Thursday Recipe - Lemon Pepper Seasoning

It's time for another spice mix!

This one was inspired by a big bowl of lemons sitting on my counter. I juice them and use some of the peel fresh, but I came across a blog post about drying lemon peels to use in seasonings. It looked easy enough so I tried it. And yes, it takes some work, but since I was going to throw out the peels anyway, I'd call it a success.

The easy way I found is to use a vegetable peeler. Wash the lemons first to remove any dirt or residue on the peels. Then peel thin strips of just the yellow peel from the lemon. If you get some of the white, don't worry. That's the next step. Use a knife, a serrated steak knife works pretty well, and gently scrape off most of the white. Lay your peel strips on a baking sheet. Put it in a sunny spot and let them dry. I ended up leaving mine out on the counter for a week just to make sure they were fully dried.

These keep for a long time in your spice cupboard. Chop them really fine or grind them when you need a hit of lemon in a recipe. Just keep in mind that 1 T. of fresh lemon peel is only about 1/2 t. of dried. It gets concentrated.

Lemon Pepper Seasoning

3 T. salt
1 T. dried lemon peel
1 T. black peppercorns
1 t. garlic powder
1 t. sugar
1 t. dried parsley (optional)

Grind everything together. I use a coffee grinder. It works great. You can buy one at most stores that carry small kitchen appliances for less than $20. It's a very useful tool if you do a lot of spice mixes.

Otherwise, use ground black pepper and chop the lemon peel very fine.

Mix it together and store in an airtight container. Shake it up before using it just to make sure everything is well mixed.

To use: Sprinkle it over fish or chicken before you cook it;
OR toss 1 T. seasoning with 2 T. oil, 4 c. pasta, 1 c. chopped bell peppers, and 1/2 c. chopped sweet onion. Sprinkle with parmesan and serve hot.

On Creativity

On Dasher. On Blitzen! Did Santa have a reindeer named Creativity? Didn't think so, but it would be awesome if he did.

I'm still struggling to get the creative juices flowing. Real life keeps interrupting. Things like doctor visits, school registration, shopping, cooking, cleaning, family wanting to talk to me, dogs that need to go out, phone calls, and on and on and on. Finding time to write has been hard. I need a few hours uninterrupted to really get stuff going, but those hours can't happen when I'm tired or having a migraine day. Too hard to think. So I'm trying to schedule writing time in the mornings between nine and noon. I need to quit scheduling appointments then. And re-train my kids to leave me alone for those hours of the day.

Then I need to find my discipline. It's too easy to let Facebook or email or this blog distract me. I can spend hours doing story "research" surfing clickbait stories and watching bizarre videos on YouTube. It's all story fodder, yes, but unless I write stories, it's just wasted time.

So here's my goal: I will finish the rough draft for Blue Mage: Shadow Nothings by Halloween. I'm about 10% done with the story, so it's a reachable goal. I'm also aiming at getting one short story written, polished, and either published or submitted somewhere every month. For publishing, I'm working on another short story collection. I'm planning on publishing that one in December. Then it's on to an Altairan Empire short story collection, with new stories written. I've also got Taco Truck Elves to write. And dozens of other stories and novels. But the point of goal setting is to set achievable, measurable goals, so I'll stick with Blue Mage: Shadow Nothings and the one short story a month. I promised Blue Mage to my daughter for Christmas four years ago, it's about time I delivered.

So speaking of short stories every month, this month I published Interagency Cooperation, a short story related to the Taco Truck Elves. It introduces the F.B.I.- Fairyland Border Investigations. Illegal border crossings happen all the time and it is up to the FBI agents to mitigate the damage on the unsuspecting human population.

Get the story free with code UN83G!

Thursday Recipe - Zucchini Brownie Bundt Cake

This is another attempt to use up zucchini. It's based off this recipe, changed up to be my kind of recipe. It turned out very moist and fudgey and just all around delicious. Definitely one to make again sometime.

Zucchini Brownie Bundt Cake

1 c. semisweet chocolate chips, melted
1/4 c. oil
1 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. white sugar
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla
1/2 c. cocoa
2 1/2 t. baking soda
1 t. salt
2 c. flour (use half whole-wheat and half white if you want it healthier)
3 c. shredded zucchini
1/2 c. chocolate chips (optional)
1/2 c. chopped nuts (optional)

Stir melted chocolate chips, oil, and sugars together until mixed. Add eggs, vanilla, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. Beat until well blended. Stir in flour and zucchini. Stir just until mixed and all flour is moistened. It may look dry when you first add the flour and zucchini, but don't add more liquid! Zucchini has a lot of water in it that will come out and moisten the batter.

Grease and flour a bundt cake pan. Pour half the batter into the pan. Sprinkle with 1/2 c. chocolate chips and nuts, if desired. Spread the other half of the batter in the pan.

Bake at 325° for 50-65 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. The cake should develop a couple of cracks on top, just like the good loaves of zucchini bread. Let it cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes. Turn it over onto a plate. Shake it gently to release the cake. Let it cool the rest of the way, then cover tightly and refrigerate. This cake is better the next day. Store any leftovers in the fridge.

Musings on a Sand Dollar, a short tale

"Caity, what you got?" Jimmy's hands reached for the sand dollar.

I lifted it out of his reach. I was twelve that summer at the beach, very grown up and ready to be an adult. "Mine."

His chin trembled. Little crybaby. "I'll tell mom."

I sniffed and turned my back. Waves washed around my feet, cold and smelling of salt. "Go find your own. They're everywhere." I held the sand dollar on my flat palm, admiring the perfect markings on the white round shell. Five leafy shapes imprinted on one side, wriggly lines surrounding a puckered hole on the other. Smooth and flat, a squashed circle that mounded softly in the center, it fit perfectly in my palm. I brushed sand from the surface.

The puckered hole spat out a small cloud of bluish purple smoke. A tiny man, wearing nothing but a shower cap, with purple fog for his legs, appeared on my hand.

"Never fails. I wait and wait before taking a bath but as soon as I get in and get all relaxed, POOF!, someone rubs my shell." He glared at me with tiny eyes the color of amethysts. "Whaddya want?"

"You're a genie." My voice trembled with excitement. Nothing this wonderful had ever happened in all my twelve years of existence.

"And you're not a genius. C'mon, get on with it. Make the wish already."

"For my first wish," I drawled, stretching the words while I frantically tried to think of something that wouldn't sound stupid or selfish.

He held up one tiny hand. "Wait one second, hold the phone, sweetie. First wish? First wish? You only got one so use it wisely. And fast. I'm on a deadline here."

"I only get one wish? They always get three in the stories."

"Stupid lamp genies. Always gotta show us little guys up. Three wishes? You got one, so talk fast before you got none."

"There's a time limit to wishes? What if I don't want to use it yet."

"Too bad. You got about thirty seconds left to make your wish."

My mind raced. What could I wish for in thirty seconds? World peace? Too vague. A never-ending money bag? No, that only caused problems in the stories. I could wish to be beautiful, smart, funny. Or to fall in love. But those were selfish wishes.

"Counting down here. Make the wish or lose your chance. For-eh-veh." He waggled his eyebrows.

My mind went blank. One wish and I couldn't think of anything.

"Caity!" Jimmy's voice drifted over the sound of seagulls and waves.

"What now?" I didn't want the most important decision of my life interrupted by my baby brother.

"Lookit what I found. It's all squooshy."

I hunched my shoulders, turning my back more firmly on Jimmy. Mom should be watching him, not laying on the sand with her book. I had more important things to do, like figure out how to save the world and make myself happy and rich all with only one wish.

"Tick tock," the genie tapped his wrist. "Spit it out or miss out."

"I wish you'd give me more time," I snapped.

He nodded. "Done."

The genie melted into a cloud of purple-blue smoke. It sucked itself into the hole in the sand dollar.

"Wait! That wasn't my wish!"

He was gone. The sand dollar was only a shell in my hand. I rubbed it frantically. No smoke appeared. I rubbed harder and harder, until it snapped in half. The inside held only a dribble of white sand.

I dropped to my knees on the beach. Waves washed around my legs. Goosebumps crawled over my skin at the touch of cold sea water. I had just wasted the most precious opportunity of my life.

"Caity, come see this!" Jimmy's excited voice beckoned me.

I dropped the broken sand dollar. The waves swallowed the white shards, rolling them through white foam and shreds of seaweed. I'd wasted my wish on more time. But I was only twelve, I had no idea what the genie had given me for my wish. I jumped up, out of the wet sand and teasing waves.

"I think it's a mermaid," Jimmy shouted.

I hurried across the beach to my baby brother. After all, I'd found a genie in a sand dollar. Why shouldn't he find a mermaid in a tide pool? Maybe later we'd hunt unicorns in the dune grass. I had time to spare now.

If you enjoyed this short tale, check out my other work at www.jaletac.com or download ebooks and free stories at my profile on Smashwords.

Thursday Recipe - Bottled Bean Salad

I adore bean salad, when it's done right. Pouring a bottle of Italian salad dressing over some canned green beans, garbanzos, and kidney beans isn't doing it right. If you like it that way, eat it. I won't judge. I just won't eat it with you. I love the sweet and sour pickled bean salad at Costco, but it only comes in giant bottles and I'm the only one who really eats it at my house. The bottle is too much for me.

I picked a big bucket of beans from my garden and decided to try out a bottled recipe for bean salad, sort of based off this recipe (the second quick one, not the overnight one). Of course I switched it up based on what I had available, so this is my version. I'm also not a fan of the garbanzos and kidneys, so I left them out entirely. Feel free to substitute one cup of canned kidney or garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed well, for one cup of the fresh green beans. The recipe makes about 4 pints.

Bottled Bean Salad

8 c. fresh green beans, washed and cut into 1-1.5 inch pieces (I used a mix of green and yellow beans because that's what I planted)
1/2 c. chopped celery (don't be afraid of the leafy bits in the center, those are great in this recipe)
1/2 c. diced onion (I used red onions from my garden, it's about 1 medium-small onion)
1/2 c. diced bell pepper (red and yellow are pretty, but green works, too)
1 c. sugar
1 1/2 t. mustard seeds
1/2 t. celery seeds
2 t. pickling salt or kosher salt
1 1/2 c. white vinegar (5% acidity)
3/4 c. water

Place the vegetables in a big pot. Cover with hot water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Drain and pack into pint jars.

Mix sugar, mustard seeds, salt, vinegar, and water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. Pour over vegetables in jars. If you don't have quite enough, finish filling the jars with vinegar. My recipe didn't make quite enough of the pickling syrup.

Wipe off the rims of the jars, then seal and process according to your altitude. I processed my jars for 15 minutes.

Story Teaser!

This is a teaser from the story written for a challenge - two names and three objects from a lucky subscriber to my newsletter. If you want the full story, sign up for my newsletter and I'll send it to you for free!

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Interagency Cooperation

Tess tucked her red hair behind her ear with a brusque gesture. She should have taken the time to braid it this morning, but the call came early, waking her out of a tangle of dreams. Double homicide downtown with some freaky strange details. She was glad she wasn't at the mercantile building dealing with guts strung across the ceilings like Christmas lights. No, she was out in the boonies serving a search warrant on a deserted farmhouse where the suspect's bloody car had turned up. By herself, at least until backup arrived. Roxy the dispatcher and Beavis the desk clerk were all she had. The department was stretched way too thin by this bizarre crime. Goose Crossing wasn't the type of town that warranted much homicide time from its cops. Mac and Fred were both trying to make sense of the strange symbols painted with the victims' blood on the floors of the store. Nobody had a clue why the perp had included roses from the floral stand and a dismembered pineapple in the display. A single banana had been left like a bent exclamation point right in the center between the two mangled bodies.

Tess eased the front door open. "Police!" she shouted as she swung her gun to cover all possible hiding spots in the entry. The old farmhouse creaked in the early morning sun. The furniture in the living room was old, worn, and covered with a fuzzy layer of dust. Somebody had been here recently, judging from the tracks across the wood floor. A lot of somebodies and not all of them human. The place smelled of fox, skunk, and a whole lot of rodents.

She prowled further into the dimly lit house. The main floor was clear—front parlor, two bedrooms, and a big farm kitchen—clear of humans, at least. Mice scurried into the shadows at her furtive footsteps.

"Police!" She swept a glance over the stairs leading up. Nothing bigger than a skunk had stirred the dust. That left only the basement cellar. She slipped through the hall to the top of the stairs leading down into darkness.

A passing farmer had reported seeing lights and hearing strange screams just before dawn. The timeline fit with the murders. So did the tire tracks that led to the farm straight from the parking lot of the mercantile. The lunatic who killed those two poor clerks had painted weird symbols with blood on the tires, leaving an unmistakeable trail to follow. 

Tess tapped her radio. "Roxy? You here yet?"

The reply was so full of static Tess couldn't understand a word. She waited until it ended.

"I'm headed to the cellar of the old farmhouse. I'd appreciate backup real soon."

Bloody handprints lined the wall. The smell of burning candles and dust hung in the air. Tess eased onto the first step. She stopped, her gun pointed into the dark cellar. She didn't want to rush into the arms of a waiting psycho. Not by herself.

The scream started as a moan, quickly escalating to a wailing banshee. The hairs on Tess's arms stood straight up, along with every other hair on her body. The scream cut off abruptly. A puff of fetid air brushed over the detective's face.

"Wait time's over," she muttered. She stormed down the stairs. Something was in pain down there. Another victim? Maybe.

Candle flames flickered, sending shadows dancing over the walls. Tess suppressed the urge to vomit. The cellar was another gruesome scene, but this time, the only victim wore fur and might have been a raccoon.

She jumped as the scream came again. Weird, unearthly, enough to make all the hair on her arms stand up straight and her finger tighten on the trigger.

"Police!" She aimed at the dark corner draped in cobwebs. She caught a flicker of green eyes down low.

A cat streaked from the corner and up the stairs, gone almost before she identified it.

Tess released the breath she'd been holding and slid her gun into the holster. She crouched to study the bizarre murder scene. Blood and guts spattered the uneven concrete floor. Bits of fur decorated lumps of coal and moldy fruit that surrounded fat candles, the kind in a tall glass with biblical scenes on the sides. The mess was at least a day old, judging by how low the candles were and how dried the corpse bits were. Symbols were etched onto the floor in dried blood. Tess pulled out her phone to take pictures in the dim flickering light of the candles.

Something crunched in the corner, like a stealthy footstep.

She dropped the phone and whirled, her gun in her hand. "Show yourself!"

A woman stepped into the light. She was at least six-two and built like Marilyn Monroe, if the actress had been a linebacker for the NFL. Her clothes and hair were dark green, both tied with laces. Her eyes flashed white and green against the darkness of her skin, which was black. Not dark brown but midnight black, as if someone had poured ink over her. She held a crooked stick in one hand, pointing it as if it were a weapon.

"Drop it!" Tess shouted automatically.

"You drop it," the woman answered. Her voice was hoarse and deep, rasping in her throat like an old smoker's.

Tess rose slowly to her feet, keeping her gun trained on the strange woman. "Put it down and no one gets hurt."

The woman's lips quirked. They were black, too, with bluish green highlights. "Put yours down and no one has to die."

"Wrong answer," Tess muttered. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

"You loaded with silver?" the woman asked, her face showing amusement. "Because nothing else can touch me. Besides, I didn't do this. I'm looking for the perpetrators."

Tess loosened her grip every so slightly. She wasn't reading a threat from the strange woman. "I'm pointing a Glock at you."

"And I'm carrying a Thriebold Sixty-Four, which means nothing to you. Let's just say it is loaded with some nasty spells and can hold quite a bit of power. Want to find out what life might be as a garter snake? I didn't think so." The dark woman knelt in one fluid motion. Her finger hovered over a gobbet of raccoon meat.

"Don't touch the crime scene." The woman had her off balance. Maybe she was a hallucination.

"Don't worry, I'm a trained professional, too. Name's Shondeen. I'd give my last name but it takes almost half a page to write and too long to say. I'm an agent with the FBI."

Tess lowered her gun, thoroughly confused now. "You're a fed?" The crime had gone from Twin Peaks to X-Files in a hurry.

The woman, Shondeen, cracked a smile. "Don't be silly. FBI—Fairyland Border Investigations. We've got a class seven unauthorized intrusion here. Redcaps. Nasty." Shondeen flashed her green and white eyes at Tess. "Put the gun away and I'll fill you in. I could use some help on this one. I don't have time to call in backup from my side and the sooner we catch these unnatural spawn of the depths, the better for everyone."

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Thursday Recipe - Flourless Peanut Butter Zucchini Brownies

Yeah, you read that right. Flourless peanut butter zucchini brownies. I have zucchini because I planted some and it grew. I'm still proud of my green thumb. I've been known as the zucchini killer for quite a few years now. Nice to know that a change of location also changed my black thumb green.

I was making zucchini brownies (and banana brownies with this recipe) because I had a pile of zucchini and a pile of overripe bananas. My youngest is allergic to wheat but she loves brownies and chocolate, too, so when I stumbled across this recipe, I knew I had to try it out. But since this is me cooking, I couldn't do it the way it was written. What I came up with is very tasty, not vegan, but wheat-free. This is my version.

Flourless Peanut Butter Zucchini Brownies

3/4 c. peanut butter (I used chunky)
1/4 c. honey
1/3 c. sugar (because I like it sweeter, you can leave it out if you want)
1 c. finely shredded zucchini (don't squeeze out the water! You need it)
1/4 c. cocoa
1 egg
3/4 t. baking soda
Chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate to help boost the sweetness)

Mix everything except chocolate chips in a bowl until well blended. Spread into a greased loaf pan (I used an 8 inch loaf pan). Sprinkle chocolate chips generously over the top. Bake at 350° for 30 minutes.

Let cool completely in the pan. Refrigerating overnight is best. Cut into bars and keep what you don't devour immediately in the refrigerator.