Kate Collins's Blog, page 126

Cleaning the fridge and other household tasks

by Lorraine Bartlett / Lorna Barrett / L.L. Bartlett

I can't believe my Mum has been gone nine months. : (

I've spent a lot of that time working on emptying her house and getting it ready for sale. I haven't always had the help I thought I'd get from other family members, so it's mostly just been me doing the actual work. We're getting down to the wire now. In fact, I signed the paperwork to put the house up for sale next Monday. But there's still so much left to do.

One prickly problem has been the carpet tacks. Six real estate agents came through to give us estimates. (My brother's idea.) Every one of them said, "rip up that ugly, dirty carpet in the living room."  Brother was not convinced, but he and I did pull it up...except, he was sooooooo convinced that everyone buying houses these days wants carpet and NOT hardwood floors  (he doesn't watch HGTV)  that he refused to pull up the carpet tacks (little bits of wood with spikes sticking up. That's what holds the carpet in place).

The real estate agent I chose (one of the six and a very nice woman) said, "Uh-uh. I'll take care of this." We've been playing email tag but today tack-removal man is going to show up and take them out.  She also dropped another bombshell. "Someone wants to see the house today BEFORE it goes on the market; is that okay?"

Well ... I still have a whole list of things that need to get done before 5 pm tonight, one of which is a little touch-up painting outside. The only thing is, it hasn't been warm enough to paint. Mother Nature is supposed to cooperate on Easter Sunday. (Guess what I'll be doing!)

In the meantime, yesterday I cleaned Mum's fridge. I have never done such a meticulous job of cleaning anything. It took me more than 90 minutes to clean a fridge that wasn't all that dirty, but I wanted it to be immaculate.  There was only one big (gooky) mess under one of the crisper drawers, and it took me about twenty minutes with hot water and soft scrub to get it clean. (I have no idea how long it had been there or what it was. *shudder*) Of course, the fact that there were only a few bottles of water and ice tea in there made the job a lot easier.  (There's also a bottle of red wine, but I don't drink wine. Not sure what to do with it.)

The worst part, though, was crumbs in the freezer.  What is with crumbs? Nothing I did seemed to get them up.  Dry cloth, damp cloth, sopping wet cloth. I decided to let them sit there and I'll have another go at them.  But darned if that older fridge doesn't now look brand new!

In the meantime, I'm hoping the rain holds off long enough that I can do some window washing.  (I don't even wash my own windows.)

I want the house to be sparkling and beautiful...something my folks would be proud of. 

By Sunday it will be. 

Do you think cleaning the fridge is one of the nastier household jobs?  If not, what IS your least favorite household job?

Bring on the chickens!

By Mary Jane Maffini aka Victoria Abbott 
My professional organizing character, Charlotte Adams, who taught me a lot, was always recommending rotating collections.  Not only does it reduce clutter, but you can really enjoy that collection when it’s time to put it on show.  




All to say, with the arrival of Easter, it is time to pick up a blooming hydrangea
 and then to cart out my army of chickens and fill them with chocolate eggs!  
As you can see this little collection is quite focused.
Although they are mostly hens with the odd duck, swan and turkey, they're known as 'the chickens' around here.  I can’t really explain the rabbit, but he must come out every year.

It all started with this glossy pink hen that belonged to my mother.


 I always loved it and the clear glass turkey that appeared every Thanksgiving and Christmas. They remind me of my mother and of family celebrations.  Over the years, I’ve found others at antique fairs and second hand shops.  Victoria has given me several as gifts.  I treasure them and am always thrilled to let them out for their springtime parade around the house.  As you can see, we've diversified into chicken pitchers as well. They were picked up in a sale in a country chuch in England in the spring of 1996.  They do like to make an appearance and remind me of that year in the green and leafy U.K.
This chat has reminded me that it’s time to stock up on those chocolate eggs that all the kids and this adult really love.  Part of the fun is lifting the lid off the chicken to find the chocolate treats.
What about you? Do you have any collections that you keep for spring, Easter or other special celebrations?   Do any of you have a thing for chickens?  Come on by and let us know.

What’s in your Easter Basket?

Duffy Brown here talking about the yummy side of Easter. There is the traditional lamb for dinner or ham and cocoanut cake for desert but what about the Easter basket? Easter is not Easter...least in my house...without the traditional Easter basket.
Yeah, I know it’s for the kids but I got to confess that I sneak  my share. There is my absolute fave...the Peeps! I just love those things. Maybe it’s the colors of pink, blue, yellow, purple or the shapes of bunnies and chicks that make them so tempting. I like mine stale. I leave them out for a few days and till they get hard. Best way to eat Peeps.

There is a side story to this. I left one out for six months. Atually I found it after six months on the windowsill from an Easter egg hunt...this sure puts my cleaning skills in question. So being me I had to eat the Peep. Do not do this! I dislocated my jaw. There are stale Peeps then really stale Peeps.
But I digress. Other yummy candy is the jellybeans. I love the black ones. Those chocolate covered marshmallow eggs are amazing. Take a bite and the chocolate cracks and your teeth sink into the soft marshmallow. Nothing more delish than that.
Than there’s the Cadbury eggs. Easter is not Easter without these. What about the chocolate bunnies shapes? Not my fave but it’s chocolate so no argument here.


What about you? What’s in your Easter Basket? Got a fave candy that just sort of jumps in your mouth when making the baskets for the kids?  
I’ll give away two Braking for Bodies totes from the answers. Winners announced tomorrow. 

It's Tax Time

by Maggie Sefton




Well, it's that Time again.  Time for most of us to gather together all our information from last year 2015 and either sit down some evening and figure out our simple tax returns by filling in the information from the form 1099(s) that we received from our employer(s) or spend several evenings gathering all receipts and expenses from 2015 for our small businesses and --- either spend several evenings computing all the expenses for our businesses plus all the other Income Tax forms required by the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) ----OR-----take all that gathered information to our C.P.A. or other Income Tax professionals.


Most of you folks may recall my saying that I was a C.P.A. myself years ago.  That's true.  But after I gather all my info, I also take all of it to my C.P.A.  She and her staff do an excellent job in a timely way.  Since it's been so many years since I worked in a tax and accounting firm, there have been MANY, MANY changes to the Federal Income Tax Code.  There's no way I want to spend the time necessary wading through all those income tax regulations----pages and pages.  Yuck!  So, last week I took everything to my C.P.A.


Most of you will only have the simple tax forms to think about and will probably easily complete your own forms yourselves.  In fact, I bet a large segment of you folks have already completed that task and some of you early birds may have already received your Refund.  If so, Yay!!!   You are way ahead of the rest of us.  Go out and celebrate---if your refund was large enough.  And if it was really large, why not plan a fun trip for yourself and/or your family.  Enjoy!  

CAN YOU KILL A RECIPE BY OVER-TWEAKING IT?

By Mary Kennedy                   
                                                           
                                    Yes, sadly, you can! Ali Taylor, in my Dream Club series, loves to tweak her favorite recipes and "never makes the same dish twice." While her sense of adventure is admirable, the results are less than stellar. Once, she went overboard on creating "healthy" cookies and the results were disastrous. Ali's "whole wheat soy nuggets delights" were so unpalatable that Taylor had to give them to the birds in the back garden. And there was a certain tofu casserole that no one could eat--finally, Bruno, the boxer next door, manfully chowed it down.                                                                                                                         As a mystery writer, I'm used to killing off my characters. And since it's true confession time today, let me tell you about a certain zucchini casserole. It's absolutely delish and I first tasted it in a Paris café.
                                                        
                                                          
 You can read the original blog here http://www.cozychicksblog.com/2016/02/ooh-la-la-recipes-from-french-cafe.html But I'll repost the recipe for zucchini gratin right here.                                                             Ingredients:4 zucchini1 yellow onion  (I like Vidalia, but any sweet onion will do)1 8 oz container sour cream, either regular, low fat, or fat free3 eggsGrated gruyere for topping
Directions  Crack the eggs into a bowl, beat and add sour cream. Set aside. Saute 4 chopped zucchini with the chopped onion. Once they are sauteed, remove from heat and let cool for a little while. Now add the egg and sour cream mixture. Add a touch of nutmeg.  Spoon into a greased casserole dish and top with grated gruyere.  Bake at 375 for 20-30 minutes, until top is golden. This dish is even better the next day, and also freezes well.  How did I tinker with it and kill it, you ask? Answer: I tweaked it too much! Like Ali, I decided to try some "substitutions" with awful results. I switched out the sour cream with Greek yogurt (which usually isn't a bad thing, but  this time it was). I used Egg Beaters instead of eggs. I used frozen zucchini instead of fresh. And (horror of horrors!) I used fat-free cheddar instead of rich, tasty Gruyere. The finished result bore almost no resemblance to the original!  Have you ever done this? Added a little of this, a little of that, until the dish bore almost no resemblance to the original? I hope I'm not the only one guilty of murdering a perfectly delightful dish! Mary Kennedy 

Spotlight on Nate Sutter...hunky guy from Cycle Path Mysteries

Hi Nate Sutter here, all the way from Detroit.
Notice the frompart? Yeah, I’m now back home in the land of milk and honey, Mackinac Island. I was born and raised here then had in itch for the big city.
Detroit is not for sissies. I did under cover for months and had special training to get through it. Talk about tough! But I did it and no one ties bows, hangs bunting, arranges flowers, china and crystal and can dance a waltz better than me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got a lot of crap from the other guys on the force but this was a rough case and to underline the point I got caught in a shoot-out. Money went missing and some not too savory characters are looking for it and guess who’s in their cross-hairs?




So here I am back at Fudge Island for a little R&R since the regular local police chief is laid up with back surgery. It’s a good time to visit with my mother who owns a fudge shop right next to Rudy’s rides, a bicycle shop. And there’s the rub.All was fine until one night I was sitting at my favorite bar, the Stang, having a beer and got this 911 phone call...
“Dead person on hill.” What the heck? I thought to myself. This is Mackinac Island there are no dead people except up at the cemetery. It was obviously someone drunk-dialing the police as does happen more often than you’d think around here. I disconnected only to get another call that went like...
  “Look, you jackass. There’s a dead woman up here on Huron Road by some steps so put down the brewski, drag your sorry self off your barstool...I can hear that jukebox in the background... and get your big fat island butt up here now.”
And that is pretty much how I met Evie Bloomfield the bane of my life.  She’s from Chicago and here to help out at the bike shop. That part I can live with but now she’s knee-deep in trying to prove that the guy who owns the bike shop is not a murderer. She’s wrong, Rudy is the killer and she’s going to have to realize I’m right...right?

Now how do I convince her to just go back to Chicago and let me handle things but I have a bad feeling that’s not going to happen any time soon.

SPOTLIGHT ON OFFICER TYLER “SMILEY” DEKKER

Poor Officer Dekker: little did he know when he moved to Harrison Falls, New York, to begin working his first job as a police officer, that his life would be turned upside down.



At the start of the first book collector mystery, The Christie Curse, it was just his bad luck to fall head over heels for Jordan Kelly Bingham, the niece of a large rabble of lovable Irish crooks.  Why couldn’t this nice young man find a nice fellow officer or a teacher or a …?  Well, he just couldn’t, that’s all.  Smiley (as Jordan calls him) has already gone against the wishes of his family to join the police and it’s a bit of a lonely existence in this town in Upstate, New York.  He has found himself, in his late twenties, a bit adrift with only his large, shaggy mutt (Cobain) as company.  He has bought himself a small vintage bungalow, which is always spotless. And yet, we like him. His plants are green, his dog is well-cared for and he knows his way around a kitchen.  He’s straight as an arrow. He may have opportunities for advancement at work. And he’ll make detective yet.  Jordan likes Smiley a lot.  She may be the first person in her family to go straight, but she still loves and spends time with her Uncle Mick and Uncle Lucky. It goes without saying that they are horrified by the scandal of having a cop in the family. 
Face it, that kind of involvement couldn’t possibly help a young recruit build the career that he’s sacrificed so much for. Plus Jordan so often seems to be closely implicated in crimes herself.  He’s pretty sure she owns a set of lockpicks and she does know how to disappear into the fog at night. There’s no way he can let her get away with that or that he can jeopardize his career. Too bad Smiley can’t keep his emotions under his police cap, but that telltale blush that starts at his neck and races to the roots of his wavy blond hair keeps giving him away. 
Jordan can always make him smile:  he doesn’t know it’s because she likes to see the little space between his front teeth.  It is pretty cute, although he doesn’t know that either.
Smiley’s challenge as the book collector series moves along is to make that decision:  is he there for her or will he sacrifice Jordan for his job?   Can this relationship ever really work? Will the conflict of interest between the would-be police detective and the criminal almost in-laws be a deal-breaker? 
  By the end of book four, The Marsh Madness, we all know the answer to that.  Oh yes, we do.
If you have any advice for Smiley, do leave it in a comment. We'll make sure he gets it!


Find more about us or to sign up for our newsletter, visit our website and check out CONTACT US That's right:  HERE
Here we're trying out our Officer Abbott look. 





.

Keeping me company

by Lorraine Bartlett / Lorna Barrett / L.L. Bartlett

Things are winding down at my mother's house, who passed away eight months ago. (Why does it seem like just last week?)  As her executor, it's up to me to settle the estate.

My Mum was a bit of a pack rat, so there were a LOT of papers, boxes, and closets (you can't believe how many closets that house has) full of stuff to go through. But as I mentioned, it's starting to wind down. I have a few more boxes to pack, one more yard sale to run (in April), and the inside of the house is pretty much done.

It has taken many, MANY hours to get this job done. Since my brother works two jobs, it's been pretty much me.  But I've been kept company by audiobooks.

I love to be read to. Mr. L often starts the day reading the news to me while I get breakfast going and feed cats.  I make green juice for myself, enough for two days, and it's time consuming. At least 20 minutes spent slicing and chopping before the veggies go into the Nutribullet. Often he'll pick a more entertaining story, rather than yet another article on misery somewhere else in the world.  It's nice.

But at my Mother's house (and in my car), I like to hear a more involved story. I'm currently listening to my own book, With Baited Breath, the first full-length novel in my Lotus Bay mystery series.  Why listen to my own stuff? Because I'm trying to figure out the plot to the next book and don't have time to actually READ the book. And Heather Masters did a wonderful job narrating the book.

Sorting and cleaning don't seem so boring when you're listening to a good story.  (Okay, I happen to like my own stories ... that's why I write them.)  I like to listen to audiobooks when I fold laundry, too. Is there any more boring task than folding laundry and pairing socks? (I have enough socks that I only have to wash them every 5-6 weeks...that means it takes a l-o-n-g time to pair them.)

If you like audiobooks, maybe you'd like to listen to mine.  You can check out my website pages under my various names: Lorraine Bartlett, L.L. Bartlett, and Lorna Barrett.

Do you have a favorite audio narrator?  (I may be prejudiced, but I really enjoy listening to just about anything my own narrator, Steven Barnett reads. Just ordered a BIG fantasy novel he read. I'll probably start that tomorrow.)

A Taste From Childhood

 By VICTORIA ABBOTT
So, what's this all about?


Including food in our mysteries is as natural as breathing for us.  We love cooking and we love eating, and so not wearing a Size 2 is also as natural as breathing.  But, let’s not go down that path.  Our point today is that we also love including recipes in our books.  We first started that with the first book in our book collector series: The Christie Curse.  ‘Somehow’, Signora Panetone, an eccentric Italian cook, had wiggled her way into the narrative and would appear three times a day to offer towering plates of food to our other characters.  Our young sleuth, Jordan Kelly Bingham, who many of you will remember was raised by her crooked uncles and fed a fairly steady diet of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and beans and franks is enchanted and never minds being urged to overdo it all.  
Our readers responded positively too:  maybe we all like the idea of being waited on with delicious food?  We do.
As some of our relatives have this exact refrain: “Eat! Eat! Whatsa matter, you don’t like it?”, it felt so right to us to incorporate that into the dialogue.  We have included three of the signora’s recipes in each book so far. 
This week we are double testing our three recipes for The Hammett Hex, which is now available for PRE-ORDER HERE




 Because THE HAMMETT HEX takes place in San Francisco and some new characters enter the fray, we are including three recipes that Officer Tyler “Smiley” Dekker remembers fondly from his childhood.  Ahem, they may have been popular with some other childhoods, no names mentioned.  Maybe even yours?
The recipes are Gram’s Best Fried Chicken , Favorite Lemon Pudding , and Chocolate Chip Meringue Kisses .  We tried a number of updates with the fried chicken, including coconut oil and variations on the spices and in the end came back to this one. 




We’ve included a few shots of the third and best test of the fried chicken:  trust us, it didn’t last long.  So what are your favorite foods from days gone by?  Do you like our choices?   Do recipes in the back of mysteries appeal to you?  


And don't let us forget to wish you a Happy St. Paddy's Day! 


 

Love being Green

Mackinac Island is not only a really neat eight-mile island in the Great Lakes where Lake Huron meets Lake Michigan, but it is probably one of the “greenest” places in the US. Eighty-percent of the island is State Park, there are no motorized vehicles and recycle is a big way of life because getting rid of garbage on a island is tough.
Transportation is via foot, horse...there are 500 really big horses to do all the heavy lifting...and, of course, there are bikes, lots and lots of them. Fact is you can’t swing a dead cat around this island without wiping out a couple of bikers. There are tandem bikes, geared biked, bikes for kids and three-wheeled bikes. There are bikes with trailers for taking the tots for a ride or the family dog. In Braking for Bodies, Evie who owns a bike shop has carts that hook on the back of bikes for golf clubs.
You can rent a bike from the many shops on Main Street or bring your own on the ferry. And, yes, that is the only way to get to MI unless you fly in on a one-engine puddle-jumper.
I visited MI with my bike and my daughter from NYC. When we got off the boat she asked if we died, surely this was heaven. Gong from the racket of Time Square to Mackinac Island all in one day is definite culture shock! There is NO noise unless you count the clip-clop of horse hooves noise. There are no traffic lights, no traffic jams, and no honking horns. There is clean air, blue skies and peace. Bikes with baskets are parked in front of shops instead of cars and parking lots are bike racks. Groceries and other purchases are in reusable sacks and everyone is walking everywhere and loving it even in the rain. It’s called an umbrella.

Mackinac Island is a clean way of life. Considering there are only five-hundred full-time residents on the island this environmentally sound living sounds pretty darn easy. And it is as its part of life. 
Clothes Swaps are twice a year where residents swap clothes to enhance their wardrobe. This year the yellow sweater with rhinestones might be yours and next year you might see it on your neighbor who shares that same great taste in clothes. Furniture is resold or given away. The post office, ground zero for catching up on local news and gossip, has a bulletin board for that very purpose.
Now what about when those tourists who visit? How do the locals get the guests to go along with their ideas and they have to as there are nearly a million visitors each year. Mackinac Island has figured out that people do what is expected. There are trashcans separated into plastic, paper, trash. Tourists come prepared to walk or take horse taxis and they bring their won bags, bikes and sense that time moves at horse speed and not warp speed.  
Mackinac is green out of necessity and everyone who goes there seems to get on board with that idea and it works. One of the best parts of visiting Mackinac Island is that you feel one with the Earth and not just someone running around on it. That’s what living green is all about and it can be done. We just have to make the commitment.