Barbara Ankrum: The Joys of Blueberries!

I usually write about books and writing here, but it’s August. Summer is winding down. I’m on a crazy deadline and my brain is not all there. So let’s talk about blueberries instead!

Summer is all about the fresh fruit and veggies for me. For years, I lived in California where the growing season is long and the weather is sweet. I always had a vegetable garden there, growing tomatoes and zucchini, peppers, onions and basil. My husband and I recently moved to Kansas to be closer to our daughter and her family, and adjusting to a new climate after living in California forever is…well…interesting. Let me just say, um, it’s not a dry heat.

I love all the green here though. With the drought in California, it’s been a good long time since I’ve seen so much lovely green and I’ve managed to uncover some hidden gems here, too. Like the blueberry fields outside of town where you can pick your own, fill buckets to your heart’s content. Picking your own fruit reminds me of the days when we actually understood that our food didn’t magically grow on grocery store shelves. As I went with my grandkids to harvest our little share of blueberries, I remembered doing that as a kid up in the Adirondacks, where berry bushes meandered wildly across hillsides, under pine trees and near foraging black bears. Those memories I hope to recreate with my own grandkids. Maybe you can find your own berry patch or vegetable garden to share with your kids or grandkids.

So today, I thought I’d share with you a recipe for Blueberry Pie that my family loves.  I made this one with my granddaughter after our berry picking adventure. Here it is.

2 Crust Pie Crust:

One of my secrets is to keep everything COLD. Flour in the freezer, butter or shortening COLD. Ice water to mix everything with. This helps make a flaky crust. And you definitely want a flaky crust! And mix as LITTLE as POSSIBLE. Just until your dough can be formed into a ball to roll out. (To make a one crust pie, simply cut these ingredients in half.)

2 Cups Flour + enough to roll it out on the board (maybe an extra ¼ cup.)
1 Tsp Kosher Salt
2/3 cup + 2 Tbsp. Crisco or some combo of Crisco and Butter (Crisco is awesome!)
½ (or a little more) Cup of Ice Water
(I fill a cup measure with ice to chill, then water and that’s usually just right.)

Mix together salt and flour. Add shortening and cut in with a pastry blender or two knives until pea sized. (Up to this point, you can mess as much as you want with the flour, but once you add the water, hurry up!)

Add ice water, a little at a time, (fluff with a fork) until you can form it into a ball. Not a perfect ball. It will look flaky. And don’t squeeze too hard. Just hard enough to get it to stick together. No seriously, this is critical!

Make two balls and roll out to fit your pie plate plus a little extra to flute the edges.

Filling:

5-6 Cups of Fresh Blueberries (Frozen will work, too.)
1TBSP Freshly grated Lemon rind
Juice of ½ lemon
Combine and mix with blueberries:
¾- 1 cup sugar depending on tartness of berries (I like it a bit on the tart side)
¼ C of flour (or cornstarch- I use flour)
1 Tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp of freshly grated nutmeg

Save:
¼ cup of butter, cut into small pieces.

Mix together all ingredients and pour into bottom pie crust.  Dot with Butter chunks. Cover with top pie crust (or a lattice crust is fun, too.) Make sure you cut a vent in the top crust. Bake at 400* for 40-45 minutes, or until crust begins to brown and blueberry juice bubbles up. Keep an eye on it, don’t over bake.

Voila! Blueberry Pie!  Hope you enjoy it! And while you’re indulging, pick up my latest book, RECKLESS IN LAGUNA for just $1.99. It’s a vacation in Laguna Beach and a love story all in one! http://amzn.to/2b0swBk

Here’s a little taste of RECKLESS IN LAGUNA:

Nio swallowed hard as he bent his head closer. “What about your fiancé?” His lips brushed the side of her mouth and his breath whispered against her skin. 
She blinked. “Ex. Let’s not talk about him. Pretend he doesn’t exist.” 
“Done.” He threaded his fingers into her hair at the back of her head. His kiss was soft at first, testing…tasting, even. As if he didn’t want to scare her. But then he deepened it, finding her tongue with his, slanting his mouth against hers.
His arms curled around her and he pulled her closer against those hard chest muscles she’d only glimpsed through the lens of her camera, stunning her with a stab of heat. She’d forgotten what it felt like to lose herself in a kiss like this. How a kiss could pull her under like a wave and spin her upside down. If Steven’s kisses had been a watermark she’d settled for, Nio’s was a riptide. 
She wrapped her arms around him to anchor herself because she thought she might fall if she didn’t. His back was strong and she remembered it now—the corded muscles along his spine, the slender dip of his back where it met his waist—though all of him was bigger now, more manly. She felt his hardness press up against her like an electrical charge. All the while, his tongue explored her mouth as if he were reacquainting himself with the very essence of her. And she, with him. He tasted of beer and salty air and something indefinably Nio. And she wanted more.
Even as that thought evolved, another warned her that kissing him was a mistake. Allowing herself to feel like this again, for him, was a mistake. 
With her head spinning, she pulled back from the kiss. Her breath came in shaky gulps. He let her go reluctantly, seeming equally shaken by their kiss.
“Whoa,” she murmured, pushing her hair from her eyes. “That…that was…”
“Good?”
“Yes. Good. But now that I think of it, we probably shouldn’t have.”
With his hand brushing her shoulder, he said, “Maybe you should think less and feel more.”
“Is that what you do?” She looked up at him through her lashes.
“No. But I’ll make an exception for you.”
She nodded. “I’m supposed to hate you, you know. I would, if you’d give me half the chance.”
“But you don’t.” 
“Oh, I did. Maybe I got over that,” she said. “Or maybe I just want to.”
 “I’m counting on it.” 
Above them, the clouds cleared a space in the black velvet, revealing a smattering of stars and moonlight that cast shadows around them, and the nearby ocean beat a rhythm as steady as a pulse.
“Did you ever think about me?” he asked. “All those years?”
Did she ever? Only every time she looked at another man and thought what her life might have looked like if he’d stayed and given her a chance. Only every night in the dark when she wished it was him holding her and not any other man. And only now—now that she’d tasted his kiss again and felt the things she’d felt in his arms—did she realize that she never had stopped thinking of him, comparing him to every other man she’d ever known. It was damned unfair, really, that one man could hold such power over her. She should resent him even now, but all she could do was wonder how she’d been without him for so long.
*

Barbara Ankrum: Summer Fun Facts!

July marks the beginning of the second half of the year. Vacation time. Lakes, beaches, mountains and RWA conferences. I didn’t make it to conference this year, but I definitely plan on finding some water nearby soon. You?

Summer is also the time when we take the books we’ve been piling up over the year and lose ourselves in their pages in the cool shade of a tree. Everything We Keep, by Kerry Londsdale is out in ebook format, and is one of the first ones I plan to read.  Jane Porter’s the Lost Sheenan’s Bride is high on my list, as well as Eloisa James’ latest novella A Gentleman Never Tells.  I–eh-hem—happen to have a beach read out this summer myself, but more on that later.

Since it’s too hot to think about anything too deep, I thought it might be fun to take this month’s blog and share a few things you didn’t know about me. So here goes:

1. I grew up loving animals—dogs, cats, you name it. But my big crush was on horses and my father, a closet cowboy, indulged me with riding lessons young, which only fueled my fire. I desperately wanted a horse of my own, but it wasn’t until I had graduated from high school that my parents moved to a farm in Tennessee and bought a couple of Tennessee Walkers for my younger sister and I.  Candy and I were inseparable when I wasn’t away at school or working. But on one particularly bad day, she kicked up her heels while racing up a mountain slope and tossed me off, breaking one of my vertebrae and cracking a shoulder blade. Needless to say, I was much more cautious after that and translated much of my love of horses into my books. I still, however, secretly think we (the horses and I) communicate psychically. I’m weird that way.

2. I’ve been lucky to be married to the same, sweet guy for thirty-seven years. He’s the inspiration for all of my heroes and the one who made me believe in happily ever after.

3. I wanted to be an actress for most of my young life and really wanted to star in Westerns (because…horse love). But I had babies and ended up doing commercials while raising my family. I did a few dozen national commercials, including a Hertz commercial with OJ Simpson and Jimmy Conner and one many remember, a Head and Shoulders/Girl On The Bus spot. So, yeah. I’m famous for scratching my head.

4. My husband used to be an actor and did a voice in the original Star Wars – Wedge Antilles. Kind of a major/minor character who was played physically by Irish actor Dennis Lawson, but voiced by my husband, David, because they wanted an American accent.  That job has taken him all over the world for celebrity signings—Japan, London, Boston. He originally auditioned for George Lucas for C3PO, but got the V.O. gig instead. I get to bask in his fandom now and then.

5. I have taught novel writing for almost twenty years. I started at UCLA Extension and taught privately for many years after that. The talented Laura Wright, Beth Kendrick and Jeannie Lin were a few of my students and we’re still good friends today. I love teaching.

6. I once did a past life regression in trade for some editing work. And if you believe in such things, it became clear to me that my first book ever, HOLT’S GAMBLE, an Oregon Trail book, was inspired by a past life of mine on the emigrant trail from Arkansas to Texas.  Then again, I’m a writer and I may have just made it all up under hypnosis!

Well, that’s a little about me.  Hope you all have a fabulous July/August. Until next time, hope you find some time to squeeze in my latest novella, RECKLESS IN LAGUNA, part of Kaira Rouda’s Laguna Beach Kindle World. It’s a second chance love story about two people with dark secrets who get a chance to start over in Laguna Beach and it’s only $1.99.  Needless to say, it’s a beach read!

Barbara Ankrum: Laguna Beach is Calling!

Laguna Beach is one of those places that you never forget, once you’ve been there. Tucked between Los Angeles and San Diego on the beautiful Pacific Coast, it’s a small, beachy community that has—over the years—become a must-visit every summer for Southern Californians. With its perfect waves, tide pools and touristy festivals, my family made this trip every summer. In fact, my mother-in-law had a second home in Laguna Niguel, on the cliffs above the beach and that was our price-is-right vacation for many happy years. I finished many a book manuscript there, too, all by myself.
When we first went there, thirty-something years ago (e-hem!) there were still bare hillsides not covered in red tile roofs and there was parking on the Main Street. Now, it’s a little more crowded. But no matter.  Laguna’s charm is constant and most of us are willing to brave the parking issues to loll on the beaches there.

My husband and I recently moved out of California to the mid-west, and leaving Laguna behind is one of our big regrets. So when I was invited by the lovely Kaira Rouda, author of the Laguna Nights series, to write a novella for her Laguna Beach Kindle World Series, I leapt at the chance.  RECKLESS IN LAGUNA (debuting July 7th on Amazon) gave me the opportunity to visit that awesome town in my imagination again, since I won’t make it there this summer.

The place rushed into my senses as I started to write this book: the sound of the ocean, the crimson bougainvillea spilling over every portico and blue lilies of the Nile swaying on every walkway—in short, my sense memories of the way the whole town makes me feel crashed in on me like a wave.  (A friendly, hip-deep kind of wave.)

Laguna Beach is home town for my two protagonists: Nio Reyes (the brother of Trey Reyes from my The Canadays of Montana series) the gardener’s son and who disappeared from Laguna without a word ten years ago, only to return successful, and Becca Howard, the rich girl who loved him, whose family has lost it all.  It’s a second chance at love story.  These two who were ripped apart under mysterious circumstances, are coming back together for one hot summer weekend in Laguna Beach for a friend’s wedding. Though their circumstances have changed, their feelings for each other lie just under the turbulent surfaces of their complicated lives. Can Nio make things right after breaking her heart? Will revealing the truth about what really happened finally heal both their hearts?

Here’s a little snippet of  RECKLESS IN LAGUNA for you:

Becca backed up against the restroom sink, bumping her hip, then edged toward the wall. “Nio. Wh-what are you doing in here?”
“What’s it look like? Talk to me, Becca. What’s going on?”
She straightened. “I’m fine. Nothing’s going on. You shouldn’t be in here.”
He locked the door behind him.
“Nio—”
“They can wait a minute. Don’t tell me you’re fine. You’re not. I can see that.” He took a few steps toward her, then stopped when she flinched. He held his palms up. “You’re crying.”
“No. No I’m not.” The words came out in a half-sob. Horrifyingly, snot squirted out of her nose and she clapped a hand over her face. 
A sympathetic grin twisted his mouth and he tugged a paper towel from the dispenser, handing it to her. “That’s snot exactly true, is it?” 
“Oh, God.” Against her will, she laughed and blew her nose. “How positively mortifying.”
“It was kinda charming, actually,” he said, brushing a strand of hair from her eyes. 
Just that, his small touch, sent a paroxysm of longing through her. Damn him! Remember your vow to swear off men. Especially this one! She glared up at him past the paper towel. “Don’t be nice to me. It goes against everything I believe about you.”
 “Well, that is a problem,” he agreed. “I guess I need to redeem myself somehow. Let me drive you home.”
 “You forget, my fiancé is right outside those doors.” Ex. My ex-fiancé.
“Yeah.” Nio glanced back in that direction. “You don’t really want him to drive you home, do you?”
Fresh out of lies for the night, she sniffed and shook her head. She really, really didn’t.
“That’s what I thought. So splash some cold water on that beautiful face of yours and let’s get out of here.” 
 “It won’t look right. I can’t leave with you.” She swayed against the sink, feeling lightheaded. “And I definitely shouldn’t leave with you. I’m a little bit drunk, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“That’s why I’m driving. For right now, what do you say we put aside our past and whatever you feel about me and let me help you? No strings. I’ll just take you home.”
Home. The thought of prowling around that empty place tonight until she fell asleep did not appeal. In fact, she couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do less.
“I—” she began, turning back to the mirror, “I don’t want to go home. Will you take me somewhere else?” 
He blinked. “Name it.”
“Anywhere. Where’s your car?”
“Parking lot.”
She considered, then did the exact opposite of what good sense dictated. “Give me five minutes.”
“Done.”

* * *

I hope you’ll join me on July 7, 2016 for the launch of RECKLESS IN LAGUNA. Because, hey, it never hurts to spend a little bit of your summer in Laguna Beach!

Where’s your favorite go-to place in summer? I’d love to hear. One lucky commenter will win a $10 Amazon Gift Card.