J. Elliott's Blog: News From the Lotus Lodge, page 7
February 4, 2020
A Visual Refresher on the Importance of Mindfuless
What you are doing in this moment determines what will happen next…
February 3, 2020
Happy Chinese New Year!
The year began on January 25th actually, year of the Yang Metal (Male) Rat. Rat is a clever, tricky, and tactical animal. The Rat has many ideas with a keen vision and can solve problems quickly. The Rat is Yin Water, the last element of 10 Heavenly Stem. It is connected to knowledge, memory, and learning. The Rat has a strong memory in learning and remembers the previous life experiences. The Rat is brilliant, brainy with a sense of creativity. The characteristics of Rat are agile, active, resourceful, thoughtful, sharp-sighted, staying alert.
While there is not one blanket reading for the year, there are some hopeful qualities to the Year of the Rat… including prosperity! Hope it’s a good one for you.
[image error]But this is a hello post and an experiment. Technophobe me just figured out how to share my page on Facebook. I hope. If you can see this, it worked! And for folks who’ve read my book Monkey Mind, I PROMISE I’m getting the sequel out by this summer. AND I’ve started writing a Christmas book too! Busy YEAR FOR ME!
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January 13, 2020
For Christmas 2020
Business hasn’t exactly been brisk; Haint’s wondering if she should even bother keeping the retreat open during the holidays. She’s not sure where things are with Buster and it seems her friends all have plans. Maybe she and NB will just go to the beach. Get away. Recharge.
The universe has other plans in store for Haint…
Meet Author J. Elliott at the First Annual Sunshine State Book Festival
Meet author J. Elliott at the Sunshine State Book Festival on January 25th!
Get your signed copy of Monkey Mind!
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Roasted Peppers with Sausage, Pineapple and Couscous
When I was little, I hated peppers. I could tolerate them chopped really small in spaghetti sauce, but a stuffed pepper? No way. Fortunately, taste buds can change. First it was thin slices on pizza, bits in omelets… and now I’m writing a recipe for roasted peppers.
This is not a vegetarian recipe as I’m (yes, pun intended) hog-wild for Jimmy Dean sausage, especially SAGE. But don’t run off, I’m sure you can substitute just about anything that behaves like sausage.
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Ingredients: peppers, pineapple, sausage, couscous, oil
Preheat the oven to around 385 degrees. Wash the peppers, and with a sharp knife cut the tops off and then cut the stems out so each pepper is a little container with a hat with a hole at the top. Clean out the seeds. Set the peppers into a glass baking pan. They should have some wiggle room but be sitting up straight.
Put a couple pineapple chunks into the bottom of each pepper.
Note: I pulled the sausage out for the photo shoot, it’s still frozen. You’ll want it thawed and soft. For four peppers, I used a little less than half of the sausage–it’ll depend on how many peppers you are cooking and how big they are.
Cut an end off the sausage and squeeze/spoon out sausage into each pepper.
Add another pineapple or two on top of each — you’ll want the peppers to be about 3/4 full–save room to add the couscous later.
Put the tops on the peppers, drizzle with oil enough so they won’t dry out and the bottoms won’t burn. Bake in oven for about 40 minutes or until they look mostly cooked and the tops are a tad brown.
Meanwhile, cook your couscous following the package directions.
When the peppers are done-ish, pull them out, pull the hats off, and spoon in some couscous. You can stir carefully so the sausage and couscous are blended in the pepper. You might add another pineapple on top to peak out of the hat. This’ll keep it from getting dry and adds color.
Option: cover with a sheet of aluminum foil, especially if your oven runs hot. You want the sausage fully cooked but don’t want to burn the peppers. Bake for another 12ish minutes.
Serve over a bed of couscous.
September 26, 2019
Polish Borscht (Barszcz) Beet Borscht
https://www.facebook.com/anetabistro/
Visited Aneta’s Bistro in Ocala recently — best borscht ever! I’d never attempted borscht before, so I was excited to give it a go. I don’t know Aneta’s recipe, but it had a bit of vinegar to it. In recent, years, I’ve gotten addicted to the local specialty oil and vinegar shops where you can sample a wide assortment of flavored oils and vinegars… and hello, there’s a chocolate vinegar– lovely with fruit salads…
[image error]This is a beautiful book with large, lush photos throughout.
So I found a recipe for borscht in a lovely picture/recipe book called “from borshch to blinis: Traditional Cooking from Russia and Poland” by Catherine Atkinson, contributing editor, Lesley Chamberlain.
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I modified the basic ingredients a little as I’m not wild about celery or parsley, but here is the original list of ingredients, to which I would add chocolate vinegar. (2 teaspoons) I did have celery salt on hand, (weird I like that more than celery, suspect it’s a remnant from my mother’s Bloody Mary days…) so I added celery salt.
I followed the instructions and the result was tasty but not quite right. Now, I did have more than 2 pounds of beets, I’m sure. For lunch the next day, I poured the leftovers into a blender until it was smooth. This did the trick! The flavors were blended nicely. It was so good, I didn’t even heat it up, it was lovely chilled!
September 25, 2019
MONKEY MIND GOODREADS GIVEAWAY!
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Contest ends on October 15, 2019
Click on the book to get to the giveaway!
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Monkey Mind
by J. Elliott
Giveaway ends October 15, 2019.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
September 9, 2019
Paranormals (2014)
Stars: Daniel Lachman, Kemerton Hargrove Jr., Mitch Landry
A charming bromance movie about Adam and Thomas, two best friends who’ve been ghost hunting together since childhood. As they enter adulthood, Thomas gets a “real job” at an office in Dallas with a double cubicle and his own little computer. Adam must find a new partner if he is going to start a ghost hunting business. But Adam’s new partner is a shady con artist and Thomas’s success is thwarted by an adversary in the office.
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This isn’t a scary movie at all, so if you’re looking for a scare, this isn’t it. The film has the pace and indie feel of the series The Detectorists and one of my favorite films Safety Not Guaranteed. I recommend it for its originality and quirkiness. And if you work in a tedious job with a cubicle and a copier that seems to malfunction with regularity, this is a must see.
August 22, 2019
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2018)
The book of the same name by Shirley Jackson, is one of my all-time favorites, and this film captures the feel of the book well. A common theme in Jackson’s work is the sense that “polite society” is just a thin veneer of gentility with an underbelly seething with judgement, hostility, and menace. At a glance, the two sisters seem peculiar but how did they get that way? Are they the frightening ones?
As a largish woman with red hair and glasses, Jackson did not align herself with the June Cleevers of the world or a society in which women were not expected to have intelligence and were expected to host cocktail parties to promote their husbands, enjoy housework and raise children.
This novel and film focus on two sisters, who live in a rambling mansion with their mentally-impaired uncle Julian. The rest of their family died in a poisoning accident at dinner. The older sister was the main suspect. Though she was acquitted–apparently along the lines of “a nice girl like that could never do such a thing” –the townspeople regards the two girls with fear and suspicion.
Mary Catherine, aka “Merricat” must foray into town once a week for food. As a nervous introvert, she dreads these encounters with the outside world. Her sister Constance and uncle Julian never leave the house.
When an estranged cousin arrives to “help”, he upsets the harmonious dynamic of the household. Constance, portrayed in the film as a Barbie-esque product of the 50’s, a submissive woman who will look to a male figure for guidance and smile her way through any unpleasantness and only see the good in people, welcomes him into their home. Merricat sees through his charming façade. A self-made witch, she works charms to protect them from his insinuating presence. Charles is strong. Merricat feels him turning her beloved Constance against her. Unlike her pliant sister, Merricat will fight back with all she’s got.
The film follows the novel well but took a liberty with the ending regarding cousin Charles. A pity that Shirley Jackson is no longer with us to interview regarding this departure from her story. Personally, I think it works logically and adds some tension cinematically though it does change the yin/yang dynamic between the male and female characters.
Trailer:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5952138/videoplayer/vi256359705?ref_=tt_ov_vi
August 10, 2019
Fun with Chocolate and It’s Sort of Healthy Too!
My favorite new thing:
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[image error]Sorry the glare hides the Boar’s Head logo, but I bet other companies have it now too.
[image error]It’s pretty fine over a sweet potato… this was my dash-out-the-door lunch yesterday.
I like hummus anyway, but THIS is the bomb, chocolate lovers! And dark chocolate has antioxidants, they say, right? I LOVE sweet potatoes, and this is a pretty nifty combo! The hummus is a bit pricey, so that limits the options somewhat, like I’m sure it’d be great swirled into a sweet potato pie and I might experiment with that.
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