Today’s another obscure holiday–Hot Sauce Day! Since I’m a lover of hot sauces, I thought celebrating them would be fun.

Did you know that chili peppers originated in the Americas? They were spread around the world by Spanish and Portuguese traders. They get their heat from something called capsaicinoids. They’re rated, too, on something called the Scoville Scale. Reading the rating of some of the hot sauces I looked at, I’m a bit of a weenie with my favorite sauces (Cholula, Tabasco, and Frank’s) only rating in the 1000s. Tabasco is the hottest in my fridge at 7,000. Da Bomb, which I listed in the puzzle, is a scorching 119,000 to 1.5 million!

So, for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, tell me whether you’re a fan of hot sauces and which ones are in your fridge!

Sorry, I’m so late posting! My website was down this morning, and I had to wait for the hosting site to do whatever they did to fix it. It’s all good now. ~DD

Yesterday, I underwent a PET scan to see how all those rounds of chemo did. I read the radiologist’s report and instantly went into “Google-MD” mode with my daughter, but I’ll wait to see whether my pieced-together diagnosis matches my oncologist’s on Monday. Damn, I hate waiting! I’ll share whatever he tells us. You’ve followed me, supported me, and encouraged me all along the way; you deserve to know the good or bad that comes of all this.

So, onto today’s puzzle!

Maybe you don’t know it, but I love food. I’m a huge foodie. I’ll try anything. Traveling to so many different countries in my younger days, I was game for anything. I remember eating a shared sheep’s head sitting in the middle of a bed of couscous on a huge tray with half a dozen Saudis around me—so delicious. A Greek woman, who I visited in her home, made a lovely Greek salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, olives—and octopus. I tried it, and guess what? I loved it! I have so many fond memories of food adventures.

These days, I’m a bit homebound, but my daughter has my foodie gene and finds exotic things to cook. The kids aren’t always so eager to experiment, but they probably have a more diverse palette than their peers at school.

I am a huge lover of pasta. The photo above? I make ravioletti with sundried tomatoes, onions, spinach, pine nuts, basil, oregano, olive oil, tons of garlic, and it’s so good. It’s one of my dd’s favorite things to eat. I like it with chopped up artichokes, too, but she doesn’t like them. *sigh* In that picture, she made the homemade focaccia bread. So yummy.

Of course, I make a very tasty spaghetti with meatballs. The 11-year-old recently went to the local Italian restaurant and ordered theirs and couldn’t finish it. She said mine was much better. Proud grandma moment there.

I’m always perusing pasta recipes on Pinterest. This looks so incredibly easy. Pasta with spinach, and it looks like bits of walnuts? I’d be all over that.

I digress because I’m hungry, and you’re here for a puzzle and contest…

Today’s puzzle features an aspirational (for me) dinner party. Pasta, seafood, all kinds of sides… For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, tell me your favorite pasta dish that you think belongs on this table. If you have a link to the recipe, it would be much appreciated, but if it sounds good, I’ll Google the heck out it! Have fun!

I’m thinking about vacation destinations this morning because my daughter and I were talking about it this morning while she was getting the kids ready for school. Last year, the family had to cancel a cruise they’d planned for two years due to my diagnosis. I still feel guilty about that, but they never said a thing about being disappointed about not going, and we made the best of December, which was when they’d planned to go and still had a lot of fun.

My future’s up in the air, but I do still have a few places in the world I’d like to see. I traveled so much during my twenties and thirties while in the military. I did see a lot of Europe, and I have been on a few cruises all around the Caribbean. I decided to share some of the places I’d still like to go and see whether any of those destinations appeal to you!

So, for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, tell me whether any of the photos you uncover appeal to you or where you’d like to go!

For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle, then tell me your favorite romance tropes, you know the underlying kind of romance it is. My favorites include: cowboy, enemy to lover, and forced proximity. So, what are yours? And if there’s one not listed here that you love, share it in the comments!

Since school shut down on Thursday due to the winter storm, we had an unexpected four-day weekend! Not that we minded one bit.

The kids have enjoyed the snowfall even if the snow wasn’t suitable for building a snowman or an igloo. They did enjoy sliding down our short hill and throwing icy snowballs at each other. My daughter made two big pots of soup which we’ve already managed to devour. She made two batches of our favorite focaccia bread.

Before the storm, we bought a copy of Wicked off of Prime Video. The girls loved it so much, they’ve rewatched it a couple of times already and have rewound all the musical numbers so they can memorize the songs. They’ve also had a karaoke night.

We have two more days to go. I’m wondering if I can interest them in another movie night. I wonder what might interest all of them.

So, for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, how about you offer some suggestions I can make. Then I’ll make some popcorn, assembles some finger foods, and hunker down for another night they’ll carry fond memories of in the future. Enjoy the puzzle!

We never see this. Well, almost never. We can have years in between seeing a blanket of snow, so we savor it. Strange, I know. But the kids have dug through drawers to find gloves they never need and find boots that won’t soak up water in a second to go play in the snow. Mind you, the “kids” are 11, 16, and 20—plus my dear daughter, whose age I won’t mention.

Other than ensuring our many animals (goats, horse, geese, and chickens) are all safe and have food and shelter, they are in play mode. Mom (my dd) made two big pots of soup yesterday for us to nosh on whenever we get hungry—taco soup and tortilla soup. What is the difference? Oh, big difference the way she makes them. One has beans and beef the other is purely veg and spice. They had a karaoke night last night in the living room—always hilarious. We all nap when we want (me, more than the others).

So far, no power outages other than yesterday morning’s inexplicable loss. The temperature will warm up above freezing tonight, but not long enough to melt everything. So, tomorrow, we expect a lot of ice on the roads and patches of snow. We’ll be stuck inside another day, which I love, but which may be kind of confining to the kids since one day of snow is fun, two is boring, right?

Anyway, strange day. Terrible fires in LA, a president-elect sort of held accountable for his crimes, continued weirdness about which countries we’re going to annex/conquer because we can… I’m happy to turn off the news, enjoy the winter wonderland outside, and simply be happy I’m here to see another snow fall.

I hope you are all safe and cozy in your homes.

For fun, I’m including a memory game for you to play! Exercise that gray matter! It’ll help you keep sharp, promise. I’m using the images from my OG bounty hunter series set in Bear Lodge, MT—Montana Bounty Hunters.

Enjoy the game. For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, tell me what you see when you look outside. Do you have snow on the ground? Is it raining, sunny? Do you have big plans for the weekend? Have fun!

UPDATE: The winner is…Angela Carter!
*~*~*

So, the other day, I posted a poll to choose the next theme for another Boys Behaving Badly Anthology. The winner of the poll is “Burn”—a tentative title. I’m okay with that. So, authors start thinking about how you can use heat/burning/fire in a short story between 2500 to 5500 words. I’ll put together a Call for Submissions soon and make a formal announcement.

Ugh. My puzzle generator changed, and I don’t like change. I hope it works similarly to the old version. Since I’ve settled on a theme for the antho, I thought I might list some ideas authors might play with for their stories. For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, tell me which idea you love. If you have another idea to offer, I’m sure authors would love to see it!