Chicken and Broccoli Casserole

I made this last night for supper. It is so yummy. I originally found the recipe in a cookbook (The Texas Experience) hubby brought back from one of his business trips many years ago. However, I usually alter things somewhat to suit my taste and this recipe was no exception.

2 large packages of frozen chopped broccoli (16 ounces each)
3 pounds chicken breasts, cooked and cut in bite-sized pieces
1 (10 3/4 ounce) can cream of chicken soup
1 (10 3/4 ounce) can cream of celery soup
1 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon curry powder
2 cups grated Cheddar cheese
1 cup bread crumbs
2 tablespoons butter
Parmesan Cheese

Cook broccoli and drain. Arrange in a buttered 13x9 pan. Place chicken on top of broccoli. Combine soups, mayonnaise, lemon juice and curry powder. Pour over the chicken and sprinkle with Cheddar cheese. Combine bread crumbs and butter and sprinkle over all. Dust lightly with Parmesan cheese. Bake in a 350 degree over 25 to 30 minutes.

Serves 8.

(Hint: My sister buys already roasted chicken at the grocery store and uses that to make this casserole. I cook the chicken in a pan first, which takes a bit of extra time.)

Black and White Photography

Once upon a time, I took a photography course. I had a 35 mm SLR camera and I had to develop the black and white film. (This was long, long ago before the advent of digital photography.) The photo above is the one the professor liked. It shows my youngest sister in a window. The reflections made it really weird. Professors seem to like really strange stuff. I worked very hard in the development process, dodging the window sill because it was too light.

I found black and white photography difficult. My photos of flowers came out horrible. (I love flowers.) When I took pictures of people or landscapes, the photos were either too dark or too light, or there wasn't enough contrast. Or there was too much contrast.

Nevertheless, when the course was completed, I bought my own developing equipment. My darkroom was the bathroom in my parents' house. We had only one bathroom. I warned everyone before I did any developing, but invariably someone would decide they had to use the bathroom while I was trying to develop my pictures.

Eventually, I gave up black and white photography. I sold my developing equipment, but I kept the camera, bought color film, and paid for developing. It was worth it.

Hyphen Crazy

I am diligently combing through the third and final edit of Daddy Wanted. My Prism Book Group publisher has given me the date for the release of the book, June 19th. :^)

It seems with every book I've written I have either used one word too much or failed to remember some important grammatical point. In this book, it appears I went hyphen crazy. Yes, I put hyphens all over the place. Nonviolent became non-violent. Brokenhearted became broken-hearted. I should have checked the dictionary but with over 62,000 words in the book, those words looked good enough to me, which is why I know I need an editor. I can tell a story, but one very important part of storytelling is the details.

I must review the rules for hyphens. I will do that as soon as I send the edit back to my editor.

Have you ever put hyphens where they don't belong?

Ulysses, The Red-Eared Slider

This is Ulysses. He's a secondary character in Daddy Wanted.

Commonly known as a red-eared slider, Ulysses is a good listener. You can find out more about this turtle at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-eared_slider

Red-eared sliders were common pets until the FDA banned the sale of the tiny turtles in 1975.

Did you ever have one of these as a pet?

Book Trailer for DADDY WANTED

I made a book trailer for Daddy Wanted! It's short and sweet--53 seconds--less than a minute. Everyone has time to watch it! Of course, it will take you longer than that to read the book, but I hope the trailer piques your interest. :^)



The book will be released soon. Check out this webpage:

http://www.prismbookgroup.com/DaddyWanted.html

While you're there, check out the other fine books at Prism Book Group. I'm sure you'll enjoy every one of them.

Twitter Spring Cleaning

I have already written one post about Twitter. You can find that post here. This post is about keeping my Twitter account tidy. I have spent the last week or so--at odd moments--cleaning and organizing my Twitter account. This was a well-overdue project. There are websites that will manage Twitter accounts, but I decided to go it alone. I was raised in a do-it-yourself household and then went on to marry a do-it-yourself husband. I believe I can do it better myself.

Here and there as I went through my daily tweets I unfollowed people who were not following me. Many of them were rich and famous. It felt good somehow to hit that red UNFOLLOW button and remove the high and mighty from my feed. I have realized that there is no point in following famous people. If someone is following 14 people but has 50,000 people following them, they are famous. Why should they follow me? They probably only follow their siblings or perhaps their lawyer.

For the famous people, it is better to add them to a list. (Because, of course, I still want to read their tweets.) You do not have to follow somebody to move them into a list, but once they are on the list you set up you can read their tweets as your leisure. Your lists can be private or public.

Once I eliminated the famous people who don't follow me, I had more spaces for new people. Twitter will not allow anyone to follow more than 2,000 people until they get more than 2,000 people following them. I was stuck at around 1,600 followers for the longest time--until I decided to do something about it.

Now I have a very different Twitter feed. It's like a breath of fresh air--like opening the windows when the weather turns warm. :^)

I also discovered there were people following me who had not posted anything for three years or more. While it's nice to have a lot of followers, it's far better if they are chatty, live people. (It takes a great deal of skill to be chatty in 140 characters but there are those who do it well.) If someone has not posted in three years, I have to assume they passed away or gave up tweeting, in which case they should delete their account and try something else--like maybe Pinterest or Tumblr.

At any rate, I should have been cleaning out my account all along, but like everything else it was just going along and collecting dust bunnies. Now I feel so organized!

Have you checked your Twitter account lately?

Fashion Flashback, The Granny Dress

Once upon a time, the "Granny Dress" was the height of fashion. That's me in 1972 looking like I am ready for an afternoon tea party with a bunch of Victorians. Granny dresses were all the rage and I loved them. Most of the time I lived in my jeans--and I still do. However, it was nice to dress up for a few hours in ruffles. Sort of like going into a time machine, but only temporarily and while still having all the modern conveniences available. (I hopped into my Chevy Nova and drove off. I would not want to deal with a horse.)

I wish I had a photo of the pink gingham granny dress I made. I sewed that dress to wear for the special party the graduating class of 1971 (of what was then Jersey City State College) had on a Circle Line cruise around New York instead of a prom. On the boat I danced to the latest rock tunes in my granny dress.

My affinity for the style is even stranger when you consider that the dress code for women was only abolished a few years earlier. Until my sophomore year in college, all women were required to wear dresses to class--every day, all the time.

Styles come and go, but it is wonderful to have the freedom to choose what you want to wear.