Catie’s Ham & Bean Soup

Start by roasting a big ham with a lot of fat on it. Ideally roast it in a cast iron pan, so you don’t have to pour the melted fat into another pan when you take it out of the oven, but whatever works for you. Make an egregious amount of ham gravy. Three cups or more. (You’ve never made gravy? It’s easy. Take a half cup of flour or so and put your sautee pan of ham fat on a decently high heat. Sprinkle in some of the flour.…

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Magic & Manners: Chapter Three

With ongoing apologies to Jane Austen, and a wish for all to have a Happy Midwinter Holiday, I present to you the third chapter of MAGIC & MANNERS, which is what happens when I get it into my head to wonder what PRIDE & PREJUDICE would be like if it was not a lack of wealth that beleaguered the Bennet sisters, but rather an excess of magic… Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three lies behind the cut. :)

birthday of the unconquered sun

I cannot for love or money get this Birthday of the Unconquered Sun account to work, so I’m going to have to bail on that aspect of it. However, if people want to send pictures in to my email address botuc at OUTLOOK dot COM that would be great!, that would be cool!

Picoreview: Frozen

Picoreview: Frozen: conflicting. There are a lot of things I didn’t like about this movie. The music is possibly the worst I’ve ever heard in a Disney film. Usually their songs tend to fit into the narrative pretty well; this really felt like the songs were being forced to fit into spaces unnaturally, and that these characters would prefer to be speaking. There were any number of times that I found myself thinking how much I would like to have seen it done in hand-drawn animation. There were moments where…

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more media plans :)

I just discovered Ron Perlman is on Twitter (he’s perlmutations, since the resounding response from my Twitter feed was WHAT WHERE?!) and this has somehow immediately blown out of control into an 2014 International Re-Watch Beauty and the Beast-fest, so, y’know, if you’ve been meaning to do that, we’ll be doing that next year. An episode a week, probably, starting early (but probably not instantly) in the new year, with live tweeting. :) Along with re-reading Guy Gavriel Kay’s novels and clearning out my TBR pile. That should pretty well…

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