Update! How is My Book Publishg Going?

Hello everyone!

I have wonderful and exciting news to tell you all. If you have been following me for a while then you know that I have been working on a novel. In my last post I gave you all a sneak peak at the cover for the book. Tonite I am happy to tell you all that my book is published and on sale! Hurray! I am so excited. You can buy it here at amazon. In about a month you will be to go buy it in your local book stores.

So, about this book of mine. What kind of book is it? It’s a young adult fantasy book that introduces some philosophic ideas without them realizing it.  This basically means that it is a young adult fantasy book that can be enjoyed by adults as well.

As for the interesting names in the book, that will be explained on the website when it is all up and running; at the moment it only has the about the author part up and I will like the website below. I tried to give the characters names that fit with not only their ethnic background, but also with the story and had some meaning behind them.  For example, the main character’s name is usually not used as a name. Koowu is the word for strength in Arabic. While she is not physically strong, she has strength in other areas.

Will there be another book? Yes! Of course! It is already in the works. Fractured Bottles is the first in the “Bottles from Ozymandias” series. The second book does not have a name as of yet, but when it does have one you all will know.

You can also like the series on Facebook. Just click the like button down below!

Check it out! Have a read! Enjoy! It would mean a lot to me.

Love you all! Stay lovely and charming!

Sneak Peak!

Hallo Schöne Leser!

So, this isn't related to food, but I feel like sharing it with you all. In my last post I mentioned that I was in the process of finalizing the cover art for my novel that is coming out. Well, I have good news for you all! Since you all are such wonderful and amazing readers I figured that I would let you all have a little sneak peak at it.

 

Tada! There it is. I think it turned out well. Hopefully there will be a site up for it soon. The facebook page is in the works and I shall let you all know when it’s up and going. I will keep you all posted on how it is going. For now I will leave you all with this lovely description that is going to be up on the online stores for the book.

Enjoy!

Koowu has never been to school and her first experience is Ozymandias Boarding School. Much to the Djinn’s dismay she is to be roommates with a Rakshasi named Rajani who is her exact opposite, loud and hyper. Being they anti-social creature that she is does not lend itself well to making friends. However, she manages to become friends with not only her hyperactive roommate but also the Nephilim (Leopold), a Mujina (Kouti), and two Greek deities (Artemis and Apollon). Just in time too. Several important artifacts from the school have been stolen and the misfit group takes it upon themselves to try and figure out where they have gone. Will the group find the missing artifacts or will they end up disappearing as well?

4th of July Special! 3 Recipes for 1 Post!

Happy Independence Day Everyone!

So, it is the 4^th of July and that means Independence Day for us here in the United States. How am I celebrating? I am going to be finalizing the cover for my novel that will be in about a month or two. Huzzah! Anyways, I want to say a big Thank You to all of our troops have served our country and are currently serving! My father, numerous other relations, and friends of mine have served and several are currently serving and I appreciate all that they do and have done. Thanks guys and gals I love you and thank you for all I do. I love you all. <3

With it being 4^th of July and all I figured that I should post something that is red, white and blue. Even though it is after breakfast, you all will enjoy these recipes year round. Today I will be posting 3 recipes. One for each colour. Red will be Red velvet pancakes, white will be whipped cream, and blue will be blueberry glaze. Sounds delicious, doesn’t it. Let’s get started!

Red Velvet Pancakes

Ingredients

·         1 cup of unbleached or whole wheat flour
·         1 ½ tablespoon of cocoa powder
·         1 teaspoon of sea salt
·         3 tablespoons of vanilla sugar
·         1 cup of buttermilk
·         1 tablespoon of vinegar
·         1 large egg
·         1 teaspoon of vanilla
·         1 teaspoon of red food colouring

Directions

·         Heat pan or griddle on medium heat
·         While it is heating mix all of your ingredients together in a medium to large bowl
·         Once the pan or griddle is hot either a bit of butter in the pan or spread it on the griddle, you can use cooking spray if you want and if you do I recommend Pam with Olive Oil
·         Pour your pancake batter into the heated pan and let them cook until the edges look firm and   dry and the top has stopped bubbling then flip to the other side and cook for 2 to 3 minutes

Whipped Cream

Ingredients

·         1 cup of heavy cream
·         1 cup of sour cream
·         ½ cup of powdered sugar
·         1 teaspoon of vanilla

Directions

·         Mix in a medium bowl on high until the mixture forms stiff peaks

Blueberry Glaze

Ingredients

·         ½ cup of vanilla sugar
·         ½ cup of water
·         2 teaspoons of cornstarch
·         1 tablespoon of lemon juice
·         2 cups of fresh blueberries
·         If you want the glaze to look more blue add a few drops of blue food colouring to the water before you start

Directions

·         Mix together in a sauce pan
·         Cook while stirring until the mixture thickens

Well, that’s it! You can use these together or separately. They are pretty easy to make. The blueberry glaze also tastes great on cheesecakes and deserts.

I hope you all enjoy these recipes. Have a happy and safe 4^th of July!

Update on How Things are Where I Live, or Why I Haven't Posted in a While

Hello World!

So, as most of you probably know/remember, or if you are new here/have forgotten I live in Oklahoma. That is the reason for me not updating in a while. Those of you who sent me messages asking about how I was and if all was well, thank you. I am pretty sure that I have replied to you all by now. If not, consider this post my reply.

I do not live in either the Oklahoma City or Tulsa metropolises which is where a great deal of the bad damage was. I live in north central Oklahoma. We did have a few tornados around where I live, but none that hit where I am at. The extent of the “damage” that my house and area got was that the streets flooded and we got some leaves blown out of our trees. The rivers around where I live were up which is a good thing since we have been in the middle of a drought and it makes growing our vegetables and fruit hard when the rivers are low.

While I was not directly affected by the tornados in the Oklahoma City and Tulsa area tornados, I had a couple of family members and some very dear friends of mine that were. I nearly got caught in the storms that produced the EF5 tornado that hit Moore area really hard on May 20^th. In fact, if I had left any later than when I had, I would probably not be here since I was traveling at the time. If you saw pictures of the Warren Theatre in Moore, I was actually in that part of the theatre only a couple days before watching a movie with about 20 of my friends. Of those same friends 1 does not have a house anymore, 3 have homes that they cannot live in at the moment because of the damage to their property, and about 10 of them have minor damage to their homes/flats. One of my friends and a cousin of mine are nurses and were put on call. My cousin was sent out to help with little kids affected by the storms. Another cousin of mine is in the Army National Guard and was helping out down there as well. For those of you who do not know, I volunteer with the American Red Cross when it was needed. For those of you who did know this and were wondering why I was not down there helping, here is the reason: there were so many people down in the area helping that the Red Cross and other organizations were asking people that were wanting to volunteer to not go down to the affected areas because there were already too many people. Also, the meteorologists were predicting more violent storms and they wanted to make sure that not all of their volunteers were in one area if another tornado hit in another area. One of tornados that hit the Tulsa metropolis were about a mile away from my big brother’s house and close to some of my other cousins’ and my aunts’ houses. However, the only damage that they got were some tree limbs down and some shingles got ripped off.

So, all is well, or a well as it will be until everything is back to being all shiny and new looking again. Hopefully I will be able to get back on my schedule. For those of you who are reading this on my fashion and beauty blog, I was doing a series of monthly posts on the birthstone of the month. Since June is a pearl I do not feel the need to repost the same thing over again. Instead, I will post a link back to it down at the bottom. For those of you who are reading this on my recipe blog, I will be back to posting recipes again soon! My friends that are from various countries in the world that do not know much about the weather where I live, tornados and bad storms are fairly commonplace in Oklahoma. However, ones that are this devastating and horrific are not. It is very rare that we get ones that are this awful that cause this much damage.

Those of us here appreciate all the help and prayers that the world has been sending us!
Lots of love and happiness!

If You Would Like To Read About Pearls Click Here!

Crème de Menthe Truffles

Hello everyone!

I have a new recipe for you all to try. They are delicious beyond reason. I have made them several times and each time they are gone in minutes. Today’s recipe is Crème de Menthe Truffles. The recipe makes about 4 dozen truffles. You can easily cut the recipe in half if you do not need that many. Keep in mind that this recipe has liqueur in it and as such may not be suitable for taking to events where children are involved. On with the recipe!

Ingredients

v 2 cups of whipping cream
v ½ cup of vanilla sugar
v ½ cup of butter
v 32 ounces of dark chocolate chips
v 2 tablespoons of Crème de menthe

Directions

v In a saucepan over medium heat whisk the cream and vanilla sugar together until the cream starts to bubble and the sugar is dissolved
v Remove from heat
v Quickly whisk the butter, dark chocolate chips, and Crème de menthe into the cream and sugar mixture until the butter and chocolate chips are fully melted
v Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature
v With a tablespoon spoon the mixture out and roll into balls about 1” in diameter
v Refrigerate for an hour or until the truffles are firm

Tips

v For a bit of something extra you can roll the truffles into various “toppings”, such as powdered sugar or coconut, before you refrigerate them
v You can change up the flavour of the truffles by changing the Crème de menthe liqueur for another kind of liqueur

Hope you all love these! They are easy to make and really delicious. So, if you are looking for a good desert, or just something easy to make, give these a try and see how well they are loved by your friends and family!

Until next time!

Yorkshire Pudding

It’s time for more recipes!

Today I will be sharing the recipe for a delicious and ridiculously easy recipe from the UK. Now, most of the people that I have spoken to hate British food. Why is that? I have yet to have any bad British food? Maybe it is because people in the States are not used to having food that does not have a ton of salt or sugar in it. Whatever the cause, food from Britain is not bad. It is quite tasty in fact. After all, how can one say that all British food is bad when the British gave the world those delicious Cadbury cream eggs? Anyways, on with the recipe for today: Yorkshire Pudding! This recipe makes 4 individual servings. You will need either a set of for ramequins or a large muffin pan

Ingredients
·         4oz of unbleached flour

·         1 large egg
·         10 fl oz of milk
·         teaspoon of sea salt
·         The drippings from a roast

Directions

·         Preheat oven to 400⁰F
·         Sift flour into a bowl with the salt into a bowl.
·         Mix the milk and eggs together
·         Add the milk and egg mixture into the flour while beating with a whisk until the well-blended
·         Refrigerate for about 1 hour
·         Place a little of the drippings into each ramequin or section of the muffin tin and heat
·         Once the pan or ramequin is hot fill each with the batter and place back into the oven
·         They are done when they have risen and are firm and brown
That’s it! They are pretty tasty. They go well with roasts and various other meat dishes. Sometimes they are used with other recipes like when one is making Toad in the Hole. I will have to post that recipe for you all to check out later.

Enjoy!

Some Questions to Answer! A.K.A. Why My Spelling and Some Phrases I Use are "Weird" to Some of You

Hello everyone! I have a post for you all that is amazingly not about food.

So, I have had several people ask me about my spelling. My favorite time has been when I had a person come up to me at college and tell me that I was spelling things wrong or that I was calling things by the wrong name. All I have to say is, oh silly American English. So, today I am taking a break from my usual posting to clear up some terms and spellings that people keep telling me are incorrect.

First things first. Where was I born? Not in the Commonwealth! Amazingly I was born in the middle of the United States to my wonderful Mother and Father that are of Oto-Missouria/Dutch/Prussian/Scottish/English decent. So, how do I end up sounding like I’m British rather than American? Well, it comes from learning my English from people that use Oxford English. *sigh* For the longest time my teaches and professors thought I grew up overseas. Oh well. That’s life.

Next: the questions that I get the most. “What is up with you adding a u to various words?” and “why do you keep spelling the word color wrong?” I am not spelling colour wrong. To me you all are spelling colour wrong. I spell it the same way that I have always spelled it. The same thing goes with flavor, labour, honour, and neighbour. Also, I sometimes people think that I spell words like centre, litre, and theatre wrong. No, that’s how the English spell the words center, liter, and theater. Sometimes I spell things like practise instead of practice or connnexion rather than connection. Most of the time I spell things like catalog this way: catalogue. That’s just one of my quirks. I’m not spelling it wrong. I’m spelling it right…in the Commonwealth.

Also, some of the phrases that I use in my everyday life are more British than they are American. For example, I often ask people if they would fancy a cuppa. Most of the time I end up with people looking at me strangely. Of course growing up in Oklahoma asking someone if they want a cupppa tea isn’t that far of a stretch and people there just look at me like I’m abbreviating the sentence and then finish it with what they want. When being asked if you fancy a cuppa, what a person is asking is if you want a cup of hot tea. Speaking of tea, when being asked how one takes their tea or coffee what you are being asked is do you want cream, milk, sugar, or nothing in it and not what kind of cup you want it in. In a lot of places outside of the States it isn’t uncommon for people to put milk or cream in their tea. I do this all the time. For a long time my boyfriend thought I was drinking coffee until he notice the tea bag in my empty cup. For those who would like a new type of tea to try I would recommend PG Tips. It’s delicious. I enjoy it quite a bit. I always have a box at work and at home so that when I feel the need for a cuppa I have it available. I also use my mobile not my cell phone. For the ladies, and this relates back to one of my previous fashion posts, I wear tights regardless of if they are called pantyhose. It weirded my boyfriend out when I started talking about ice lollies. Those are popsicles for those who don’t know.

I could go on and on, but alas, I have so many things to get done today that I must cut my post shorter than what I would like. I will try to start posting little random tidbits at the end of my post though or explain things that may be unfamiliar to those who were not raised by Europeans.

Until the next time!