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Sour Bitter Smash

Sour Bitter Smash Drink

If you plan to attend Culture, Cocktails, and Culinary Creations at Buns and Roses 2020 with Tracey Livesay, Priscilla Oliveras, and me, please hop between us, pick your drink, and make it with us during the live virtual session. My drink pulls on my Caribbean heritage and my need for things to be perfectly sweet–not too sugary, not bland, but perfect. Below are my recipe and a little history tidbit.

One of the greatest contributions to the modern world is Trinidad’s Bitters.

Angostura bitters are an aromatic staple that can often be found in your local grocery store. In 1824, Dr. Johann Siegert opened a business to sell bitters as a medicinal tincture, but the surprising tasty concoction found its way into beverages. The secret bitters formula is more closely guarded than Coke-Cola’s. The Angostura Company produces batches in unmarked bags of ingredients. The production schedule is irregular and only happens when the stock in the Port of Spain warehouse is low.

Sour Bitter Smash is a drink that speaks to the fun one can have when sweet fruity flavors blend with perfect hints of bitters.

Sour Bitter Smash

1 cup soursop (guanabana) juice* or pineapple juice

1/2 cup strawberry lemonade

4 dashes of angostura bitters

1 1/2 teaspoons blue curaçao liqueur

Ice cubes

Non-alcoholic

6 tablespoons of good seltzer water

Alcoholic

6 tablespoons of good gin

Garnish: Edible flower or burnt lemon rind.

Choose the your version of my smash,  load all ingredients in a cocktail shaker. Fill with ice. Cover and shake well. Strain and pour into two fancy glasses. Garnish and enjoy.

Sour Bitter Smash Drink
Sour Bitter Smash – a Drink that salutes the Islands

Hop to my buddy’s drinks:

Priscilla’s Drink

Tracey’s Drink

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4 Ingredient Christmas Cookies

It’s four ingredients. Yes, four and these gems are so good. I love to cook, so you’ll often find me in the kitchen. I like elegant great tasting easy to create recipes. So this is one of my personal favorites.

Ingredients:
1 cup of peanut butter, the crunchy type with peanuts
1 egg white (You need to cut the cholesterol somewhere.)
1 cup of sugar (I use raw cane sugar, sounds healthier, but you may eat so many that this doesn’t help)

1/2 of Christmas Candy or Chocolate chopped to be peanut size.

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Line a baking tray with parchment or a silicone mat. They will stick to your tray if you don’t, not good eats, a big mess. No one has time for all that cleaning.
Combine all the ingredients together mixing until you have a smooth dough-like consistency.
Take a scoop of it and form a small ball. Flatten it out onto the tray.
Get fancy and make crisscrosses with a fork’s tines. Place the cookies at least an inch apart.

When your tray is full and your oven is ready, pop these into the oven for about 7 minutes. Be careful not to overbake and adjust your timing based on your oven. The cookies should be a light golden brown. You want these to be chewy.
When you take them from the oven, let them cool on the tray for about 2 minutes, then transfer the cookies to a wire cooling rack. I usually just pick up the parchment and set it on the rack to cool completely.

Your patience will be reward with chewy yummy goodness.

My Favorite Christmas Novel: Frederica is quite the hostess and loves to make sure her guest has the right treats. Find out more about her in The Butterfly Bride:

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Apologetic View of Slavery in Demerara

Vanessa here.

I love reading primary sources to gain a view of the world within the context of the time. The Political Economy is one such narrative.

I had the opportunity to read it and observe what I can only hope was an abolitionist’s view of how to economically show the ills of slavery. In truth, it feels like an earnest but inauthentic gaze at the life of the enslaved complete with white saviors and a debasement of the underhanded negro, “gaming the system” to the peril of his owners to gain his freedom.

Harriet Martineau’s Political Economy, circa 1832. Below is a critique of planters or settlers in the West Indies.

Stats used to show that manumitted slaves were able to care for themselves and not incapable as often thought by slave planters.

Comparison of Barbados’s enslavement and that of Demerara, somewhat arguing that higher rates of manumission equalled higher productivity.

The book may have been effective. Slavery in the colonies like Demerara ends The statistics are interesting. Slavery Abolition Act passed Parliament in 1833 and abolished slavery in British colonies, freeing more than 800,000 enslaved Africans in the Caribbean, South Africa, and Canada. It received Royal Assent (William IV) on August 28, 1833, and took effect on August 1, 1834.

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Meghan and Harry

The Royal Wedding

Royal Life

First Royal Tour (Australia, Fiji, Tonga, and New Zealand

First Royal Tour II

First Royal Tour III

 

Harry and Meghan

The Love Story of the Century. The last time a Prince Henry (Prince William Henry) of England was involved with a Woman of Color, their loved didn’t last and he kept her mostly on his frigate. Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s love is beautiful.

Just Dating.

 

 

Engagement Photos

Full Interview after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announce their engagement.

 

 

 

First Christmas.

Lifetime Movie: Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance Official Trailer

Full Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

Prince Harry’s full name: Henry Charles Albert David
Meghan’s full name: Rachel Meghan Markle

Official Surname: Mountbatten-Windsor

The Queen has conferred the titles will be Duke of Sussex, Earl of Dumbarton and Baron Kilkeel. Prince Harry thus becomes His Royal Highness The Duke of Sussex, and Ms. Meghan Markle on marriage will become Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Sussex.

Meghan and Harry Harry and Meghan Prince Harry Duke and Duchess Sussex  Meghan and Harry Harry and Meghan Prince Harry Duke and Duchess Sussex

 

Meghan and Harry Harry and Meghan Prince Harry Duke and Duchess Sussex

Harry and Meghan on the balcony with the royals - Trooping the Colours 2018 Queen birthday
 

Being Royal – The duties.

 

All pictures below are shots from Wiki-Commons, my TV and computer screen, the feed of Kensington Palace and the Royal Family and photos I took from whatever was on my screen during the evening news.  Video is linked from You-Tube.

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Best Kisses In Celebration of International Kiss Day

Here are some of the best kisses around.

#InternationalKissingDay  Well let’s start with one of my favorite International Kissers. #RemingtonSteele The look, the motion, the follow through. Sigh.

Ok, you know we were waiting for this one, Mark and Bridgette. Yes nice boys do kiss great. #InternationalKissingDay

 
Kyle, was always international to me. I love a good enemy to lovers story.  Kyle and Maxine brought the heat and to me there is a sweet vulnerability to this one as guards lowered. #InternationalKissingDay

Monica and Chandler #friendstolovers hooked up Internationally. #InternationalKissingDay  These two… Their #romance made the show for me.

 

Wasn’t Whitley studying International Art? One of the best friends to lovers, unrequited love love stories ever. #InternationalKissingDay

 

Burke and Christina. This was definitely a #frenchkiss. Their romance made the show Grey’s Anatomy for me.   #InternationalKissingDay

Rick and Michonne. Ok, I didn’t see this one coming, but yeah. Who knew Walking Dead with Zombies could make toes curl.  #ZombieThreatIsInternational #InternationalKissingDay

 

One for my Irish Peeps. See cleaning a man’s house leads to no good.  John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara  – The Quiet Man  #InternationalKissingDay

 
 North and South with Richard Armitage and Daniella Denby-Ashe. #InternationalKissingDay  Swoon.

 

Rhett and Scarlett.

Outlander.  For you Denny.

 

Victoria and Albert after she proposes. Who can forget the cut-my-shirt scene? #intense #InternationalKissingDay

Still love this almost kiss here:

Mindy and Danny in the rain. Enemies to Friends to Lovers to HEA… for now.  It’s complicated, so international.  #InternationalKissingDay

Iris West And Barry Allen  Superhero love is international. This kiss is no flash in the pan. #InternationalKissingDay #firstkiss

Let’s not forget this one: 22 November 1968, the very first televised interracial kiss. It was between Kirk and Uhura #paranormalkiss #InternationalKissingDay Kirk, I wish you were a little more into it. Uhuru, you are slaying with those nails.

For the record, I’m firmly in the A&E version camp on Pride & Prejudice Movies, but no one can deny the beauty of this Darcy and Lizzy kiss. Oooh Mrs. Darcy.   #InternationalKissingDay

Last but not least (for me at least, please add to this thread) Meghan and Harry. #MeghanAndHarry #InternationalKissingDay #romance  This is why I write romance and love these kissing scenes.

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My Musings – For Prince

So, I did a thing to celebrate the Genius of Prince for his 60th Birthday using his song titles.

Ode to Prince

Yes, I Gotta Broken Heart Again, because I Can’t Make U Love Me. I should Dance On, think about Dinner with Dolores, but this is a Condition of The Heart.

I wish U heaven, Emancipation, Everyday Winding Roads, a Good Life, really. You see I Feel For You. Yes, I Can’t Stop This Feeling I Got. But 4 The Tears In Your Eyes, we should be 2gether. If Eye was the Man in Ur Life and you were Forever in My Life, we would have Good Love, One Kiss At The Time as we Play in The Sunshine. Your love is like 3 Chains O’ Gold, wrapped about me. Hello. Baby, Call My Name, you Most Beautiful Girl in The World.

It is Undisputed. When You Were Mine, this was the Greatest Romance Ever Sold. But now you Tell Me How U Wanna B Done?
Sweet Baby, Beautiful One, I should have seen this in a Crystal Ball, but I was Courting Time, waiting for the Dream Factory to Start.

I close my eyes. It’s So Dark. I see the Slave I’ve become. I’m So Blue. So Dark is my world. My Soul Sanctuary holds too much Purple Rain, too much Hallucination Rain, too much Pink Cashmere. For The Rest of My Life, I will remember when we went to Hollywood, how the Housequake sent me spinning with you Under the Cherry Moon. It was a New Power Day. I should Release it, these feels, this Reflection–all the how it was When I Was Your Girlfriend. But the hope that you will be Right Back Here In My Arms is Insatiable.

No Escape. I’m Face Down in my denial. I Hate U. I truly want to you, Partyman, you Nasty Girl. But I can’t. I can’t even drive away in my Little Red Corvette.

So goodbye again. This is my Last Heart. It must stand for truth.
So even now with the Illusion, the Coma Pimp and Circumstance gone, I’m still Dreaming About You. I think of our Slow Love and Silly Games, and that time with the The Morning Papers and The Ladder. La La La He He Hee. We both know La La La Means I Love You.

Damn U, Darling Nikki. I crossed that Graffiti Bridge just thinking of us. I Wanna Melt With U, Die 4 U. Hello, you Hot Thing. Come On. I know. I know. Call The Law for it is a crime to forgo The Screams of Passion, this love that Still Would Stand All Time.

Shhh, I know now I Can’t Make U Love Me. No Wedding Feast for us. It’s Wasted Kisses. We Gets Up and go our separate ways, no Sensual Everafter.  No Joy in Repetition. No Comeback. So there is no Righting the Wrong. I will Release It like I toss my Raspberry Beret in the air.

I’m done Going Crazy.

I’m Letitgo.

La La La, La La La.

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3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies

It’s three ingredients, and they are so good. I love to cook, so you’ll often find me in the kitchen. I like elegant great tasting easy to create recipes. So this is one of my personal favorites.

Ingredients:
1 cup of peanut butter, the crunchy type with peanuts
1 egg white (You need to cut the cholesterol somewhere.)
1 cup of sugar (I use raw cane sugar, sounds healthier, but you may eat so many that this doesn’t help)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Line a baking tray with parchment or a silicone mat. They will stick to your tray if you don’t, not good eats, a big mess. No one has time for all that cleaning.
Combine all three ingredients together mixing until you have a smooth dough-like consistency.
Take a scoop of it and form a small ball. Flatten it out onto the tray.
Get fancy and make crisscrosses with a fork’s tines. Place the cookies at least an inch apart.

When your tray is full and your oven is ready, pop these into the oven for about 7 minutes. Be careful not to overbake and adjust your timing based on your oven. They should be a light golden brown. You want these to be chewy.
When you take them from the oven, let them cool on the tray for about 2 minutes, then transfer the cookies to a wire cooling rack. I usually just pick up the parchment and set it on the rack to cool completely.

Your patience will be reward with chewy yummy goodness.

Frederica is quite the hostess and loves to make sure her guest has the right treats. Find out more about her in The Butterfly Bride:

 

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The Butterfly Bride

The Butterfly Bride released October 22.

Frederica Burghley wants to be married by Yuletide. Or else her father will set her up with one of his friends. The bonbon-loving illegitimate daughter of the duke wants to choose her own husband. Advertising in the newspaper seems like the way to go. But a sinister response, with threats against her life, leads her to enlist the help of her very handsome, dear friend Jasper Fitzwilliam, Lord Hartwell.

A father and widower, Jasper is not only tasked with keeping Frederica safe but also with helping his vibrant friend choose a suitable husband. The more he tries to keep the ever-surprising woman alive and find her a good match, the more Jasper realizes he cares for her. The two friends risk their lives for each other, so they should be able to risk their feelings for a chance at a deep and true love together. But he’s not looking for marriage and she’s not looking for convenience.

 

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Jane Austen’s World

Looks What’s Brewing in the Regency

  • It Happened One Christmas
    It Happened One Christmas is one of my favorite holiday things–a Regency Christmas Anthology! Even better, it features three novellas by fellow Harlequin Historical authors–all award-winners:  Carla Kelly, Georgie Lee, and Ann Lethbridge. These ladies have generously offered to give away one … Continue reading →

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