 minutes then carefully transfer them to a cutting board. Cut each log at a slight diagonal in 1/2 inch slices. Arrange the slices back on the baking sheet on their sides. Bake them again for about 17-22 minutes.

 

Happy Holidays and Enjoy!

Kalua Pork- An Easy Slow Cooker Recipe

I have recently become an owner of a crock pot. I know! Hard to believe it’s taken me so long. Since I don’t have a lot of time in the mornings, I love really easy recipes and kalua pork is as simple as they come. I learned this recipe back in my MGM Grand days (Thanks Nyree Jones!) and it takes less than five minutes to throw together. Having family over for the holidays and you need to feed them for more than one meal? Kalua pork is the way to go.

Kalua Pork

Ingredients:

One pork shoulder or butt. Size it to whatever fits in your cooker or roasting pan.
Water
Salt
1/4 cup Liquid Smoke- Feel free to adjust to your taste once you’ve made this recipe a few times.

Yep, that’s it. Four whole ingredients.

Dry off your shoulder then stab it repeatedly with a fork or small knife tip. Rub the meat with salt all over. Give him a nice little massage. Pour a little bit of water into your cooker then add the meat. Pour the liquid smoke over the top. Put on the lid and turn the cooker to low.

Ta-da! I told you. This is an easy recipe. Do not fret if you don’t have a slow cooker. An oven at 200-220 degrees works just as well. The idea here is low and slow. Depending on your size of pork, this could take eight to ten hours. Once done the meat will shred so prettily, and it’s so smoky and juicy, I dare you to keep from snatching pieces before the rest of the family knows it’s done.

The only difficult part of this meal is choosing the sides, and in my opinion, the best one is white rice. I try to eat healthy and stick to black rice, but truthfully, a good white rice is the best accompaniment to kalua pork. Add a nice macaroni salad or coleslaw, it’s like having a little Hawaiian luau on a plate.

Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

 

Yummy!- Anna Alexander’s Leak and Pine Nut Stuffing

Three more weeks until Christmas dinner, or lunch depending on how you roll. My family is still debating on whether we have ham, lamb or a roast, but my mother insists I make my leak and pine nut stuffing to have on the side. Yes, I said side because I don’t stuff my birds, but this recipe works inside or outside your once-feathered friend. This is a recipe I learned from my ex-grandmother-in-law and tweaked it a bit. It’s easy and makes for great leftovers because this recipe can easily feed fifteen people, so have two containers to bake it in or scale it down to your speficiations. Enjoy!

Leak and Pine Nut Stuffing

Ingredients:

One large onion        One package of powdered Cream of Leak Soup mix

2-3 stalks of celery               16 to 24 ounces of chicken or turkey stock

One good-sized leak                        1/2 cup toasted pine nuts

One stick of butter                          6 cups of dry bread cubes

Let’s talk bread cubes for a second. You can make your own, or buy them in the store. What’s important is that they are dry and made from a hearty loaf of bread, like a chibatta or French or Pullman loaf. Softer breads tend to make a soft and soggy stuffing, and you don’t want that.

Toast your pine nuts in a sauté pan or while your oven is pre-heating to 385 degrees. Don’t let them burn!

In a large pot melt the stick of butter and cut the onion, celery and leak into even-sized dices. Toss the veggies into the butter and sauté with some salt and pepper until soften. Add in the pine nuts and the package of cream of leak soup. Then add in three cups of stock.

Add your bread cubes and mix it up. If the mixture looks really dry, add more stock. The bread cubes will soak up a lot of juice, but you don’t want your stuffing too dry or too soggy. When your mixture looks wet but not flooded, you’re good.

Transfer the mixture into a baking dish, or two, and bake for thirty minutes. *Leak and Pine Nut Stuffing by Anna AlexanderIf your stuffing appears dry when you remove the dish from the oven, you can always add a little spoonful of hot stock over the top, because I know you all have a small pot of chicken stock on the stove. Don’t you watch Food Network?

Happy Holidays!

 

A Holiday Recipe: Sugar-free Chocolate Mousse

It’s that time of year when I lift my head and say, “Holy crap. It’s the end of the year already?” From Thanksgiving till New Year’s I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Cakes and pies, biscotti and trifles, I’m always cooking something for a holiday party or family gathering. So in honor of this time of year, I’ll be posting some of my favorite recipes to give you all some ideas for your next event.

We have a few diabetics in my family, so I always make something that is sugar-free and this recipe quickly became a favorite. The best part about this recipe is its versatility. You can use it as a pie, in a trifle, as a cake filling, or even on its own in a pretty glass topped with whipped cream. The possibilities are endless, so enjoy!

 

 

Sugar-free Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients:

1/4 cup water                                            7 egg whites

1 packet gelatin                                         3/4 cup of Stevia (this is my favorite sugar substitute)

3/4 cup of heavy whipping cream        9 ounces semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate. Whichever is your favorite.

Recipe:

Fill a pot with about one inch full of water and set it to simmer.

In a small bowl sprinkle the packet of gelatin over the 1/4 cup of room temperature water and set it aside to activate.

In a separate bowl melt the chocolate and set aside to cool.

In another bowl whip the heavy whipping cream to a stiff peak. Cover and set in the refrigerator until needed.

In yet another bowl (yes, there are a lot of bowls used for this recipe) you will combine your eggs and sugar substitute. If you want a regular chocolate mousse, replace the Stevia with regular sugar. Easy, I know! Place this bowl over the simmering water and whisk for three minutes. Do not pause in your whisking or else you’ll end up with scrambled eggs.

Add the gelatin to the egg mixture and whisk to melt the gelatin. With a Kitchen-Aid or hand mixer, whip this until thick and cloud-like. The Stevia prevents a nice glossy peak, so whip until firm, but don’t let the meringue become grainy.

Fold the meringue into the chocolate until well combined. Then add the whipped cream into the chocolate/meringue mixture until well combined.

Pour mousse into your desired container, cover with plastic wrap then refrigerate for at least two hours for the mousse to set. If you don’t  cover the mousse, a weird skin will form no the top. Yeah, I wouldn’t want that either.

 

 

I make this recipe the night before and it works great.

Happy holidays and happy eating!

 

 

 

Emerald City Writers Conference Bookfair 2013

Another busy week and this time I’m at the Emerald City Writers Conference. As the workshop chair I made sure there was a class for every writer at every level every hour. Yeah, we worked our butts off.

Saturday I will be joining 80 other authors for our annual bookfair. Proceeds will go to DAWN, the Domestic Abuse Womens Network and as a special bonus Barnes and Noble will be offering a special code that can be used until October 24th to continue the funsdraiser. When you make a purchase with the code at any B&N location in the country or online, proceeds of that sale will go to the ECWC bookdfair fundraiser. How cool is that? Readyfor the special code?

Mention 11132172 at the point of sale, or online, and a portion of the proceeds of

that sale will be donated to DAWN. The code is good in stores from October 19th

through the 25th, and online through October 30th.

I hope to see you there!

It’s Release Day! A Night at The Cavern

I told you it was a busy week. Today A Night at The Cavern is available for sale at Ellora’s Cave. Yay!!

http://www.ellorascave.com/a-night-at-the-cavern.html

If you remember, in Hero Unleashed Amaryllis’ friend Jorges tried to cheer her up after a bad altercation with Lucian. She points out a lonely looking woman at the bar and tells him that if he wants to make her happy, he’d give that woman the night of her life. After I had finished Hero Unleashed, I wondered whatever happened between Jorges and Ms. Lonley Hearts. Well, this is what happened!

Warning! Warning! This is a short story at 24K and has no paranormal elements aside from a visit from Amaryllis and Bale. I should also warn you that there is a lot of sex in this one. Yes, I have warned my mother and she is properly terrified.

In honor of release day and Halloween, I thought I would share some photos from my past.

This is me and my sister when I was four. I have no idea what happened to my neck, but I think the headband is pretty rockin’, as well as the hero pose.

Romanticon 2013- My First Time. Yippes!

Howdy all. I’m smack in the middle of my first ever Romanticon. I’ll take plenty more next week about my adventures, but if you’re in the Canton area, come by and say hi and pick up a printed, that’s right, I said printed, copy Heroes of Saturn before the rest of the world can get their hands on it. Otherwise you’ll have to wait for Hero Revealed and Hero Unleashed to release January 3rd.

Hope to see you there!

31 Days of Halloween

This week kicks off my crazy, busiest time of year. Today I am at Brynna Curry’s 31 Days of Halloween event. I’m sharing my scone recipe and giving away a copy of Hero Unmasked. Come by and say hi.

http://www.brynnacurry.com/

What is Sexy?

There has been a fair amount of talk lately about the whole Miley Cyrus debacle and it started me thinking. I’ve heard comments about how she was trying to be shocking, and there, I agree. She was trying to be provocative. Hmm, maybe. She was daring to be sexy. Now right there I have to stop you. I do not believe Ms. Cyrus was trying to be sexy. Why do I think this? Because where on the planet is that considered sexy?

I write romance novels. An 8.5 billon dollar a year industry that specializes in sexual attraction. I have never read a novel where the hero enters a room and sees a scantily dressed woman gyrating as if she’s holding both ends of a live wire and fornicating with a foam appendage and thought, “Damn, I must to have this enchanting woman.” NEVER. If this book exists, please let me know.

But Anna, I hear you say, romance novels are in no way based in reality. (Excuse me while I snort so hard, I injure myself) Okay, fine. Let’s look to the movies. An industry blamed many times over for its influence over modern culture and most often directed by men for men. Marilyn Monroe may have been on the wiggly side, but she did not become an undisputed sex-goddess icon by twerking. Can you imagine Lauren Bacall telling Humphrey Bogart to pucker up his lips and blow then punctuate the sentence with an impersonation of a giraffe reaching for an apple with its tongue? Shudders.

In Body Heat, Kathleen Turner smoldered on the screen simply by standing there. I don’t think William Hurt’s character would’ve been so eager to bust through that door if she’d been bent over at the waist and shaking her booty like she was trying to flick gum off her butt cheek. Wait a second, the image has me laughing so hard, I can’t type.

Remember Kelly McGillis in Top Gun? The scene where Charlie struts down the aisle of fighter pilots in a black knee-length skirt, stockings and heels depicted a woman who is smart and sexy. Even in “guy” flicks like Fast and Furious, the women in tiny skirts and stripper-dance moves are nothing more than scenery and forgotten as soon as the camera pans away.

One of my favorite movies is The Thomas Crown Affair with Pierce Brosnan and René Russo. That entire movie is sexy, and I’m not just talking about the scene with the see-through dress. But let’s talk about that dress for a second. In that scene it might have been Catherine’s black gauze covered nipples that garnered Thomas’ initial attention, but it was the entire package of grace, confidence and sultry dance moves that lit his fire. I loved Russo’s wardrobe in that movie. The first time we meet her character she is wearing that fantastic coat with the fur and gray suit with the long slit up the side. Again, sophisticated, sexy and smart. The men thought she was hot but also knew she was two steps ahead of them.

Really, is there any comparison?

I guess that’s my point. When did sexy equal dumb and immature? I know it’s to each their own, but seriously. Do I want people to think I’m sexy? Yes. But I also want them to think I’m smart and respect my opinions and my abilities. When I meet someone, I want them to think, “Wow. What a great girl. A real class act.”  And not, “Poor misguided thing. Is she on drugs or was she dropped on her head too many times?” At the end of the day Miley’s behavior has zero effect on me, but I hope the women of the world understand that one’s actions will stick with them forever. What sounds like an awesome attempt to garner attention now may come back and bite you on the ass years down the road. You don’t want to blow a lifetime of credibility on a publicity stunt, or have your entire career weighed down by one poorly thought out plan and became the world’s punch line.  Class, my friends, class. That is the word I shall live by.