Rock Victoria Day with Your Family Fairy Falls-Style...

Are you ready to rock this Canadian holiday? I've always looked forward to the first long weekend heralding the upcoming summer season. Loved all the firework displays put on by the surrounding small tourist towns while we lived in cottage country. Hated those dreaded blackflies. One thing we became accustomed to was the rain that usually accompanied this particular weekend. It was usually 50-50 weather, getting rain on Saturday or Sunday, or both. Victoria Day Monday could be a mixed bag, as cottagers and campers would pack up and head home after opening their cottages or trailers. Ah, those good old days!

So that said, I'd thought I'd help out all my fellow Canadians who decide to brave this unpredictable long weekend with a quick and easy soup recipe, that will allow you more time to spend with your family...or fix those nasty problems around the cottage or trailer that seemed to have cropped up over the winter.

Who doesn’t love a hearty bowl of soup, especially on those cold or rainy nights? Makes for a wonderful meal at the cottage when unexpected guests pop in, or in the comfort of your home if it’s just you and your significant other. Easy to prepare, this delightful Italian cuisine takes about an hour to prep and cook. Perfect for a weekend lunch, and plenty of leftovers for the week, serve with half a baguette, sliced and buttered, and ready to dip! Bon Appetit!

Stick-to-your-Ribs Minestrone Soup

2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 large onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 large carrot, diced
⅓ lb. green beans, trimmed and cut into ½ inch pieces (about 1½ cups)
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. dried basil
¾ tsp. salt freshly ground pepper to taste
1 28-ounce can no-salt-added diced tomatoes
1 14-ounce can crushed tomatoes
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 15-ounce can low-sodium kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup elbow pasta
⅓ cup Parmesan cheese, finely grated
2 tbsp. fresh basil, chopped

HEAT olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add onion and cook until translucent, about 4 minutes. Add garlic and cook 30 seconds. Add celery and carrot, and cook until they begin to soften, about 5 minutes.

STIR in beans, dried oregano and basil, salt, and pepper; cook 3 more minutes. Stir in diced and crushed tomatoes and chicken broth to the pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer 10 minutes. Stir in kidney beans and pasta. Cook until pasta and vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes. Ladle into bowls and top with the Parmesan and chopped basil.

While you’re waiting for the minestrone soup to digest why not put your feet up and relax on the dock or couch with a good book? May I suggest a visit to Fairy Falls, or if you’re feeling really adventurous, a trip back in time with The Last Timekeepers? Whichever you choose, either series will transport you to another time and place, leaving the busyness of life far behind.

Here's a glimpse into one of the books from Mysterious Tales from Fairy Falls, my teen psychic cottage country mystery series.

The only witness left to testify against an unsolved crime in Fairy Falls isn’t a person…

City born and bred, Hart Stewart possesses the gift of psychometry—the psychic ability to discover facts about an event or person by touching inanimate objects associated with them. Since his mother’s death, seventeen-year-old Hart has endured homelessness, and has learned ways to keep his illiteracy under wraps. He eventually learns of a great-aunt living in Fairy Falls, and decides to leave the only life he’s ever known for an uncertain future.

Diana MacGregor lives in Fairy Falls. Her mother was a victim of a senseless murder. Only Diana’s unanswered questions and her grief keeps her going, until Hart finds her mother’s lost ring and becomes a witness to her murder.

Through Hart’s psychic power, Diana gains hope for justice. Their investigation leads them into the corrupt world threatening Fairy Falls. To secure the town’s future, Hart and Diana must join forces to uncover the shocking truth, or they risk losing the true essence of Fairy Falls forever.

Mysterious Tales from Fairy Falls Teen Psychic Cottage Country Mystery Series:

Lost and Found, Book One Buy Links:

MIRROR WORLD PUBLISHING ׀ AMAZON ׀ BARNES & NOBLE ׀

Blackflies and Blueberries, Book Two Buy Links:

MIRROR WORLD PUBLISHING ׀ AMAZON ׀ BARNES & NOBLE ׀

There’s no place like Canada…and Fairy Falls…

Happy 150^th Birthday Canada! I have so many happy memories living in Canada, and I’m proud to call myself Canadian, though truth be told, I was born in Illinois, USA, so I’m what you call a dual citizen. Not fun around tax season, but that’s another blog post. Still, my heart and soul belongs in Canada, and now that we’ve passed our milestone 150^th birthday (I was also around for the 100^th birthday!), I want to share why I’ve set my new teen psychic mystery series, Mysterious Tales from Fairy Falls in beautiful Canadian cottage country.

It began with what I knew based on the area where I was located at the time to create the fictional tourist town of Fairy Falls. You see, for over eleven years we lived on a small/medium-sized lake in the heart of cottage country. So I took in the sights, smells, sounds, tastes, emotions, and feelings of this beautiful place, and added the challenges and obstacles of what it would be like for an uprooted teenager possessing a psychic ability to adjust to the day-to-day living in Fairy Falls. Meagan Walsh, the protagonist from Lost and Found tells us what she thinks of Fairy Falls right off the bat: “This town sucks!”, and she goes on to describe it as ‘a small, boring northern tourist town’. If only Meagan knew what life had planned for her in this magical place!

Indeed, Fairy Falls could be any small tourist town that you may have visited during your youth (or adulthood) that invokes happy memories and simpler times. I wanted these feelings to emerge for the reader, and make my characters realize that there truly is no place like Fairy Falls. The town itself hosts a number of stores, services, and inhabitants that you’d be familiar with when visiting any small, tourist town. There’s a real estate office, a general store, a combined pizza shop and laundromat, a small theatre, a coffee shop where the locals hang out, a restaurant and bar (where tourists hang out), a marina, an arena, schools, the police and fire stations, town hall, a handful of churches, and of course the animal shelter.

I actually envisioned Fairy Falls from what I remembered of a tourist town during the early 1970s, while we were visiting our neighbor’s cottage. This town has since grown, but some small cottage towns never grew much, and when major highways were built to take on more traffic, these towns were bypassed, and much of their economy suffered. Call it the pros and cons of progress, but I think much of the innocence was lost to those quaint, tourist towns when change was forced upon them.

I didn’t want to lose that ‘small, tourist town feeling’ when I created Fairy Falls. True, change is good, but there’s something about going to a tourist town and connecting with the people living there that somehow leaves you feeling better than you did before you arrived. I also wanted to be realistic in the fact that growth is a necessary part of life, and Fairy Falls will have to deal with all kinds of challenges that will create conflict and divide the residents, believing that they are doing what’s best for their hometown.

The psychic teenagers in each of my stand-alone books in the Mysterious Tales from Fairy Falls series will have their fair share of adversity and prejudice to deal with. They truly believe they’ve arrived in a place so foreign, so backward, that they try so hard to find a way to leave, only to realize in the end that Fairy Falls has been waiting for them to finally come home to themselves. Welcome to Fairy Falls. Expect the unexpected.

Have you ever visited a small town while on vacation and felt at home there for some reason? Do you still think about a tourist town that continues to create happy memories for you? Would love to read your comment. Cheers, and as always, thank you for reading my blog!