Word of the Day Update

Buzzwhack wrote me back and basically said not to blame the submitter because the word originally appeared in a story in the Washington Post. I don't get nor read the Post, so I haven't seen the story. Shame on the Post then because that's just shoddy journalism to lump all authors in with one or two who have used products for pay.

185,000 new books are released a year. Of those, 99.9999% of the authors who mention a brand are doing it for no good reason other than character development or to show a detail. And, lawsuit-fearing publishers sometimes excise brands (I've had some brands taken out of my books, some left in). Music is one of the things that I rarely reference because it's very dicey territory on legalities in mentioning it (with the whole fair use thing on whether a line or a stanza is okay or whether you should pay for permission...it's easier not to use any part of the song at all).

Anyway, the whole thing still irks me. I'm a responsible, above board, honest author in what I do and what I write and I don't want to be lumped into any category like that.

Deep breath. Time for another topic.

Last night was our church's spaghetti supper. DD had the day off from school and was supposed to help me bake the desserts but her father needed her to help at work more, so she went there instead, leaving me with the cookies and brownies and a failed toffee attempt. The spaghetti supper went okay...didn't raise as much money as we'd hoped but I think that was because school had been canceled and a lot of people might have assumed church was canceled too (it's a parochial school). But we all had fun and the food was fabulous. We sold the extra desserts on the way out and made extra money that way, too :-)

So that meant no cooking at my house last night. The night before I made a sun-dried tomato/spinach stuffed chicken breast. It was a decent recipe but I think it needs freshly grated parmesan and a bit more spice to kick it up. To me, it was kind of bland, though DH assured me it was great. Still, I'm going to make notes on the recipe and try again :-)

I also made some not-so-bad mashed potatoes -- just take your basic mashed potatoes and add garlic and chive cream cheese into them along with skim milk and low-fat margarine (to bring down the calories). They were pretty good (though not as fat-filled as regular, of course ).

Have a great day! The weather has warmed up here, so my kids are bummed the snow is melting but I'm happy not to be bundled up ;-)

Shirley