This post is part of Long and Short Reviews’ Winter Blogfest. Leave a comment for a chance to win any one of my e-books. They’re all clean (no explicit sex) but not exactly sweet. Think of Georgette Heyer or Mary Kingswood.
Christmas Memories of My Father by Kathleen Buckley
Many of my childhood Christmas memories are of my father. He loved Christmas: the food, the gifts, the music. When he was a child, gifts were clothing rather than toys.
One year in Fairbanks, Alaska, Christmas trees were in short supply; they weren’t locally sourced unless you went out and cut one, not an attractive option at -50° F. (-45.5 C.). Gritting his teeth, Dad bought an artificial tree. It was white and fluffy like a Persian cat. We never bought another tree: the limbs on this one were all in the right place, it was easy to assemble, the right size, and it didn’t shed needles.
But mostly I recall the food rather than gifts or decorating because he liked to cook, although the vintage broadsword he gave me one year was a delightful surprise as was the KitchenAid Junior mixer the year I broke a wooden spoon mixing the very stiff dough for a Portuguese Christmas cake. The mixer is still going strong some forty years later.
I don’t recall why he began to make fruitcake, but once he did, his Christmas preparations began in September. He’d soak quantities of candied fruit in brandy in a big container that was stored in the front hall closet. Fortunately, everyone, including guests, used the back door. Then he’d make the cakes in tube pans. When they were done, he’d put them in decorative cans and put a brandy-soaked sponge in a paper cup in the center and let them age, refreshing the sponges occasionally. They made better gifts than the mass-produced fruitcake loaves.
There was the year we visited family friends on Christmas morning and left the turkey soaking in the sink. When we came home, our Siamese cat had eaten the skin off the breast. Our turkeys always roasted with a strip of bacon on each drumstick and one or two on the breast. A few more strips covered the damage and kept the breast moist.
Most of all, I remember the turkey stuffing. Bread stuffing tends to be bland. Dad’s stuffing scented the entire house. In addition to pork sausage and ground beef, it contained poultry seasoning and cinnamon. I still make it, although I no longer cook a turkey. Sausage stuffing has made a comeback. I applaud the trend but think Dad’s is better.
Ingredients
1 pound bulk pork sausage (one of those rolls like Jimmy Dean’s is what I use)
1½ pounds of lean ground beef
1 cup chopped onion
1 teaspoon celery salt
1 cube chicken bouillon or equivalent in the powdered form
1 tablespoon poultry seasoning
¼ teaspoon pepper
¾ cup fine bread crumbs
5 teaspoons cinnamon
2 ½ cups water
Fry the sausage and beef, mashing it fine so there are no lumps. Sauté the onions and add them and the crumbs. Add the celery salt, pepper, and poultry seasoning. Dissolve the bouillon in the water and add it. Cook until the flavors blend, then add the cinnamon and cook a little longer.
Allan Everard, an earl’s illegitimate son, is dismissed from his employment at his father’s death but inherits a former coaching inn. Needing to make a new life in London, he begins by leasing the inn to a charity.
Unexpectedly orphaned, Rosabel Stanbury and her younger sister are made wards of a distant, unknown cousin. Fearing his secretive ways and his intentions for them, Rosabel and Oriana flee to London where they are taken in by a women’s charity.
Drawn into Rosabel’s problems, with his inn under surveillance by criminals, Allan has only a handful of unlikely allies, including an elderly general, a burglar, and an old lady who knows criminal slang.
A traditional romance.
Kathleen Buckley has loved writing ever since she learned to read. After a career which included light bookkeeping, working as a paralegal, and a stint as a security officer, she began to write as a second career, rather than as a hobby. Her first historical romance was penned (well, word processed) after re-reading Georgette Heyer’s Georgian/Regency romances. She is now the author of ten Georgian romances: An Unsuitable Duchess, Most Secret, Captain Easterday’s Bargain, A Masked Earl, A Duke’s Daughter, Portia and the Merchant of London, A Westminster Wedding, A Peculiar Enchantment, By Sword and Fan, and Hidden Treasures. While an eleventh is in production she is writing the twelfth.
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“What if the side quest is really the main quest?
Mila Winston aspires to earn a professional license to practice parenthood. It’s all she needs to start her family in the happiest micronation on Earth. Newcomers flock to Coolbeensia to fulfill their dreams of raising children here, where kids are guaranteed loving—as opposed to horrible—parents.
Obsessed with learning the origins of the cosmos, the actual meaning of life, and the true purpose of civilization, a fine Scotsman named Fingal T. Smyth dedicates himself to the study of Plato’s most extraordinary ideas. Convinced of Plato’s belief that humankind possesses any and all innate knowledge deep within the collective unconscious mind, Fingal soon conducts a series of bold, pioneering occult-science experiments by which to resolve the riddle of the universe once and for all. However, Fingal forgets how violent and perilous the animal impulses that reside in the deepest recesses of the unconscious mind. And when Fingal unleashes a mysterious avatar of his innate knowledge, the entity appears as a burning man and immediately seeks to manipulate innocent and unsuspecting people everywhere into immolating themselves. Now, with little hope of returning the fiery figure into his being, Fingal must capture his nemesis before it destroys the world.
