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~ Female. Fearless.

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Summer Cozy Recommendations

26 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by Lipstick Commando in Uncategorized

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Reading and summer seem to go together, and not just because schools are out. Summer is hot, so when you have down time, nothing beats a cool beverage and a good book. Here are some of the books I’ve been reading, all from authors who are new to me. LipstickCommando.com

  1. Kale to the Queen by Nell Hampton (2017)

Chef Carrie Ann Cole has long dreamed of being personal chef to celebrities, so she is thrilled to accept that position under that Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. It means moving from Chicago to London, leaving behind her boyfriend of six years, and getting used to life at Kensington Palace—where she has her own chambermaid (whom she never lays eyes on), virtually every door has a key card, and a number of the male employees are extremely attractive. Carrie Ann has not even gone through orientation when she finds her assistant, Frank, dead in the kitchen’s greenhouse. Worse, her other assistant, Michael, is arrested for the murder. In the ensuing days, she must hire new staff, dodge the ire of the palace’s head chef, and find a way to prepare healthy, wholesome meals for the royal family without access to her kitchen. Oh, and, if Michael is ever going to come back to work, she had better prove his innocence.

This novel is well paced, clever, and fun—I never had an inkling as to the murderer’s identity, yet the solution makes perfect sense. Like so many foodie mysteries, this one includes recipes. I never make them, but they are fun to peruse from time to time. They are also placed in the back of the novel, rather than interspersed throughout, so they don’t intrude in the narrative. Kale to the Queen is the first in a new series, which now includes a second novel, Lord of the Pies (2018).

  1. Lending a Paw by Laurie Cass (2013)

Librarian Minnie Hamilton is proud to launch her pet project, the new bookmobile for Chilson, Michigan. Eddie, the tabby cat who adopted her six months ago, stows away and becomes the new bookmobile mascot. Thus begins the Bookmobile Cat Mysteries, which now has seven installments. This is a fun series with an amusing cat who helps sniff out clues. Minnie, for her part, is a hard-working, determined woman who is, unfortunately, a bit of a doormat when it comes to romance. Nevertheless, she is driven to help people, including, er, helping the police with their murder investigations. After all, research is what librarians do best!

This is a low-key cozy series with a likeable sleuth and amusing supporting characters. It’s amusing and logical. Minnie cares about the people around her, even the ones she does not like. At the same time, she displays just the right amount of introspection, encouraging a bit of self-evaluation and improvement in the reader. Eddie’s personality, based on a real-life feline, is skillfully wrought. Any cat lover will easily recognize the relationship between cat and human. These books make excellent downtime reading.

  1. Raspberry Danish Murder by Joanne Fluke (2018)

This novel is #22 featuring Hannah Swensen. This is one series it is probably best to read from the beginning. I started with this one, and was at a disadvantage. The characters’ personalities have already been established in previous novels, so the details are sparse here. Here is what I could glean. Hannah Swensen, our unlucky-in-love heroine, has her own café in a small Minnesota town. She spends most of her time thinking about baking and trying out new recipes on family and friends. Occasionally, she will take freshly-baked goods to people as excuses/bribes when she needs to question them, so she can solve a murder. In fact, every conversation in the book seems to take place over food, and often includes food as subject matter. As for the other characters in the book, they like to eat. I understood the various roles of the female characters; however, not having read the previous books, I found it hard to differentiate the male characters. By the end of the book, the two characters I felt I knew best—though not extremely well—were Hannah and her cat, Moishe.

And at least once, someone calls a recipe by its proper name, including capitalized letters. It doesn’t strike me as a natural way to speak; yes, one might occasionally do that, but it seems a bit like overkill here.

In fact, my initial impression was that this is actually a cookbook with occasional bits of fiction thrown in—but, of course, that is an exaggeration. Every couple of chapters or so, the book has three or four pages of recipes; since I don’t like to interrupt the flow of the story (and I rarely cook or bake), I skipped most of these. Nevertheless, once I got to the end, I was sufficiently intrigued to want to read more in the series. I picked up three more at a recent trip to the library, and I’ve already read #14, Devil’s Food Cake Murder (2011). I really liked that one, and felt like I was getting a better handle on the characters’ identities. I’ll definitely keep reading this series.

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Hemingway Novel Social Media Game

02 Tuesday Jun 2015

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game, Hemingway, literature, social media

I decided to try my hand at a social media game–the kind which places you in a hypothetical situation and asks you to fill in the first nine friends on your friends’ list, assigning them to certain roles. I thought carefully, and decided to play upon my strengths. Hence, Hemingway. Here’s the game; and it’s Hemingway, so be advised of mildly adult language:

You and 9 friends find yourself in a Hemingway novel. Fill in the blanks with the first 9 people on your friends’ list.

  • Spends three weeks silently fly-fishing in a rural stream:
  • Claims to be a “lousy Catholic,” but can’t stop going to church to pray:
  • Uses another person’s execution as a diversion to escape a firing squad:
  • Spends 6 drunken months in the hospital recovering from a leg wound:
  • Smuggles booze into the hospital for the above patient:
  • Constantly picks fights with smaller opponents:
  • Arms a fishing boat and cruises the coast of Cuba, looking for German subs:
  • Discovers the meaning of life 20 seconds before being killed:
  • Thinks that “not being a bitch” is “sort of like what we have for God”:

Thanks for reading, and enjoy!

Of Vigilance and Grasshoppers

18 Wednesday Jun 2014

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container gardening, organic

This spring I steeled myself for the worst and hoped for the best. Yes, once more unto the breach! More container gardening!

With some heirloom seeds passed around at a local church and some commercial organic seeds, I planted carrots, beets, corn salad (mache), red romaine, Italian parsley, sage, and Genovese basil. I also attempted some starts using the root end of an organic celery bunch, the same of organic green leaf lettuce, and some gourmet variety organic fingerling potatoes, as suggested on many web sites. I chose organic not only because I prefer organic vegetables, but because conventionally-grown produce is said to be sprayed with a growth inhibitor. This was an experiment, done because we liked the potatoes and a few had started to develop eyes.

But, really, all gardening is an experiment. It’s important to remember that, because, as this blog has shown, if nothing else, results are never guaranteed. You never know what will grow in any particular season, or what will do poorly. When we grow tomatoes, we know to plant several different varieties, because invariably 1 or 2 varieties may do really well, while the rest produce very little or even no fruit. And this year my container garden has proven this once again.

 
 photo IMG_6103_zps8ecc5895.jpg

Results so far are mixed: the beets never amounted to much. In fact, I got one tiny beet about the size of a marble. It was good, but not very filling. The other beet seeds sprouted and seemed to grow well for several weeks, but apparently not much was going on under the surface. I haven’t harvested the carrots yet, but the greens seem to have stopped growing, so I will likely do that soon. The corn salad basically disappeared. I think something was eating it, but I could never figure out what. After our spring rains came, late this year, two surviving sprouts developed very well. I’ve never had it before, so I’m not sure how big it is supposed to get; however, it, too, seems to have tapered off in growth, so I’m eyeing them for part of a salad. Similarly, the parsley did nothing for weeks: 1 sprout no more than an inch high struggled along until the rain came. It is now several inches high, although it is not a big plant, useful for much beyond adding a little color or flavor to any dish. The basil has been a fairly slow-grower, as well as the sage, although both have looked healthy. We warmed up fast this spring–I think getting into the 90s in late April just after the last frost–and the lettuce, plagued by little caterpillars at first, soon bolted. The celery grew several inches with the rain water, but, as with the other plants, seems to have stopped growing. I think it just got too fast too soon.

This past winter was a cold one for this area–we had several hard freezes–and I for one looked forward to having fewer mosquitos, fleas, and other pests this spring and summer. However, conditions were apparently also just perfect for another problem we don’t usually have–grasshoppers! They are all over the horseradish and spearmint in the ground, and they are starting to get into my pot! I am not happy about this development. All of my crops, such as they are, are starting to show signs of trouble from these pests. I tried diatomaceous earth and an old garlic oil spray leftover from last year, but neither worked. The latter was too old, I suspect. Today I just set a trap by sinking a glass jar half-filled with molasses water in the soil. I hope it works. I do not want to lose my crops or have to resort to chemical pesticides or poisons.

Vigilance, as every gardener knows, is the key to any garden’s success. I will stay vigilant.

 

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Mystery Berries – Found these over the Christmas holiday. Anyone know what they are?

28 Tuesday Jan 2014

Tags

berries, mystery, plants

Mystery Berries - Found these over the Christmas holiday. Anyone know what they are?

Yep, these are mysterious berries. They were about the size of dried peas, growing in a well-shaded wooded area, next to a rarely used path. As you can see, some sun filters through to them. They cluster like grapes, but they certainly did not look like them.

Posted by Lipstick Commando | Filed under Uncategorized

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Tea for One

27 Thursday Dec 2012

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Christmas

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