Elaine Ambrose

Bestselling Author, Ventriloquist, & Humorist

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Seeking Joy? Make Elaine’s Bolognese Lasagna

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Ingredients for a double batch of Elaine’s Bolognese Lasagna

Hungry? Frustrated? Don’t care about carbohydrates or diet rules? Eat my Bolognese Lasagna and celebrate life. Double this recipe to share with friends, and they will praise your name.

Caveat: You can use regular red sauce and have a boring lasagna. Or, you can save time and money by buying a frozen lasagna, but we can’t be friends.

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons imported olive oil

1 onion, diced

2 carrots, diced

2 celery stalks, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

1# lean ground beef (½ pound is okay)

1# Italian sausage – spicy or regular (½ pound is okay)

2 jars Bertolli marinara sauce (or homemade)

1 small can tomato paste

1 small can diced tomatoes

1 can crush Italian tomatoes

½ cup heavy cream

4 cups fresh mozzarella, sliced

2 cups ricotta cheese

2 cups shredded Parmesan cheese

1 box Barilla lasagna pasta

Italian spices

Italian red wine

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Brown 2 meats. In separate pan, sauté finely chopped carrots, onion, garlic, and celery in butter and olive oil. In another pot, boil water and make lasagna pasta and lay pasta on paper towels or baking sheet.

Open wine and sip a glass.

Drain meat. Add the other sautéed ingredients and add the tomato items. Add spices. Combine well and heat 15 minutes. Turn off stove and add cream. Mix well.

Sip another glass of wine and smell the delightful aroma of the Bolognese.

Lightly cover the bottom of a 9” x 13” pan with olive oil. Add sauce to cover. Make three layers:

Pasta – sauce – ricotta and mozzarella – 3X

Finish top layer with Mozella and grated Parmesan

Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Remove cover and bake another 10 minutes.

Remove from oven and allow dish to cool for at least 15 minutes.

Serve with green salad and wine. It’s better the next day, but who can wait that long?

Sharing this Bolognese Lasagna is a genuine act of love.

 

 

 

 

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!

 

 

 

 

Everything is Upside Down

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When my wee granddaughter was a year old, her favorite pose was to poke her butt in the air, place her head on the floor, and look back between her legs. This position is best executed by little people who are close to the ground. I tried it once but strained my back, ripped my pants, and fell on my face.

It’s tempting to try this pose again because everything seems to be upside down, and what once was considered strange and inappropriate is now accepted and even celebrated. Here are some perplexing examples of news stories that hurt my brain and cause me to mutter (more than usual.)

Recently in Boston, a man dressed as Elsa from the movie “Frozen” helped push a police vehicle out of the snow. At least he was braver than the man in Portland, Oregon who frantically called 911 because his cat scared him into cowering in a bedroom with his family. The man was paid to tell his terrifying tale on a television entertainment program, and the cat is in therapy. I live with a Marine who could strangle a ferocious beast with one hand without spilling his gin and tonic. And I’m thankful for that fact.

In a related story about a new product, when the killer cat dies the owner can memorialize the feisty feline by having its nose molded into a sterling silver necklace. This lovely tribute is available for dogs, too, and can be found at several online stores. The precious pendant costs a few hundred dollars. I don’t socialize with any friends who wear animal noses as jewelry.

Then there’s the news about former actress Heather Locklear almost biting off the tip of her boyfriend’s nose during a domestic dispute. Maybe the boyfriend should enlist the help of Angelica Velez of Brooklyn, a tattooed sideshow star who was interviewed about her unique and enviable ability to hammer nails up her nose. You can bet your sweet hammered nostrils that she would organize and sell tickets to a cat fight between the nose-chomping girlfriend and the notorious kitty.

She’s probably not part of a peculiar group of lonely women who choose to marry inanimate objects. I read a report that a woman in Florida married an amusement park ride she named Bruce because she experienced special feelings while riding it. (And who doesn’t? But we don’t marry the things!) Women also have married other items, including the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Berlin Wall in Germany. There’s not a single chance of biting off body parts in these relationships.

Finally, I’m stunned by the “too damn many lawyers” story about the teenage girl suing her parents for child support. Too bad that sweetheart hadn’t met my father. If I had tried that, I would have been given a one-way ticket on the next bus to Brooklyn to live with a tattooed woman and watch her paint with her nose.

I’ve decided to stop reading news bulletins because they clutter my brain with disturbing images and confounding details. I’ll just focus on things I already know to be weird, irrational, and irrelevant. The US Congress comes to mind.

Today’s blog was fueled by a Sebastiani Cabernet from Sonoma County. Enjoy a bottle or two and then you’ll be able to strike a downward facing dog pose to get a balanced perspective on our weird world.

Do You Need Daily Erotica?

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daily erotica authors

Eight years ago, I organized a writing group in Eagle, Idaho called “Writers Who Wine.” We met to read our work, critique prose and poetry from others, and to focus on writing prompts. And, we enjoyed wine.

After a few festive meetings, four of us decided to create a book of poetry called Daily Erotica – 366 Poems of Passion. We chose the  provocative title because we  knew Daily  Poems was too boring. We brought our poems to my cabin for a weekend in the fall of 2008 and rated the submissions from 1 (Oh, yes!), to 2 (Warm, but not sizzling), to 3 (Get out of here. You can’t write.)

daily erotica authors oct 2009We published the book through Mill Park Publishing and released it on February 14, 2010. The book is dedicated to all the women who are searching for their lost libidos.daily erotica coverThe 366 poems begin on February 14 and span every day for a year. The content varies between romantic, silly, and a bit naughty. The authors are convinced their writing is better than the insipid lines in the bestselling book Fifty Shades of Grey. Here are two examples:

September 17

All that I am

unafraid

unashamed

uninhibited

undressed,

I am yours.

 

September 2

The first time she saw his smile

she knew he was worth the wait.

Finally, after all these years,

she let down her guard,

opened the door to her heart,

and invited him inside.

He took off his boots

and decided to stay.

 

Response to the book was fun and we enjoyed presenting selected poems at various events and for community organizations. The four of us ranged in age from 37 to 57, all of us had children, and three of us were divorced. One in the group, Gretchen Anderson, had been happily married for more than 17 years. The other three, Liza Long, Rachel Hatch, and I found true and lasting love after the book was published.

Copies of the book are available on Amazon.com for $12,95 or from the authors or Mill Park Publishing in Eagle for only $5.00.  If you’re interested in a unique Valentine’s Day gift that will last all year, email me at elaine@millparkpublishing.com. I’ll deliver Monday and Tuesday to downtown Boise, Eagle, and Meridian.

Everyone sing along now, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.” (I don’t like ending a sentence with a preposition, but that worked for Jackie DeShannon and Dionne Warwick when they sang the famous song.)

This Valentine’s Day, be a lover, not a fighter. Read and share Daily Erotica.

daily erotica authors sitting

 

 

 

 

Where to Find Midlife Happy Hour

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happyhour_sketches_v3

 

If you’re looking to purchase and read Midlife Happy Hour by #1 bestselling author Elaine Ambrose, first try a local bookstore such as Rediscovered Books in Boise, Idaho. If independent bookstores don’t have the book in stock, they can order it through various distributors. You also can check your local library.

If you want to order online, the book is available on Amazon.com in both paperback and e-Book versions and through Barnes & Noble in both paperback and e-Book. Other sources for e-Book editions include ITunes and Google Play.

Midlife Happy Hour – Our Reward for Surviving Careers, Kids, and Chaos is a kiss-my-attitude collection of humorous essays that encourage midlife women to celebrate a time of life when they can boldly declare that they’re still relevant, resilient, and ready for another round. The book is the sequel to the #1 bestselling book, Midlife Cabernet.