Author Archives: Frances Ellen

Julia Roberts – A Disappointment

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What was Julia Roberts thinking when she wore a jersey dress to the Golden Globe Awards Ceremony?

Julia Roberts 2010 Globes

Photo from The Find

I don’t know about you, but I watch the award shows to see the fashions. Julia certainly disappointed this year. Maybe she thought she was a big enough star to forgo the trouble of dressing up.

Perhaps she didn’t get the memo that the Globes are all about glitz, glamour and stardom. If you’re a star–you come looking like a star. It’s part of  “the job.”

The viewer tunes in to see “who is wearing what,” at least that’s why I watch. The awards are nice, but they’re secondary. Globe night is all about gowns and jewelry and the mystique of Hollywood.

Julia failed miserably. So did Kristin Bell for that matter, but Julia should know better. Perhaps she just didn’t care.

Julia Roberts – The Find didn’t think much of the dress, either.

You have to hand it to Julia Roberts to showing up to the Globes in what is essentially a black jersey day dress (albeit an Yves Saint Laurent one). Then again, this is a woman who let her unshaven armpit hair dangle from a sleeveless top at a movie premiere several years back. The woman does not. Give. A. Fuck. That said, her hair looked great, her legs looked even better, and she seemed totally at ease. I’ll have what she’s having.

Diary of a Mad Fashionista found Julia’s outfit–well, read for yourself.

Julia Roberts was a stand-out for all the wrong reasons. She made many Worst Dressed lists by seeming as if she had just run out of the house without changing her clothes.

Sorry, Julia, you’ll have to step up your game.

Quick & Easy Shepherd’s Pie

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1 lb. ground beef, lean
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 or 2 cans of your favorite vegetable (or leftover veggies)
Instant Mashed Potatoes, you choose the amount of servings
OPTIONALS: Shredded Cheddar Cheese
1 can Creamed Corn

Cook beef and onions in skillet until the meat is browned. Spoon into a baking casserole dish.

Prepare instant mashed potatoes. Add Shredded Cheddar, if you like. ** Place the prepared potatoes around the edges of the casserole dish on top of the beef.

Fill the center with vegetables (If using canned veggies, remember to drain beforehand.)

Bake in 425 oven for 15 minutes.   Serves 3 or 4 people.

**FOR A CHANGE OF PACE – Pour the can of creamed corn, straight from the can, over the beef, BEFORE adding the potatoes and veggies. Great!

Lentil Barley Soup – The Best

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3 cans Vegetable Broth
3 cans Beef Broth
1 cup lentils
1 cup barley
1/2 cup dry black eyed peas OR dry kidney beans
3 tblspn olive oil
1 lb (2 cups) Italian sausage OR Italian turkey sausage
1 large onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 large carrots, chopped
2 large cloves garlic, chopped very fine
1 tblspn fresh basil (use dried if you must, but add only 1 tsp.)
1 tblspn fresh parsley (use dried if you must, but add only 1 tsp.)
1/2 tblspn powdered thyme
3/4 tblspn dried oregano
1 tsp pepper
1 – 8 oz can stewed tomatoes OR Italian cubed tomatoes
Optional Ingredients:
1 can beans, drained (northern, kidney OR cannelloni, your choice)
brown or white rice
1 can mixed vegetables
pastina
bouillon cubes (with water)

  • Pour all broth into a large pot
  • Add lentils, barley and dry beans. Simmer for 1/2 hour.
  • In separate pan, brown sausage on all sides in olive oil. Drain off oil, if necessary. After sausage is cooked, cut into bite-size pieces. Add to soup.
  • Chop celery, carrots, garlic and onion. Add to pot.
  • Add all seasonings and the can of tomatoes to pot.
  • Cook on low for 1 1/2 hours.
  • About the Optionals – I usually serve this soup as the main course (with French or Italian bread) so I like it to have a lot of body. I often add some OR all of the Optional Ingredients.
  • NOTE: If you decide to add rice or pastina, you must add another 3 or 4 cups of water along with a bouillon cube for each cup of water.

As with most homemade soups, the longer it cooks, the better it gets. I have put this soup all together in the morning and left it cook on low until dinner. Excellent! Remember to check it from time to time, though.

This makes a huge amount of soup, but it freezes well. I put it into freezer containers holding 3 or 4 servings each. Believe it or not, it comes out of the freezer better than when it went in, if that’s possible.

Enjoy. It’s worth the trouble and one pot will feed a family several times.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

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Did you ever hear of Stieg Larsson? He wrote The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The title intrigued me, so there you are. I picked the book up. That’s how happy mistakes are made.

The intrigue doesn’t stop with the title. Main characters don’t come more fascinating than Lisbeth Salander. Her personality: mysterious, hidden, socially inept, computer savvy (genius hacker), sometimes deadly, cautious, captivating, hold-your-breath nerve wracking.

I wanted to know a little bit more about the author. Larsson lived in Sweden. He died in 2004. But before he died, he delivered three manuscripts, which were published and later translated into English. Lucky for us.

I just finished reading his second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire. Again the troubled, complicated heroine is Salander.

I found this second book to be slightly slower than the first, but only slightly. Both are good reads.

6 Easy Diet Snacks

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I’ve already demonstrated how to cook perfect hard-boiled eggs in my previous post, and they are the first items on my snack list, as well as on Heidi Klum’s.

  1. 2 Hard-boiled Eggs (only 150 calories)
  2. Eat your favorite cereal straight from the box. No milk? More cereal!
  3. Look for The Laughing Cow light cheese spread triangles in the dairy case. 1 triangle = 35 calories. (I can vouch for the Swiss flavor–it doesn’t taste like artificial muck!) 1 triangle easily covers 6 or 7 saltine crackers.
  4. Rice Cake smeared with 1/2 tablespoon peanut butter and 1/2  sliced banana
  5. Low-fat Cottage Cheese with plenty of fresh blueberries mixed in
  6. Listen up! There are 15 calories in a tablespoon of ReddiWip. Think about that. You can add some really good zippitydoodah to that blah jello. Live a little. Spritz on two whole tablespoons. I’m not talking about that fat free stuff, either. This is the real deal. Jello with fruit with a large dollop of whipped cream. Heaven help us!

Helpful Hints You Probably Already Know:

  • Don’t drink your calories.
  • Stay away from sweets.
  • Eat every morsel of food s-l-o-w-l-y.
  • Be realistic. If you lose one pound in a week, that’s “great.” If you lose 1/2 pound in a week, that’s “very, very good.”
  • Homemade vegetable soup is your friend. It’s easy to make. Empty a large can of chicken broth into a pot. Put every imaginable vegetable you have handy (fresh or frozen) into the broth. Cook over medium heat for at least an hour. Separate into 2-cup containers (or larger, if you want – there’s no limit to the amount you can eat). Then keep the containers handy in the frig and freezer.
  • I’m not even going to mention exercise, because that’s such a pain in the butt. But remember, if you walk down every aisle in the supermarket, or you shop at the mall. Hey, you’re walking–Excellent!
  • Most Important – Don’t beat yourself up. If you hate broiled scallops, but love fried scallops, what the heck. Order them, but fill the rest of your plate with veggies. Also start you meal with a salad. And stick with the cocktail sauce, not the tartar sauce. There you are–no guilty conscience at all.

The Perfect Hard-Boiled Egg

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“It’s so hard to peel a hard-boiled egg.” I hear this complaint over and over again. Therefore, I think it is time for me to share my secret.

Also, you might like to know. Heidi Klum’s exercise guru says that Heidi insists hard boiled eggs be available for that time of day when she needs to have a snack, something filling, but low in calories.

So, here you have it. This takes exactly 20 minutes.

Gently place eggs in pan. Cover with water. Eggs should fit tightly in the pan. You don’t want them rolling around while boiling.

Place pan on burner set on “high.”

The 20 minutes starts now. Set your timer.

Only lower the heat if your pot begins to spit or overflow, but keep the water boiling.

When the timer goes off, plunge the pan under cold running water and fill the pan immediately with ice cubes. The eggs must chill rapidly. Shut off the water and allow pan with cubes to sit for 10 minutes. Replenish ice cubes, if necessary.

Refrigerate eggs.

Now, for the crucial peeling. Crack the shell, not just a little. After you’ve started to crack it, roll it lightly along the counter. It will almost begin to peel itself. Finish peeling. Voila! Beautiful, shiny, smooth egg – ready to eat. Enjoy.

10 More Great Places to Visit in the U.S.A.

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This is my second Top Ten List–the Recap. Have fun planning your vacation.

  1. Washington, DC
  2. Cape May, New Jersey
  3. Outer Banks, North Carolina
  4. Key West, Florida
  5. Macon, Georgia
  6. Cape Cod, Massachusetts
  7. Natural Bridge, Virginia
  8. Salem, Massachusetts
  9. Atlanta, Georgia
  10. The State of Maine, including Acadia National Park

I have written at length about all of the above places in my previous posts. Enjoy!

If you’d like to see my first Top Ten List, go to 10 Great U.S. Cities to Visit

Maine

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Acadia National Park

I’ve never been to Maine, but I’d like to go someday. Here are some of the places I’ll be looking for:

Presque Isle is the starting point for the world’s largest scale model of the solar system, which runs along U.S. Rt. 1 to the town of Houlton, 40 miles away. The center of the solar system is the University of Maine at Presque Isle. The town rests on the eastern edge of the great North Woods, so it is the ideal home base for those who come to Maine to snowmobile, hunt, fish, hike, or mountain bike.

Bar Harbor is adjacent to Acadia National Park, home to 1,532-foot Mount Cadillac. Its summit is the first spot in the United States where the sunrise can be seen.

Other things you’ll find in Bar Harbor: 125 miles of hiking trails, brewery tours, rock climbing, sailing, boat excursions and golf.

Portland, located on Casco Bay, is Maine’s largest city as well as its creative hub. Many craftspeople, artists, and other creative types have chosen to live and work here.

I’m going to take the ferry over to Nova Scotia, and go up in a hot air balloon. And if you like deep-sea fishing, this is the place to go.

Naples is packed with antique shops, restaurants, art galleries, gift shops and two miniature golf courses. It is also the place to rent boats, kayaks or jet skis, buy a ticket for a sea plane ride, or catch a ride on a 300-passenger replica of a Mississippi River stern paddle wheeler. For evening entertainment, establishments on the Causeway offer live music, and the nearby Bridgton Drive-In shows first-run movies on two screens under the stars.

This is only a small sampling. There’s Bangor, Kennebunk, Bath, Rockport, Cape Elizabeth, and Stonington.

Oh, did I mention the food? Zowee!

Natural Bridge, Virginia

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natural-bridge-va

A friend of mine had a temporary position in Virginia, a few years ago. She wanted some visitors because she was lonely. So, I told her to find some places in and around where she was staying and we’d go exploring. That idea culminated in a visit to Natural Bridge. We stayed two nights at the Natural Bridge Hotel. What I remember most about the hotel was their restaurant. The food was good and so was the music. Don’t go expecting a high-end resort, though. The hotel is historic, but quite charming.

There’s a lot of history connected to the Bridge.

The Natural Bridge was a sacred site of the Native American Monacan tribe, who believed it to be the site of a major victory over pursuing Powhatans centuries before the arrival of whites in Virginia.

Thomas Jefferson purchased 157 acres (635,000 m²) of land including the Natural Bridge from King George III of England for 20 shillings in 1774. He called it “the most Sublime of nature’s works”.

At nighttime, the Bridge is lit up with a rainbow of colors. It’s lovely. And while you’re there, visit the Wax Museum and the Toy Museum across from the hotel. There are also caverns there to visit. The kids will love it.

What I remember most about this trip, though, was the view out my window. In the morning, I watched the clouds in the valley slowly rise to the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I never saw anything like that before. Awesome!

Atlanta, Georgia

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Sky-Hike-Atlanta

It’s been a number of years since I’ve been to Atlanta, but I remember my visit fondly. Probably one of the most innovative places in Atlanta is their underground shopping, where you’ll find unique shops and restaurants.

Also downtown, tour the World of Coca Cola. The kids will love it and so will you.

You won’t want to miss Atlanta’s Botanical Gardens. It’s a very special place. Among other things, it houses the country’s largest orchid garden.

If you are traveling with your family and have kids accompanying you then you should visit the Children’s garden that educates your kids along with some entertainment. The Children’s garden can be accessed by crossing over the Flower Bridge.

The best thing I did in Atlanta, though, was spend a day at Stone Mountain. [And if you home school, you’ll be interested in the Homeschool Day coming up in October at Stone Mountain.]

Stone Mountain has something for everyone: hiking the trails, a skyride to the top of the granite mountain, a scenic train ride, a sky hike,  an antebellum plantation, a fireworks/laser light show nightly showcasing the world’s largest relief sculptured mountain. There’s a campground or you can stay at Marriott Stone Mountain Inn. There’s more–much more.

Atlanta is a fun city.