One of the foods my family has always enjoyed on Christmas Eve was tortière. It is a French-Canadian meat pie that my mother learned to make when she grew up in Northern Ontario.

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TORTIÈRE

2 lbs ground pork

1 lb ground beef
1 tbsp butter
1 large or two medium potatoes
1 large onion (diced into tiny pieces)
2 teaspoons allspice
pepper to taste
1 tsp cinnamon (optional)
4 Deep Dish pie shells (I use pre-made)

1. Peel, cut up, and boil potato(s). Mash them well. Put aside. They will be used later in the recipe.

2. In a large skillet or pot, melt the butter. Add onions until they've turned clearish.

3. Add the ground pork and ground beef until well cooked. Drain the grease.

4. Add the mashed potato and mix well.

5. Add the allspice, pepper, and cinnamon. Mix well. 

6. Add enough water to cover the mixture and let simmer for a few hours, allowing the potato to thicken the mixture.
7. Once the mixture is thickened, divide equally into two of the pie shells. Cover each with one of the remaining pie shells and pinch the edges, using a wee bit of water to bond them. I always cut an eight-point star into mine to vent them well when cooking.   
8. Bake at 425 degrees F until edges are golden brown and pie dough cooked. I usually undercook one just slightly so I can freeze it and just pop into the oven to reheat without the pie dough getting burned during reheating. The other one I cook fully for dinner.

In one week, Princess Ro’sa will board a spaceship, leaving her home on Minjet to be with her betrothed on Earth. The only problem is, she detests the prince’s selfish and arrogant ways, preferring to spend time with his personal aide, a man who stirs her desires in ways she never imagined possible with his radiant blue eyes and smouldering lips. And oh, the way he touches her.

Earth’s post-apocalyptic landscape offers little but the alliance offers much and a princess must do her duty, no matter the danger to her person and to her heart.

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jessicasubject.com

I admit it. I found this recipe when I had a pound of ground beef and was too lazy to go to the market for hamburger buns. When it turned out to be delicious, I was doubly happy, because Becca Chen, the heroine of my book, Across the Line, has a café that specializes in soups and a daily offering of lettuce cups. I hope you like this one as much as I do.

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Asian Beef Lettuce Cups

16ish Boston Bibb, butter, or iceberg lettuce leaves

1 pound ground beef

1 tablespoon oil

1 large onion, chopped

¼ cup hoisin sauce (found in Asian section of the market)

4 cloves fresh garlic, minced

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar

¼ teaspoon ground ginger (or you can use a teaspoon of fresh grated ginger)

a couple dashes of Sriracha or other hot sauce

1 (8 oz) can water chestnuts, drained and finely chopped

1 bunch green onions, chopped

2 teaspoons sesame oil

Rinse and pat dry the lettuce leaves.

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook and stir beef and cooking oil in the hot skillet until browned and crumbly, 5 to 7 minutes. Drain and discard grease; transfer beef to a bowl. Cook and stir onion in the same skillet used for beef until slightly tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Stir hoisin sauce, garlic, soy sauce, vinegar, ginger, and hot sauce into onions. Add water chestnuts, green onions, sesame oil, and cooked beef; cook and stir until the onions just begin to wilt, about 2 minutes.

Spoon some of the filling into the lettuce cups and enjoy! This would probably make a wonderful salad, too. I found myself wanting a higher lettuce to meat ratio. This would also be yummy with white rice and some steamed veggies.

Calder Griffin needs to get back in shape. Sidelined last season by a knee injury, he's determined to return to the San Diego Barracudas and play the best hockey of his career. This might even be the year he gets out of his talented older brother's shadow.

For months, Becca Chen has poured her energy into Cups, the restaurant she owns, desperate to prove to her parents that she can succeed in the career of her choice, not theirs. But after she spends a five-hour plane ride flirting with charming, magic-on-the-ice Calder, she tells herself she needs a fling.

Becca and Calder can't keep their hands off each other, but they know the relationship can't last. They live on opposite coasts, and they're both too devoted to their careers. All they have to do is prevent their feelings from crossing the line from lust to love...

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You won’t find any vegetables at a dragon gathering! Here’s a recipe—adapted from dragon-fire temperatures to oven settings—sure to be a hit for any carnivorous species, be they human or reptile!

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Candied Meat Treats (Recipe is adjusted for 8 human stomachs and makes about 60 treats)

Ingredients

1 dash ground black pepper	1 (16oz) package bacon
2 cups brown sugar (more or less if desired)	Toothpicks
2 (14oz) packages Lit’l Smokies™

Directions

Heat oven to 400°F – Line a baking or casserole dish with aluminum foil

Mix black pepper and brown sugar.

Cut strips of bacon into thirds and wrap each lit’l smokie, securing the bacon with a toothpick. Place into backing dish.

Pack the brown sugar and pepper mix around the smokies and cover the dish with aluminum foil.

Bake in oven for 18-25 minutes at 400°F. Remove aluminum foil cover.

Increase the temperature to 450°F and bake for another 30-40 minutes, or until brown sugar has melted and thickened.

Serve.

Consoling a sobbing dragon and serving pig buffets are just part of the job for Myrna Banks. Working for a mediation firm, it's her job to get humans compensated for damages caused by the dragons who now rule. But her "typical" day is interrupted by Trian Chobardan, an old flame who sneaked out of her bed two years ago, taking her heart and a handful of classified documents with him.

Myrna would love to show Trian the door, but he's been sent by North America's reigning dragon lord for help negotiating a truce with a powerful rival to avert war. Myrna agrees to help, even though she'll be stuck with Trian as a partner.

As the two work together, Myrna finds Trian to be surprisingly supportive—and still irresistibly attractive. Though her brain tells her not to forget his betrayal, her body feels differently. When they learn the enemy dragon lord is planning something no one could have imagined, Myrna has to learn who she can trust before she loses not only her heart, but her life.

84,000 words

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http://lorendac.com

There were many issues facing Alex and Lisbeth, the least of which was the king’s appearance at Glen Kirk Castle but I’ll tell you all about that later. Lisbeth planned a banquet for the king featuring duck breast with berry sauce using her special garden berries. Here is Lisbeth’s recipe. I hope you get the same results she did!

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Sautéed Duck Breast with Berry Sauce – serves 6

Ingredients

6 large boneless duck breast fillets, skin on
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 cup red wine
1 cup chicken or duck stock
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 sprigs fresh rosemary
2 cups berries: blueberries, raspberries, or blackberries
2 tablespoons butter

Directions

1. Season the duck breast with salt and pepper.

2. Heat the oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Brown the duck breast, skin side first, then flip over, reduce heat and cook other side, about 10 to 15 minutes.

3. Remove the duck breasts to a platter, reserving the juices in the pan. Work in batches, if necessary.

4. To make the sauce, add the balsamic vinegar and red wine to the pan and cook until reduced by half.

5. Add the stock and reduce by half again, then add brown sugar, rosemary and berries and cook for 3 minutes.

6. Strain into a bowl and whisk in the butter to finish.

7. Place the duck breast on each plate and drizzle the sauce around.

Note: You can substitute jam for the berries just omit the sugar. You can also substitute chicken for the duck.

Lisbeth winked when she told me this was an old family recipe. If that is so then chef Robert Irvine of the Food Network is a distant relation! I used this recipe from Food Network after we remodeled the kitchen and I wanted a special dinner just for Paul and I. He licked his fingers and gave me a smoldering stare …

 

England, 1290

Lord Alex Stelton can't resist a challenge, especially one with a prize like this: protect a castle on the Scottish border for a year, and it's his. Desperate for land of his own, he'll do anything to win the estate—even enter a proxy marriage to Lady Lisbeth Reynolds, the rumored witch who lives there.

Feared and scorned for her second sight, Lisbeth swore she'd never marry, but she is drawn to the handsome, confident Alex. She sees great love with him but fears what he would think of her gift and her visions of a traitor in their midst.

Despite his own vow never to fall in love, Alex can't get the alluring Lisbeth out of his mind and is driven to protect her when attacks begin on the border. But as her visions of danger intensify, Lisbeth knows it is she who must protect him. Realizing they'll secure their future only by facing the threat together, she must choose between keeping her magic a secret and losing the man she loves.

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Website: www.RuthACasie.com

Blog: www.RuthACasie.blogspot.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RuthACasie

Book Trailer: http://bit.ly/19jej7y

Thanks for coming by to check out my romance recipe. Now, granted, this isn’t going to be something sexy, and since my main characters have all been vampires, you can guess they don’t eat this sort of thing for themselves. However, my husband and I LOVE this recipe. It originally came out of the American Heart Association Cookbook (7^thEdition).

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Vegetable oil spray

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 lb lean ground beef

1 cup shredded low-fat mozzarella (AHA calls for Monterey Jack)

14.5-ounce can tomatoes, undrained (AHA says unsalted, we don’t bother)

16 6-inch corn tortillas, halved

1/2 cup salsa (this is somewhere you can add spice)

15-ounce can navy beans, rinsed and drained (AHA says no-salt added)

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 can whole-kernel corn (AHA says 1c frozen)

1 cup fat-free/low-fat ricotta cheese

7-ounce can sliced black olives (AHA says 1/4 cup)

1 teaspoon chili powder

1. Preheat oven to 375◦, lightly spraying a 13x9x2-inch baking pan with vegetable oil spray.

2. In a large nonstick skillet, cook beef for 7-8 minutes (medium-high), or until browned, stirring occasionally. You can drain/rinse the beef, but we generally don’t. If you do, return beef to skillet.

3. Stir in tomatoes, salsa and salt, reduce heat to medium-low and cook for 5 minutes or until warmed through, stirring occasionally. Turn off heat, but leave skillet on the stove.

4. In a small bowl, stir together the ricotta cheese, chili powder, and cumin.

5. Arrange 8 tortilla halves in the baking dish (they can overlap, that’s to be expected).

6. Spread half of the beef mixture over the tortillas and sprinkle using half of your mozzarella (or Jack, if you use the Jack).

7. Arrange another 8 tortilla halves.

8. Spoon 1-tablespoon mounds of the ricotta mixture over the tortillas, then flatten each mound slightly, pouring the beans and corn on top.

9. Put on another layer of tortillas.

10. Add remaining meat, sprinkle with the last of the cheese, add the olives.

11. Put on the last set of 8 tortilla halves.

12. Cover with aluminum foil.

13. Bake for 30 minutes, or until warmed through.

14. Enjoy!

If this is too bland for you as is (it was the first time we tried it), Tabasco sauce works wonders, as does adding a jalepeno pepper and/or hot salsa rather than mild or medium.

One hundred ninety-eight seasons after the mushroom-shaped clouds first blossom to poison the humans of the Rising Sun, near the beginning of the Season of Inundation, Atlantis will return.

With those words ringing in their ears, vampires Christine Javert and Jordan MacNaught find themselves in a race against time to stop the return of Atlantis. As they hunt for the deadly Ares, they discover the true depths of his plot to incite a world-wide species war, turning the humans against all the non-humans, not just the vampires as they’d originally thought.

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www.torymichaels.com

http://torymichaels.blogspot.com

My current favorite to make for holidays is a BBQ brisket, or brisket tacos. The brisket is a tougher cut of meat and therefore needs to be handled well to keep it moist and soft.  Since I’ve picked up brisket as one of those things I can do well, I get asked a lot about how to figure out cooking it. I’ll share my easy calculations for how to make a great brisket at home in your oven.

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What you’ll need:

· Brisket

· Onion

· Salt

· Pepper

· BBQ, seasoning, dry rub, beer batter or other dressing

When you cut the packaging open on your brisket, go ahead and give it a quick wash. Keep that wrapper handy though, you’ll need it toward the end. You’ll see that one side of the brisket has a fatty layer, usually half an inch to an inch thick. Put the brisket in a pan with the fat side up. This way as the brisket cooks the fat can keep the meat moist.

Dice up the onion to add some flavor. Some people here in Texas like to add some peppers and jalapenos as well. I’m simple, so I prefer a plain onion.

Season your brisket to taste. This can mean a few things. I personally prefer a good BBQ brisket, so I will either make up a quick batch of BBQ from scratch or use my favorite brand of store bought sauce and slather the entire brisket in a bottle so the flavor can cook through the meat. You can also experiment with beer batter, various rubs or sauces.

I usually pour a cup or more of beef stock in the bottom to add more flavor and ensure that the meat stays as moist as possible. This is something you can take or leave, it’s just my preference.

Another tip for those who want easy clean up and chose to skip the broth, you can wrap the brisket in foil inside the pan so there’s even less scrubbing to do.

When you’re brisket is ready to pop in the oven, it’s time to calculate how long you will need to allow for cooking. If you’re a well-done person, I’d suggest something around 275 degrees. I’m more of a medium-rare girl, so I cook my briskets around 225 degrees.

Go back to your wrapping that you removed at the beginning and see how much your brisket weighs. For every pound of meat, you will need to cook the brisket for one to one and a half hours. The more you cook it, the more well done it will be.

So say you have a five pound brisket and want it well done. You’d cook it at about 275 degrees for up to seven and a half hours. Say you want it on the rare side. That same cut of meat would be cooked at 225 degrees for as few as five hours.

If you have a meat thermometer you can cook until the inner temperature is between 145 to 190 degrees.

When it’s finished, cut and serve to your preference, be that sliced and slathered in BBQ sauce or diced and in a taco!

A woman who doesn’t believe she deserves love…

Toe-curling kisses and enough sex to fill a weekend were all Pandora wanted from a fling with her teenage crush. She’s never forgotten how he played the knight in shining armor to her damsel in distress. She’s ready to say thank you in several naughty ways, so long as she can walk away when it’s over with her heart intact.

A man moving on from tragedy…

Brian has no intention of allowing the feisty tattoo artist to leave him after one taste. He hasn’t had enough of her inked curves. The packaging might have changed, but Pandy is the woman he hasn’t been able to excise from his memory. He’s ready to put together a new life, one that includes her. But he’s not the only one vying for her attention. Someone else wants her, dead or alive.

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Fun fact: Iowa is the #1 pork producing state in the United States. Go us! This time of year, we grill like crazy so I thought I’d share one of our favorites.

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Ham Steak

In a saucepan, heat until well-blended:

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup horseradish (Coarse ground horseradish, not the creamy sauce. I personally like a little more
horseradish, about 1/3 cup but since this is my husband’s recipe…)

1/4 cup lemon juice

Let it cool to thicken up a bit.

Score the ham steak, grill until nearly done and then brush sauce over the steak.

Easy, easy, easy. And delicious! And cheap! The new pork slogan is “Pork: Be inspired” and clearly you can see why. Here’s a picture of my husband preparing the steak.

There’s really no way to make that pretty, is there? See the horseradish sauce in the background. DON’T BUY THAT SAUCE. I bought the wrong kind and had to run out to the store for the real stuff.

 

Private investigator Grace tracks a kidnapped child to middle-of-nowhere Iowa. Encountering a strange creature she knows can't be a local animal, she doesn't need her psychic abilities to figure out the sleepy town is not what it seems. When she meets the intriguing Aiden, she's plunged into a world of Norse gods and fire demons where the Wild Hunt still rides the night.

Aiden needs Grace's help to cross the portal between worlds and rescue his daughter. Grace is unlike any woman he's ever met. He's drawn to her courage, distressed by her vulnerability and doubtful of her motives. But he knows that her visions are the key to defeating the enemy and bringing everyone home alive.

Grace wants a future with Aiden, even if it means she'll never have a normal life. When a test run to the portal takes a terrifying turn, they must learn to finally trust each other or Aiden's daughter, and their chance at love, will be lost forever...

~~~

www.eleristone.com