Elaine Ambrose

Bestselling Author, Ventriloquist, & Humorist

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My Prolapsed Bladder is a Winner

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http://www.columnists.com/2019/06/and-the-2019-columnist-contest-winners-are/

The National Society of Newspaper Columnists and Bloggers (NSNC) recently announced the winners of the annual writing contest, and two of my blog posts won third place in the humor category. I write about serious stories that are relevant to most women sliding down the backside of midlife: the empty nest and a prolapsed bladder.

https://elaineambrose.com/blog/can-midlife-marriage-survive-a-prolapsed-bladder/

https://elaineambrose.com/blog/does-the-parade-end-at-the-empy-nest/

Enjoy the blog posts and know that the parade doesn’t end at the empty nest, and midlife marriage can survive a prolapsed bladder. Thanks, NSNC, for the award.

U of I Hosts Ambrose Storytelling Workshop

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Elaine Ambrose speaks at the U of I Storytelling Workshop

MOSCOW, Idaho — April 24, 2019 — Storytelling through film is the focus of the University of Idaho’s second annual Ambrose Storytelling Workshop, to be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday, April 24, in the Idaho Commons Whitewater Room.

The free community workshop will introduce participants to visual storytelling and demonstrate how filmmakers can use tools at their disposal to make high-quality films.

“This year’s Ambrose Storytelling Workshop will be a fun event highlighting the power of story through film. Participants will learn directly from award-winning filmmakers and go home with usable skills,” said Benjamin James, a clinical assistant professor who teaches screenwriting in U of I’s Department of English. James is the recipient of the inaugural Ambrose Storytelling Endowment faculty research award.

James will be joined at the workshop by Palouse filmmakers Martin McGreevy and Jace Wrigley.

Following the workshop, participants will have 48 hours to submit their own short film utilizing the skills and techniques taught in the workshop. U of I seniors taking part in the workshop will compete for the Ambrose Senior Award and $1,500 prize.

The Ambrose Storytelling Workshop was started in 2018 thanks to a donation by bestselling author and U of I College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences alumna Elaine Ambrose. She created the Ambrose Storytelling Endowment to share her gift of storytelling and to honor her late brother George, a U of I alumnus.

“My entire career has been writing and telling stories,” Ambrose said. “I wanted to give back to the university to encourage more storytelling. We live in an age of sentences through Twitter and instant messaging that don’t quite communicate a story the same way a rich paragraph or dialogue does.”

More information on the workshop, including registration information, is available at uidaho.edu/ambrose.

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Media Contact
Benjamin James
Clinical Assistant Professor
Department of English
bjames@uidaho.edu

Celebrate “Frozen Dinners” with Warm Food, Cool Jazz, and Sizzling Friends

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Please join the celebration on November 8 at the premiere party for Frozen Dinners – A Memoir of a Fractured Family.

Register Here.

Bestselling author Elaine Ambrose departs from her award-winning humor to describe her childhood in the village of Wendell, Idaho. Her father, an intense entrepreneur, created a trucking company in 1952 to haul frozen food throughout the Northwest. His businesses grew into a multi-million-dollar empire. After his untimely death, his survivors imploded in a maelstrom of brutal courtroom drama, heartbreak, and dementia. The $20 million-dollar estate is all gone, and Elaine’s parents and younger brother have died. In this new memoir, Ambrose chronicles her 50-year-search for warmth beyond the family legacy of frozen dinners.

Guest options include autographed books, glasses of Telaya wine, delicious “Grazing Table” food provided by Wild Plum Catering, custom cedar bookmarks, live music, free prizes, and a short reading. Additional books by the author will be available for purchase for holiday and Christmas gifting.

Popular singer and songwriter Dan Costello will provide a musical feast of sass and sound.

Ambrose Trucking, 1952

Frozen Dinners is published by Brown Books Publishing Group of Dallas, Texas. For information about Elaine’s books, blogs, and events, see ElaineAmbrose.com.

Full of luscious details, clear-eyed compassion, and enduring joy, Ambrose’s memoir gives us an insider’s view of one family’s rocky pursuit of the American Dream. Even when she is relating personal stories of conflict, loss, and grief, Ambrose does so with a survivor’s voice made strong by experience, stubbornness, humor, and love.

— Kim Barnes, Author of the Pulitzer Prize Finalist Memoir: In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country

This tell-all memoir will resonate with anyone who has endured family 
dysfunction and will defrost the hearts of readers everywhere.
—Joely Fisher, actress, singer, and author of Growing Up Fisher

Elaine will read and sign books at Rediscovered Books on Thursday, November 29 in downtown Boise. Elaine is available locally for sales, signings, and holiday cheer.

Elaine’s Delizioso Chicken Parmesan

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Elaine’s Chicken Parmesan

What to do on a rainy spring day? Make chicken Parmesan, of course. Several years ago, I attended a cooking school for a week in Tuscany, Italy with A Cook’s Tour. We learned from local chefs and consumed a year’s worth of delicious Italian food and wine in a few days. It was glorious.

Elaine learning from Italian cooks.

As a successful bribe to have my adult children visit me, I just make the chicken Parmesan recipe I learned in Italy. Here is the recipe, with a few original adaptations.

Start with a good red sauce. You can use canned marinara sauce but buy an Italian brand such as Bertolli. If you want to make your own, take a day and enjoy this process.

Roast and dice two green and red peppers. Dice two onions. Sauté peppers and onions with some Italian apices in olive oil in a large pot. You can add diced mushrooms and minced garlic, but watch the garlic so it doesn’t burn.

Open red wine and taste to enhance your cooking experience.

Add several large cans of Italian tomatoes to the pot and simmer for at least an hour. You can use a food processor to obtain the best consistency before adding the tomatoes to the pot.

While the tomatoes are simmering, cut up a few pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Flatter with a pounder and cut into pieces. Dip pieces in beaten eggs and then dip in a mixture of Panko bread crumbs and grated Parmesan cheese. Fry in olive oil until brown but not fully cooked. Drain on paper towels.

Saute chicken in Panko bread crumbs and grated Parmesan cheese.

Sip the wine to make sure it’s still good.

In large casserole dish, spread some red sauce. Add browned chicken, more red sauce, cover with sliced mozzarella cheese, top with more red sauce, and add more freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour. Sip wine and sing Italian songs while the food is cooking. This dish can be better the next day, reheated. It also freezes well.

Serve with crusty bread, cooked pasta and more red sauce, a green salad, and buttered, steamed asparagus. Add red wine, of course. You may need to open another bottle. Delizioso!

 

 

 

 

Create Your QR Code for a Conference

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I’m traveling to two important events in April: the prestigious Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop in Dayton, Ohio, and the Wayfinding Women excursion to Ireland. My latest bestselling books are too heavy and cumbersome to carry and many people don’t want to haul them home, so I have the next-best marketing tool: a QR Code. QR stands for “Quick Response” and allows any URL to be scanned for instant access. To make a free QR Code from any website, go to several options including QR Code Generator. I have codes for my books and for my website.

To use the QR Code, download and open a QR reader on your smartphone, take a photo of the QR Code, and open the website. Most smartphones will automatically connect to the website after “seeing” the black and white squares embedded in the QR Code.

This QR Code allows potential clients and friends to instantly access my website without storing business cards or scribbling website addresses. Other marketing materials include the code to each book so it can be found and ordered on Amazon. I strongly advocate selling through local bookstores over Amazon, but the choices are different at a conference. Here are two examples of how I use the codes on my book marketing materials.

Midlife Happy Hour remains in the top 100 bestselling books for Midlife Management on Amazon.

Midlife Cabernet earned hundreds of positive reviews on Amazon.

  • Silver medal for humor, Independent Publisher Book Awards
  • “Laugh-out-loud funny!” – Publishers Weekly
  • “Erma Bombeck” – Foreword Reviews
  • #1 Bestseller in Humor on Amazon
  • Available in Paperback and eBook

I printed the QR Code on postcards to distribute at conferences. It’s more convenient that hauling books. There is one downside: Authors can’t autograph or personalize the books ordered through a QR Code. Maybe there’s an app for that!