For a sleighride, don’t you think?

I haven’t been on a sleigh ride in years, but I have fond memories, especially of when I was a kid growing up in a small farming community.  I belonged to groups like 4-H and we often had outings that included skating parties, hot cocoa, caroling, and yes, sleigh rides.

Of course you would hope for snow so you could actually go on a sleigh ride and not a wagon ride. There is something magical about the white snow and moonlight and the squeak of the runners against the snow. The sound of the horses’s hooves and the plume of the frosty air out their noses and of course the sound of bells!  But if there was no snow, we made do with wagons and bales of hay just the same. After all, you don’t need snow to sing carols. Or drink hot chocolate. Or eat Maudie Griffith’s fudge.

I got thinking about different books and movies that I love that have sleighrides in them.  How about the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and burrowing under buffalo robes to keep warm?  Or one of my favourites – YEARS by LaVyrle Spencer. Teddy and Linnea were lovely characters and the day he picked her up from the train after Christmas break and they stopped and saw the wild horses…. happy sigh….

Movies, too. Like The Santa Clause 2 when he uses some magic to create a snowfall around the sleigh as they make their way to the Christmas party. Or at the end of White Christmas when it begins snowing and they roll back the barn doors and a horse and sleigh go jogging past!

Alas there are no sleigh rides in my immediate future, maybe you can recommend some other holiday books and movies I may have missed?

And as this is my last post of 2010 – MERRY CHRISTMAS and a big thank you to the other fillies for welcoming me to the family this year.

First off, HAPPY THANKSGIVING to my fellow Canucks!  I hope you’ve stuffed yourselves full of turkey and cranberry sauce this weekend!

When I was a girl, I lived on a farm, so we never really vacationed much.  In the summer time, it was too busy.  In the late fall and winter, I was in school. There was the odd trip to the Annapolis Valley for apple grower field days in the summer. But I didn’t camp.

My husband’s family, on the other hand, camped A LOT. When we started dating, I suddenly learned what Coleman stoves and lanterns were for. How to put up a tent. The taste of bacon and eggs cooked in the outdoors. How you don’t touch the sides of the tent in the morning or when it rains or else you’ll get wet.  We moved out west and had kids and bought a bigger tent. Then we bought a tent trailer – a pop up that keeps us off the ground and has a table that works out dandy when it’s raining.  I love how I can leave my dishes and necessities in it and not have to pack them up every time.  It has burners but we still take the Coleman stove and use it unless it’s pouring down rain. It wouldn’t be camping without the camp stove.

One of my favourite camping trips ever was the summer before we left Alberta. We’d already spent a few weeks in the Shuswap area of British Columbia, but after being home a few days we felt the urge to hit the road again.  The husband left the destination up to me. I think for a while he regretted it, because I picked The Great Canadian Barn Dance  in Hillspring, Alberta – I think it was 2 or 3 nights camping and then a roast beef dinner and dance included.

Now my husband is a quiet guy.  The idea of going to a “group” dinner and then a barn dance earned me a few nasty looks. The girls, on the other hand, thought it sounded marvelous.

Southern Alberta is beautiful, and the campground was only a short drive from Waterton National Park. If you’re at all familiar, you’ll know that Waterton is on the Canadian side of the Montana Border and Glacier National Park. It’s absolutely stunning. And all around it is some of the most beautiful ranch country I’ve ever seen.

And the barn dance was great. First there was dinner – roast beef, potatoes, beans, coleslaw, buns….mmmm.  And Apple Crisp for dessert. Then there was the entertainment – the place is run by the Kunkel family and they’re all pretty talented. There’s an audience participation component (can you see my husband’s eyes roll again?) and wouldn’t you know he got chosen to play the “gut bucket” aka washtub bass. But he was a good sport.  After that the kids got a wagon ride around the place and then there was the dance itself.

Don’t worry if you don’t know how to two-step or line dance.  They’ll teach you.  They’ll teach you something called The Butterfly too.  A mutual friend taught me to two-step several years ago, but this was the first time my husband ever did it, and it was great. We left before it was over to put the kids to bed, but as we sat outside we could still hear the music.  We even shared a dance beneath the stars as the party ended.

Now that we live on the East Coast, we’ll probably never make it back there again. But I’m sure glad we went.  And glad we’ve got the memories. Heck, it even inspired one of my Romances that was out in 2009.

Our camping trips inspired lots of locations, sometimes just be exploring a part of Alberta or British Columbia and finding it particularly pretty.  Such is the case with my next Harlequin Romance, Proud Rancher, Precious Bundle.  It’s out in February, but it’s out this month in the UK as a Mills and Boon Cherish.

Potatoes are one of my absolute favorite foods, no matter how they’re cooked, baked, fried, mashed, or chowderfied. This is a variation of my mom-in-laws recipe.
Ingredients:

5 pounds of potatoes, peeled and cubed (I use brown/golden potatoes)
4 stalks Celery, diced
1 tsp Onion Salt
1 tsp Pepper
1/8 cup Chicken Soup Base (or two billion cubes)

4 cups Half and Half
1 can Cream of Celery Soup
1 1/2 lb Cheddar Cheese, shredded
1/2 tsp Paprika

**Optional**
1/2 tsp Cayenne Pepper (for spice fiends like myself)
Four strips of bacon, chopped and fried to a crisp
Small Sour Dough Bread Rounds

Add potatoes, celery, onion salt, pepper and soup base to 1 quart water. Water should just cover the potatoes. Bring to boil. Boil approximately 20 minutes, until potatoes are tender. Add Half and Half, Cream of Celery Soup, Cheese, and Paprika (Cayenne Pepper optional). Cook over medium low for another 20 minutes, stirring frequently.

We love the sour dough bread bowls. Slice off the top of the round, pull bread from immediate center, not too close to the crust (we place that bread around the plate to dip in the chowder), fill with chowder, top with bacon.

YUM

To comment on Patricia Potter’s recipe, click here.

I’ve got a true frontier bread recipe for you to try today. I wish I could claim this was handed down from mother to daughter from my great-great-grandmother, but I can’t. Since Linda beat me to biscuits, and Cheryl has a delicious-looking cornbread recipe coming on Friday–and I rarely plan far enough ahead to make yeast rolls–I had to go hunting. Luckily, there are some excellent cowboy cooking sites on the internet. So here’s Frying Pan Bread, from the Legends of America site, to go with Pam’s Italian Sausage Tortellini Soup and Elizabeth’s Stampede’s Comin’ Chili. I added a few suggestions of my own [in the brackets], but the link for the original recipe is at the end. Enjoy!

Frying Pan Bread [also called Bannock]

1 cup flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

Water

Thoroughly mix dry ingredients. Add just enough cold water to make a stiff dough. [something under ½ cup for me]. Now let the dough rest while you heat up your skillet to medium, then add a little butter or bacon fat so the bread doesn’t stick.

Working dough as little as possible, form a 1-inch thick cake. Lay the cake on a greased, pre-warmed skillet. Brown the bottom of the cake lightly and flip or turn with a spatula to brown the other side. When both sides are lightly browned, prop the skillet in front of the fire [or slide it into a 375-400 degree oven] and let it bake [for 10-15 minutes]. Test for doneness by thumping the cake with a spoon handle or stick. A hollow ringing sound indicates doneness. An alternative test is to jab the cake with a twig or matchstick. If the twig comes out clean (no clinging dough), the cake is done.

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-frontierrecipes4.html#

Old fashioned in every way (except the healthier olive oil choice), you won’t be disappointed with this yummy no-fail recipe for the best pumpkin bread you’ve ever eaten.  Tip: If you use fresh nutmeg, cut the recommended amount in half.

Grandma’s Pumpkin Bread

4 cups sugar

1 cup virgin olive oil

1 large can pumpkin

Stir the above three ingredients together

Sift together and add:

5 cups flour

4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp nutmeg

½ tsp ginger

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

Chopped nuts, if desired

Mix well. Pour into greased bread pans.

3 large loaf pans: Bake at 350? for 1 hour 15 min

5 small loaf pans: Bake at 350? for approximately 1 hour

Serve warm and top with whipped cream.

Loaves will keep well if placed in plastic bags and stored in the refrigerator.

An outlaw calls a man out for tampering with his horse – only to find out there’s nary a pistol in town.  You can’t have a showdown with an unarmed man!  This north of the border Wild West tale had me in stitches!

I love Paul Gross.  Love him.  I loved him in Due South and I was so impressed with Passchendaele (despite the Oscar ending rather than the Hollywood ending, and yes, I’m still bitter about that).  So when I heard that he was in a new movie – and that he played an outlaw – I knew that I had to see it.  So one afternoon my writer friend Julianne MacLean and I headed to the theatre to sneak in a matinee.

Gross plays The Montana Kid, who after a failed attempt at being hanged (never hang a man from a dead tree branch) ends up in Barclay’s Brush.  He doesn’t realize he’s crossed the border into Canada, and his mere presence puts the town’s residents (all dozen or so of them) in a state of excitement.  Within minutes he’s challenged the town smithy to a shootout – except Mr. Montana Kid has the only pistol in town.  Well, almost.  You see, the widow Jane has a pistol.  It’s broken, but wouldn’t you know it’s the blacksmith that sets out to fix it.  In the meantime, Jane exchanges the pistol for some hard labour on the farm.  The Montana Kid is dirty.  I mean really dirty.  And he’s rough around the edges.  And of course, there’s a bounty on him.   

It has all the making of a gritty western, but it’s not.  It’s firmly tongue in cheek.  If there’s one thing we seem to be able to do in Canada, it’s not take ourselves too seriously.  So when the Kid gets cleaned up, it’s hard not to snicker when he reappears from the Chinese laundry wearing this:

It takes a special kind of man to get away with that particular shade of purple.  And silk. Especially with the long hair. 

Come to find out his real name is Sean, and this hardened outlaw is no match for Jane, played by Sienna Guillory.  Add in the town doctor, who is very adept at removing bullets from posteriors, an unflappable Indian (played by the always wonderful Graham Greene) and a host of Mounties (including one particularly fresh-faced man in red serge who is quite sweet on Jane as well) and there are some true gems.  We have horses and donkeys, a sweet school marm and a pair of bumbling “boys” quite awestruck at having a real live outlaw in their midst.

And yes – we must get back to the baddie.  I was thrilled to see that Callum Keith Rennie was playing Ben Cutler.  I like Callum a lot – most recently as Leoben in Battlestar Galactica and as Lew Ashby in Californication. 

It goes without saying that two things needed to happen in this movie – there has to be a shootout, and the guy has to get the girl.

Check out the trailer if you don’t believe me. I guarantee you’ll have a giggle!

Occasionally, I read a book that seems to be moving along just fine, and then a passage comes up that irritates me like nails on a chalkboard. We all probably have pet peeves about the books we read. Perhaps I’m more critical because I’m a writer…but I don’t think so. The readers I know and love are savvy and know the elements of a good book. In no particular order, here’s my list of things that drive me crazy if I read them.

The heroine has tiny feet.
How many people actually think of their own feet as “tiny?”

The heroine falls asleep thinking about what’s going to happen or what already happened.
Yawn.

The heroine has “small perfect” teeth. One that overlaps is far more interesting don’t you think?.

Jumping in and out of heads/point of view.
Do readers notice or care when we even know what the cab driver’s thinking? I once got into a horse’s point of view, but my critique group didn’t get it slip past.

A couple jumping into bed before I care about them – or before they care about each other. Yawn.

The ending feels rushed, as though the author only had so many pages in which to resolve everything.

A story that starts out with so much backstory that I feel as though I’ve missed the previous book.

Heroines who giggle.

Heroines who only need a shower and a little lip gloss to look like JLo. Yeah, right.

Heroes with bad attitudes and nobody ever calls them on it.

Another thing that irritates me and always has is the scene changing to another viewpoint and location just when the story gets exciting. As a writer, I understand it’s a pacing and tension ploy to keep the reader engaged and vary the emotional intensity, but….I’ve been known on many occasions to simply skip the scene in which the tension drops, flipping forward to the character I want to read about. Sometimes I go back for the other viewpoint, sometimes not.

So how about you? Do any of the things I’ve listed bug you or do you have your own pet peeves?

Excuse me now, won’t you? I have to go put my tiny feet up.

With the issuance of the “Cowboys of the Silver Screen” stamps, the U.S. Postal Service honors four extraordinary performers who helped make the American Western a popular form of entertainment. Film stars from the silent era through the singing era are featured on the stamps: William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers. The stamps go on sale April 17.

Roy Rogers was so much more than an extraordinary performer. Born Leonard Slye on November 5, 1911, on a quiet street in Cincinnati, Ohio, where Cinergy Field, home of the Reds, now stands; “right where second base is now” according to Roy.

Though Roy was city born, he was farm raised. His family bought a small farm near Duck Run, OH, when Roy was seven. On Saturday nights, Roy was the musical entertainment, singing, yodeling, and playing mandolin while the family and their neighbors danced. His yodeling abilities were self-taught, and he, his mother, and sisters used the musical form to communicate when they worked in different areas of the farm.

The Roy Rogers we know best was a silver screen cowboy who sang his way to stardom. He always played the Western hero, with a warm smile, good character, and strong values.

Thanks to Gene Autry and his wildly successful films, every movie studio in Hollywood wanted a singing cowboy. Columbia Pictures signed the Sons of the Pioneers to appear in a series of westerns. Here, give ‘em a listen.

Sons of the Pioneers ~ Tumbling Tumbleweeds, written by band member Bob Nolan

When Gene Autry, who’d grown unhappy with his contract with Republic Pictures, threatened not to report for the start of his next film,  Republic held auditions for another singing cowboy, just in case. Roy heard about the auditions: “I saddled my guitar the next morning and went out there, but I couldn’t get in because I didn’t have an appointment. So I waited around until the extras began coming back from lunch, and I got on the opposite side of the crowd of people and came in with them…” It worked, and Republic signed him to a sever year contract. And when Autry left the studio, they put Len Slye, who had been renamed Roy Rogers, into the lead role in Under Western Stars. When the film was released in April 1938, it became an immediate hit, and Roy Rogers was a star.

In preparation for filming of Under Western Stars, several of the stables that provided horses to Republic brought their best lead horses to the studio so Roy could select a mount. The third horse Roy got on was a beautiful golden palomino that handled smoothly and reacted quickly to commands. Roy used to say “he could turn on a dime and give you change.” Roy named him Trigger, and the horse became synonymous with Roy Rogers.

As Roy’s popularity grew he never failed to give Trigger credit for much of his success. Roy was proud of the fact that through more than 80 films, 101 episodes of his television series, and countless personal appearances, Trigger never fell.

Trigger wasn’t his only sidekick. Smiley Burnette was Roy’s sidekick in his first two films, followed by Raymond Hatton, who worked with him in three films. Early in 1939, Gabby Hayes was cast as Roy’s sidekick in Southward Ho. Although Gabby had already made a number of films with John Wayne and William (Hopalong Cassidy) Boyd, he is probably best remembered today for the many films he made with Roy Rogers.

Roy Rogers & Gabby Hayes ~ We’re Not Comin Out Tonight

In 1943 Roy was voted the #1 Western star at the box office, and Republic began billing him as the King of the Cowboys. A few months later he made a guest appearance in the Warner Bros. all-star wartime musical film Hollywood Canteen, in which he and the Pioneers introduced the Cole Porter song Don’t Fence Me In.

Here’s another one I think you’ll enjoy: Roy Rogers & Sons of the Pioneers ~ Cowboy Ham and Eggs 

By 1944, Roy had starred in 39 films and had worked with almost as many leading ladies. Then the studio cast Dale Evans in The Cowboy And The Senorita. The immediate chemistry between Roy and Dale lit up the silver screen. Dale’s intelligence, strong will, beauty and talent earned her the moniker “the queen of the West.”

Did you know that Happy Trails to You, the song that became a Roy Rogers trademark, was written by Dale? Here are the two of them singing it together: Happy Trails to You

 Children across America who grew up on The Roy Rogers Show wanted to be just like him and tried to live by the Roy Rogers Riders Club Rules:

1. Be neat and clean.
2. Be courteous and polite.
3. Always obey your parents.
4. Protect the weak and help them.
5. Be brave, but never take chances.
6. Study hard and learn all you can.
7. Be kind to animals and care for them.
8. Eat all your food and never waste any.
9. Love God and go to Sunday School regularly.
10. Always respect our flag and our country.

Roy Rogers died on July 6, 1998, at the age of 86. Although Roy was a huge success in show business, he remained a down-to-earth country boy that Americans couldn’t help but admire. “Roy Rogers was a man who unashamedly loved his God, his family, and his country. He was that rare public figure who was just the same on screen as he was off. He just wouldn’t have known how to be anything else.”    — from Happy Trails: The Life of Roy Rogers by Laurence Zwisohn  (www.royrogers.com/roy_rogers_bio.html)

It’s Home Sweet Home to Me

“Goodbye, good luck, and may the good Lord take a likin’ to ya.”  – Roy Rogers

Has everyone enjoyed learning all about the Fillies? There’s sure a slew of things to take in. Ah’m still trying to digest it all. Whoo-ee! All of our Fillies could write a book on their lives. One thing for sure they haven’t let any grass grow under their feet!

Are you ready for the answers??

Filly #1 — Cheryl St. John

Filly #2 — Margaret Brownley

Filly #3 — Karen Kay

Filly #4 — Linda Broday

Filly #5 — Tracy Garrett

Filly #6 — Tanya Hanson

Filly #7 — Mary Connealy

Filly #8 — Elizabeth Lane

Filly #9 — Vicki Bylin

Filly #10 — Winnie Griggs

Filly #11 — Pam Crooks

So there you have it. Hope you got a bunch right.

Come back tomorrow and join the Fillies as they entertain Linda Ford. And Monday they’ll be back to their regular blogs.

So long and come again! You never know what you’ll find here in the Junction.

This Filly took a canoeing class and a bowling class while in college

This Filly’s high school summer jobs included
1) shelving books at the public library
2) working as a file clerk at the Water Dept., and
3) schlepping backstage at a repertory theater during their production of  Three Penny Opera (Mack The Knife anyone?)

This Filly was born on a Friday the 13th

This Filly taught herself to make a full size quilt (Grandmother’s Flower Garden pattern) – it took her two years to complete it

This Filly once had a fox squirrel named Squeeky for a pet