Perils of Cooking Healthy

Who here is a foodie? I'm not. But I am interested in eating healthy food, despite the fact that I prefer the other kind. lol

I have a banana bread recipe from my mother-in-law, who is an excellent cook. I've been making it for years, and the family loves it. But - it has a lot of sugar and butter in it, plus white flour. I looked around for something 'healthier'.

I found an oatmeal-based recipe which I quite like. But no one else does. So now, when I want to make banana bread, I need to make two batches, based on two totally different recipes. Here's a photo, with the guilty culprit alongside.

Today was baking day. I had four overripe bananas, two for each loaf. My recipe is done in a food processor. Her recipe calls for creaming the sugar and butter together (ugh), beating the egg, sifting the flour with the spices, etc. Most importantly, hers calls for sour milk. So I have to take the milk out early in the day. It so happened I didn't get to the bread yesterday, so I put the milk in the fridge for overnight and took it out again today.

So, I had my sour milk, right? It goes in at the end and you have to alternate the milk with the flour mixture. It's a fair bit of work as compared with mine of just throwing everything in a bowl and hitting the switch. (Who do you think is the better cook?)

I got to work. Assembling, measuring, cleaning. All told, it took me a full two hours to make both recipes. Put them in the oven. Whew. My husband was looking forward to his banana bread.

Discovered I had left the sour milk out of MIL's recipe. Whoops. After babysitting that darn bowl of milk for two days, I had managed to forget all about it. I had too much going on. Dishes and implements and ingredients everywhere. What to do? The loaf had been in the oven ten minutes already. Hubby was so disappointed, which made me sad, as I only do the extra work for him. The kids don't really care about the banana bread.

This is why I don't like to cook. Too much effort and too many things go wrong.

But I will say, when it was all done, he cut off a big piece and ate it with good cheer, pronouncing it 'not bad'. Now look at the photo. Can you guess which is the 'healthy' bread and which the 'unhealthy'?

I do have a daughter who's an avid baker, and I used her as the model for my heroine in Love Charm for Carlotta. Carlotta runs a bakery in Martha's Vineyard. She doesn't believe in love charms. But when the bad boy hockey player from her past re-appears in her life, something wild and wonderful is fighting with her common sense.

Love Charm for Carlotta

Beach Dinner on Martha's Vineyard

I traveled with my family to Martha's Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts, last week. The island is famous for its celebrities, but it's also a relaxed summer enclave. Our favorite activity was dining on lobster at Menemsha Beach, a quiet beach on the calmer part of the island. It's so easy to do.

You drive down to the beach, park your car, and go into this little shop.

You order your lobster and I think they have scallops and quahogs. We all ordered lobster (except for my youngest, who preferred a peanut butter sandwich). They catch the lobster right here in the harbor off the beach. You can actually dig for the quahogs yourself. They cook up your lobster and you carry it to the beach, lay out your blanket, and dig in.

The main event, however, is watching the sun set. We were lucky to have a beautiful, clear evening. The closer it gets to sunset time, the more people appear on the beach. When the sun actually dips into the sea, everyone claps.

It's the ultimate low-key activity and if you ever go to Martha's Vineyard, you should try it.

I almost forgot something very important! I just released an anthology of four novellas. It's called The Love Charm Series and one of the stories, Love Charm for Carlotta, takes place on Martha's Vineyard. There is, in fact, a scene right on this beach. Here's a snippet:

Thank God she was still wearing her dress. As she pushed herself to her feet, she caught a glimpse of her torn panties gleaming whitely in the moonlight.

Jace's gaze followed hers. He grinned. "Lost cause, babe. But look on the bright side. You're gonna have to ride home on the bike commando."

Oh, Lord. Holding onto him all the way.

Carlotta smoothed down her dress, as if she might press away any trace of Jace Burton from her life. But it was no use. All she could think about was him, standing naked in the moonlight, watching her. She was doomed. The word echoed in her head like a deep bell.

Dooooomed. Dooooomed. As if an evil witch had—

She gasped. "The love charm!"

She didn't realize she'd spoken until Jace raised his brows. "The love charm?"

"It trapped me." Her mouth trembled and she tightened her lips so he wouldn't see her distress.

"Love charm? What the hell?"

"I got a love charm from my friend Ashley," she said. She felt like she was speaking in a trance.

"It—it boomeranged on me."

"Ashley who?"

"Never mind." Carlotta snapped to attention. Why was she talking about a love charm to Jace? Nothing would make him run further or faster. "It's nothing." But that wasn't true. It was very definitely something. She could see it in her mind's eye. The ground-up silver bean, the petals from her hydrangea bush, a spray of her perfume, all wrapped up in a blue silk package.

"Are we talking about Love Potion Number 9?" Jace grinned. "I think that means you're supposed to kiss me." He stepped forward.

 
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Free Today-Love Charm for Carlotta

Love Charm for Carlotta is free today, Sunday May 14. This is a short story (60 pages on Amazon) and here is the blurb:


Carlotta doesn't believe in love charms. Especially not when the bad boy hockey player from her past suddenly re-appears in her life. But the small town island atmosphere of Martha's Vineyard conspires against her when she tries to escape him. Is it the love charm working, or something else? Do people change, or will she be courting heartbreak again if she succumbs to her high school sweetheart?

Excerpt:

Carlotta kneaded the bread fiercely, reminding herself that she'd practically killed herself to eliminate the impulsivity she was born with. She would never repeat the mistakes of her youth. She no longer bolted headlong into ill-conceived temptations.

Except for that craziness last weekend when her friends Ashley and Genevieve had talked her into casting a spell with that—

She froze again.

The love charm.

A blue silk packet made up of a lock of her curly black hair, a ground-up silver bean her friends had given her, and one of the overblown blue flowers from the hydrangea bush at the corner of her yard. She didn't believe in charms and spells, but she'd tossed the silk-enclosed bundle into the moat at the deCordova benefit. The Venetian-themed ball provided such a romantic setting, and when she'd seen the moat – yes, impulse had overtaken her and she'd made a wish and thrown the charm. As she'd expected, no one interesting had approached her that night, and she'd returned to the Vineyard, the love charm forgotten.

Now the memory swept into her kitchen, in a sparkle of remembered hope. She shook her head to dislodge it.

If that damned charm had brought Jace Burton back into her peaceful life like a boomerang from hell, she'd find herself a voodoo witch and hex the lot of them—Ashley, Genevieve, and Jace himself.

She'd tossed that rotten heartthrob-without-a-heart from her life a dozen years ago, and he was never coming back.

A loud rap on the front door signaled that Jace didn't realize he'd been banned from her life.

Her hands clenched in the stretchy dough as if the bread could trap her and save her from moving.

She forced herself to begin kneading again. Maybe if she focused on the work she loved, she could press out this compulsion that ordered her to walk into the living room, approach the door, and open it wide.

In welcome.

She had to resist that instinct because she could never welcome his re-entry into her life.

She'd moved past that tumultuous time when Jace was the center of her existence. She never wanted to go back to it.

"Carlotta!" His deep voice boomed through the house and she heard his self-assurance, his zest for life, and the poignant memories of her first love—all wrapped up in one word—her name.

And twining through the memories was the sharp, bitter, edge of pain, a pointed needle scraping through her flesh.

"Carlotta! Let me in." A brief pause. "Please."

A spring breeze, fresh with the scent of the sea, blew the white, dotted Swiss curtains at the kitchen window. She welcomed the clean May wind, praying it would cool the heat that washed over her body every time she heard his voice.

"I know you're in there, Carlotta." He wasn't angry, but rather amused. He didn't think she could withstand him.

"Do you still leave the door unlocked?" he hollered.

She stiffened. Of course the door was unlocked. She'd never gotten out of the habit, even though she knew it was foolish to be so careless, even on the Vineyard.

She had a key now, which her parents never had, but she forgot about it more often than not.

"I know the door is unlocked, Carlotta, because I know you," he called out. "I'm going to open it now."

She couldn't hear the handle turn from in here, but she could imagine it. She could picture him walking in, his tall figure dwarfing the low-ceilinged living room, his boots loud on the hardwood floor.

She should retreat, escape. Her eyes darted to the back door—

Too late.

Available free here:

http://amzn.com/B00AHJN4ZW