Gallery & Recipe

  

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This week's blog features a longer gallery than usual, plus a truly tasty ham recipe.

Amazingly, I downloaded the following pic from Facebook in August 2025, a few weeks BEFORE the Charlie Kirk assassination. 

 

 Here's a rather startling puzzle, titled Ancient Statues . . .

  

 Speaking of ancient creatures—still in existence & adapting to the 21st c. . . .

 Wise words from Arizona . . .

 

 

 

 

 

New Port Richey (FL) Sunset, August 2025

Below, a truly remarkable sunset, taken by Zanetta Janette in North Port, FL, just south of where I lived for 25 years on Florida's Gulfcoast. Attributed to clouds moving in to obscure half the sunset.

  

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I am a Recipe Freak, buying cookbooks even when I know I already have more recipes than I will ever be able to use. I go through each book, making a legal pad list of the recipes I find most appealing, which is how I found HAWAIIAN HAM BAKE, even though it only had a small photo. The surprising thing about this recipe is that, despite its obscure placement, it has that gourmet chef touch. I.e., it's REALLY tasty. 

For the ham, you can settle for a slice in your grocery's meat display or do as I do because of my allergy to chemical preservatives—ask your Deli for a 1/2" - 5/8" slice of Black Forest ham.  (Ham that miraculously seems to survive without chemical additives.) The recipe is made easier these days by those packets of rice, ready in 90 seconds in the microwave.

Recipe is from Taste of Home Casseroles & One-Dish Meals, May 2012. 

 

 

HAWAIIAN HAM BAKE 

 3 cups cubed fully cooked ham

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

1 small green pepper, cut into rings*

2/3 cup raisins**

3/4 cup pineapple tidbits, drained

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

3 teaspoons ground mustard

1/4 teaspoon salt

1½ cups pineapple juice

½ cup cider vinegar

4½ teaspoons soy sauce

 

Hot cooked rice 

 

* since peppers tend to be large, I quarter them, then slice thin to desired amount

 

**golden raisins, preferred

 

Preheat oven to 350°. 

In a greased 2-qt baking dish, layer ham, onion, green pepper, raisins and pineapple. In a large saucepan, combine the brown sugar, cornstarch, mustard and salt. Stir in pineapple juice and vinegar until smooth. Bring to boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened.

 

Remove from heat; stir in soy sauce. Pour over pineapple. Cover and bake at 350° for 30-35 minutes or until heated through. Serve with rice. 

 

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Featured Book of the Week:  Shadows Over Greystoke Grange

 

For the fun of it, I used a slightly different format when writing this Gothic. In addition to that bit of daring, the hero gets upstaged by a secondary character. Oops. But I never could settle to writing the same tale over and over. Why not try it and see what you think?

 

 

At eighteen, Adria Lovett can think only of making her come-out and finding the love of her life. Until, scant weeks before leaving for London, her world crumbles around her, pitching her into a situation shockingly contrary to anything she has ever known. And yet, far from London, Adria finds herself surrounded by a bevy of young men—though none of them what she envisioned when dreaming of her future. There is Dudley Greystoke, who should be Sir Dudley but is not; Chandler Satterthwaite, who has strayed far from the fold of his father, the vicar; the supposedly reliable Ned Steadman, son of the local squire; Garth Maddox, son of a gamekeeper, who calls himself Myrddin, the Welsh name for Merlin. And Drake Kincade, son of a wealthy merchant—the Drake Kincade, known to many as "the Devil's Spawn," who has fled to the country to escape a bride selected by his father. And then there is Dudley Greystoke's twin sister, Daphne, a young woman as willful as she is beautiful, who plunges Adria into the world of witchcraft—a world already complicated by a barrage of evil deeds ranging from nasty pranks to murder.

Grimoires, spells, devil-worship, rape, and murder—not at all the Season Adria dreamed of.

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Thanks for stopping by,

Grace (Blair Bancroft)