Ute Carbone's Blog, page 43

Passionate Cooks

Click on image for more information!I'm excited to announce that my recipe for Capri Salad is being included in the Passionate Cooks cookbook. The book includes over 150 recipes; from hot to sweet and everything in between.
It'll be available on October 1 from ARe and best of all, it'll be free! You can pre-order your copy now!

Postcard from Eastham part two

Sand patterns at low tide on the Eastham Tidal Flat, Cape Cod Bay
It's Sand Art

Postcard from Eastham

I'm on vacation in beautiful Eastham, Massachusetts on Cape Cod this week.

Having a wonderful time! Wish you were here!

I'm in the Vineyard

I'm over at The Writer's Vineyard today, blogging about the sharks on Cape Cod.

The Whisper of Time has Arrived!

The Whisper of Time, my time travel romance novella has arrived!

When fate offers Gwynn Powell a chance to start over, she jumps at the opportunity. Laid off and living with a husband whose gambling problem has eaten through a good part of their savings, Gwynn buys a farmhouse sight unseen, leaving both her marriage and her old home behind.

But fate has more in mind for Gwynn than just a new home. The farmhouse, tucked away in the Green Mountains of Vermont where even GPS can’t find it, is also a step back in time. And Slate Peck, the farm’s caretaker and part owner, is tied to Gwynn’s destiny in ways she never expected.








Sneak peek at Whisper of Time: Chapter 1

      It figured that I would get lost. Kyle was always telling me I had a terrible sense of direction. “Turn left,” I would say, and he would answer “Which left, Gwynn, yours or mine?” I used to think everything Kyle said was charming.

I’d since found out that Kyle, like GPS, had a limited range. Out here, in the middle of Vermont farm country, my GPS had stopped functioning. A signal kept insisting the phone was searching for a satellite, but it was becoming pretty clear that the satellite was nowhere to be found. It was hiding, perhaps, from the snippy woman’s voice that commanded me to turn left when I wanted to turn right.

Luckily, the real estate agent had given me directions. I’d scribbled them down on the back of an envelope and was now trying to decode them. The agent’s name was Vera Applegate, which I thought sounded like Vermont. I could almost hear Kyle, “What, exactly, does Vermont sound like?” And I might try and explain that it sounded like rolling green hills and stone fences and cows lying under huge old maple trees. None of it would have made sense to Kyle.

“Take route 153 from West Rupert town center and turn left on Witches Hollow Road,” I read aloud. My bulldog Tyrone cocked his head from where he sat in the passenger seat of the VW bug. “I know, right? Which was town center, the shopping plaza or that quaint green with the historical marker and the gazebo? And how far from town center?” Tyrone lost interest in my pondering and went back to doing what he does best, sticking his head out the window and letting the wind blow his jowls back. Miss Kitty, my tabby, was pacing the back seat with a bad case of nerves. I’d let her out of her carrier back in Saratoga, because she had been yowling. She had stopped complaining aloud, though the prowl wasn’t much better. I kept waiting for her to land on top of my head so that she could navigate.

The road wound this way and that through the hills. I had slowed to a crawl, nearly coming to a stop at each intersection to read the road signs. Some of them looked like they had been posted in the eighteenth century and never updated and some were missing all together. An old truck, that looked like something out of the fifties, with a huge toothy grill, eased up behind me, the grill nearly kissing my VW’s back bumper. I hate tailgaters, so in defiance I slowed even more. The truck beeped, making Miss Kitty jump and then the driver throttled up the engine and roared past me. I caught a glimpse of a nice looking sandy-haired man with a Jack Russell terrier on his lap. In that instant, I got the notion that the dog was driving the car.

“Don’t get any bright ideas,” I said to Tyrone. I went back to searching for Witches Hollow Road. A wonderful name, isn’t it? I could picture a trio of old crones stirring a steaming black cauldron, throwing in mysterious ingredients like eye of newt and chanting spells.

That the farm was on Witches Hollow Road was only one in a long list of features which made me take the leap and buy the place. I could hear Kyle saying it was an impulsive thing to do. At least it wasn’t compulsive, I argued back to his voice in my head.

I had, on the trip from Manhattan, scripted out the whole of the argument we’d have when he found out what I’d done. He would storm into the farm kitchen (lots of sunlight, wide oak plank floor), take the bowl of muffin batter from me and ask “Have you gone stark raving?”

And I would take the batter back, and calm as you please I’d start putting it into muffin tins. “I need a change. This is a change,” I would say.

“Who buys a farm sight unseen?” Kyle’s mouth would be set tight, his hazel eyes squinched together.

“It’s an investment.”

An investment. I loved that part. It’s what Vera Applegate said after I’d called for information on the too-good-to-be-true classified in the Sunday Times. Old Homestead. Needs some TLC. There had been a picture next to the ad, the farmhouse like something out of a picture book, an old barn sitting on an emerald meadow. Twenty Acres. Small private pond. I was enchanted.

I’d been looking at estate sales for a long time. Each week, I’d open the Times and imagine what it would be like to live in the rambling Gothic in Portland Maine, the brick row-house on Beacon Hill in Boston, the painted lady on Martha’s Vineyard. Window shopping is what it had been, a Sunday morning pastime in the tiny basement apartment on Tenth Avenue.

“We love the city,” Kyle would say when I pointed out the cedar-shingled beach house in Hampton. “And we could never afford it.”

He was right. We couldn’t have afforded any of them. And they would have stayed tight in my imagination if I hadn’t seen the price on Auld Lang Farm. I thought it was a typo.

When I called Vera, price was the first thing I asked about. “We can get you financing. You would only need five percent down.”

I quoted the price again. “Is that right?”

“Sticker shock.” I could hear Vera chuckle through the phone lines. “We’ll run through the numbers and find a way.”

I hadn’t the heart to tell her that I didn’t think it expensive. Quite the opposite. I began to wonder what was wrong with it. “It needs a little work, updating,” Vera said. “Nothing too daunting.”

I pondered the house for a week. I even asked my friend Gloss to do a Tarot reading. “Big changes in your future,” Gloss announced.

“What kind of changes?”

 “I see a farmhouse. Somewhere pastoral. And a man. Ooh, he’s your destiny. The love of your life.”

This was spooky. I hadn’t told Gloss about Vermont. “Kyle is the love my life.”

Gloss shook her head. Her earrings- a string of silver hearts- began to chime. “Never was never will be.” Gloss had advised me not to marry Kyle. She insisted that he was no way no how the man I was supposed to be with.

“I’m still married, you know.”

“You shouldn’t be.” I had never believed her, though a sliver of doubt about my future with Kyle had found its way into my brain.

That in itself might have been enough to convince me to buy the farm. But the universe wasn’t through throwing signals. A few days later, I was told Bow and Meow, the veterinary clinic where I worked, was closing. My boss, Ted Carlin, was going to retire.

“You’re a damn fine vet, Gwynn. You’ll find another job.” With that scant bit of reassurance, Ted handed me a list of places where he thought I could apply. Most were in the city, but one, right at the bottom of the list, was in Rupert, Vermont. A Dr. Henry Bolger was looking for a partner. It didn’t register at first.

“Rupert?” I asked Ted.

“In Western Vermont, near New York I think.”

Then it dawned on me. Auld Lang Farm was in Rupert! How much of a coincidence was that?

Though I still wasn’t convinced, mostly because I wasn’t sure I could talk Kyle into moving to Vermont. He was a fireman with the NYFD and he wasn’t likely to give up his job. Just the same, I called Dr. Bolger. I figured I might as well cover my bases.

“Cornell, huh?”

“Yup. I’ve been working in New York City.”

“I’m a Brooklyn boy myself.” We talked for quite a few more minutes and after that, Dr. Bolger said. “Well, you want the job or not?”

My heart was pounding. Did I want the job? “Sleep on it,” Dr. Bolger suggested.

Sleep? How was I to sleep with the universe making such a racket?

Though how was I to convince Kyle? The universe, it seemed, had an answer for that as well. Sometimes, fate can hit you over the head so hard it hurts.

Available as an e-book at:

What's your chocolate? Chocolate Pots

What's better than Chocolate? More chocolate! Go ahead, be decadent. Click on the logo and check out all the great chocolaty chocolate blogs.  Umm, chocolate pots. I first sampled one of these decadent little bits of heaven at a writer's retreat in Maine. Friend, fellow writer, and cook extrodinaire Deb Jelly made meals for us during our stay. She made a these for dessert one night. If you're not lucky enough to have Deb cook for you, here's a version you can make for yourself.


Chocolate Pots

Ingredients

2 cups whipping cream
1/2 cup strong coffee
6 ounces of good dark chocolate, chopped
1 tablespoon rum (optional)
6 egg yokes
1/4 cup sugar

Preparation
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees
2. In saucepan, heat cream over medium heat until it just begins to simmer
3. Remove from heat and add coffee, chocolate and rum. Stir until chocolate is melted
4. Whisk together egg yokes and sugar. Slowly whisk into chocolate cream mixture
5. Pour into six custard cups and cover each with foil. Place the cups into a baking dish and add enough hot water to cover halfway up the cups.
6. Bake for 50-55 minutes, until just beginning to set.
7. Take the cups from the water, remove the foil and put them into the refrigerator for two hours to finish setting. (Note: you can make them in advance. Just leave them in the fridge for several days)
8. Garnish with fresh whip cream and a few chocolate shavings before serving.

The Insecure Writer: Putting the Blah in Blogging

For more writer insecurity, click on logo


I feel the need to share a secret: I hate blogging. I should probably not be telling you this.  After all, it is written in the writer’s Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt have a blog.” Look it up; it’s right in between “Thou shalt not abuse adverbs” and “All of thy speech tags shall be called ‘said’.”             Blogging, so it is writ, is one of the best ways for an author to gain fans and influence people. Write a blog and you can razzle-dazzle ‘em with your writing acumen, your rapier wit, and your broad encyclopedic knowledge of farm animals and the like.  So blogging is on my should list. Only, each and every time I sit to write my little blog ditty, I begin to bite my fingernails to nubs. Maybe hate is the wrong word. It would be more accurate to say I dread blogging.  I dread it because most of the time I haven’t a clue what to blog about.             I write fiction. Writing fiction is easy because I get to make stuff up. Blogging is hard because blogs are supposed to be garnered from real life. My real life is about as interesting as watching grass grow.  I mean, sure, I have my moments. Just last week I found a quarter on the sidewalk in front of the grocery store. And yesterday, a missing sock was mysteriously found attached to the bed sheet.            But, most of the time, my life isn’t that interesting. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer my intense dramas to be imaginary and on the page. Life is much easier if you’re not living inside a Lifetime movie of the week. It makes for tough going if you’re trying to come up with a blog topic, though.            I will no doubt continue to slog forth on my blogging journey, continue to try and find interesting topics that will wow my blog visitors. Next week, I’m planning a blog on how finding change on the sidewalk can add up to cup a coffee in no time. Hope you’ll stop by!

Blueberry's Coming to Print!

Blueberry Truth is coming out in paperback in mid-October!



Beanie MacKenzie and her husband Mac have led perfect lives, with perfect families and perfect jobs they both love, he a leading cardiologist, she a teacher at a school for troubled children. Now they have the perfect home, a big house on a quiet Albany street, just perfect for raising a big family. Only the babies they’ve been trying so hard to conceive just won’t come.
Stressed in her marriage and fearing she may never bear children, Beanie throws herself into her work, surrounded by society’s throwaways. Enter Beanie’s new student, seven-year-old Blueberry Truth Crowley, a fiercely independent child whose life had been anything but perfect. Abused, neglected, and mistrustful of everyone around her, Truth throws a monkey wrench into the perfect order of Beanie’s classroom--and into her very life--challenging Beanie’s notions of motherhood, commitment, and family. But their unlikely bond may be just the thing to teach them both about love.

The P-Town Playlist: I Won't Back Down

From time to time, I've posted the music I listened to while writing P-Town Queen. I like to think of of Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" as Nikki's theme song.

















Nikki Silva feels like she’s blown up her life even as her brothers tease her about blowing up a boat called the Mona Lisa. Divorced, funding for her shark research cut off, she’s moved back to Provincetown to live with her father in her childhood home. Nikki hopes to regain herself. She’s written a grant proposal for the newly formed Massachusetts Bay Commission to fund a study that will get her back to the sort of research she loves. The commission is run by her ex-husband Ned, who would rather have a migraine than give money to his ex-wife.
            Marco Tornetti wants to turn a hole-in-the-wall Newark spaghetti joint into a trendy bistro. His silent partner, Fat Phil Lagosa, wants to use the place to solicit questionable business deals.  When Fat Phil accuses Marco of a double cross and has him taken for a ride by one of his hit men, Marco knows he’s in too deep.
            Marco escapes the hit man and takes the first bus out of the Tri-state area, a bus chartered by the Greater Teaneck Gay Men’s Choir and headed for Provincetown. Marco figures that Phil would never look for him in Provincetown‘s gay community. But when he meets Nikki and falls hard for her, he finds that pretending to be gay isn’t as easy as it would seem.

You can purchase  The P-Town Queen at:http://champagnebooks.com/shop/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=583http://www.bookstrand.com/the-p-town-queenhttp://www.amazon.com/dp/B0088QAL6Ghttp://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-theptownqueen-819120-149.html

Life's Simple Pleasures : Capri Salad

The  tomatoes in our garden are ready! Yesterday, I made this terrific and easy Capri salad with  fresh picked big boys and some home grown basil.







Here's the  recipe:

2 or 3 fresh tomatoes, sliced
4 ounces of mozzarella, sliced
7 or 8 basil leaves, chopped
1 T olive oil
1 T balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper

1. Arrange sliced tomatoes and mozzarella on a plate ( I like to dot the mozzarella on top, but you can intersperse it with the tomatoes if you like)
2. Top with fresh chopped basil
3. mix olive oil and vinegar. Sprinkle on top.
4. sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Enjoy!