Dear Reader

Dear Reader Column - July 4, 2022

Dear Reader,

Happy 4th of July! I'm celebrating with my family. Have a bang-up day!

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com

Dear Reader Column - July 1, 2022

Dear Reader,

“Hi Suzanne, I'm wondering since you love to bake from scratch, if you would have a divine, moist, chocolate cake recipe. My son was always gluten-free growing up...so all my recipes were gf. But every once in a while I get a craving for a good, non gf, chocolate cake...and many of the recipes are disappointing. Can't wait to see if you have a good one to share!” – Warmest Regards, Deanne W., Librarian I - Literacy Coordinator, OC Public Libraries 

(Suzanne replies) Deanne, when I read your email I knew right away which moist and delicious chocolate cake recipe I wanted to share with you. When I found the recipe, I also found the column I wrote when I first baked the cake several years ago...

I love to bake. In fact, I've used the same chocolate cake recipe for over 25 years. Tried and true, it's always produced rave reviews. So I was surprised the other day when I decided to try a different one.

I've heard other people comment about a favorite food confessing, "I started eating it and just couldn't stop," but I could never relate. Food isn't that big of a deal to me. In fact, sometimes I get so busy I forget to eat. But now I know exactly what they're talking about. This new chocolate cake is good, I mean really good, I mean as good as it gets, and I too confess, "I just can't stop eating it."

I've gained two pounds since I baked it. My waistline is expanding but my pants aren't, so if I plan on getting them zipped up tomorrow morning, I've got to get this cake out of my house. There are only the two of us--me and my husband--so whenever I bake, each of us indulges a little bit and then we give the rest away to friends.

I've cut the leftover pieces, put them on paper plates and covered them with plastic wrap, but as I'm standing here licking chocolate cake off of my fingers and desperately trying to scrape every last crumb off the bottom of the pan, I don't know if I've got the willpower to do it. Truth is, sharing is overrated when it comes to good chocolate cake.

Hershey's Disappearing Cake

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter or margarine, softened

1/4 cup shortening

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup Hershey's Cocoa

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 3/4 cups milk

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan.

In large mixing bowl, beat butter, shortening, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Add eggs; beat well.

In separate bowl, stir together flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add alternately with milk to butter mixture, blending well. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until wooden toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan on wire rack. Frost as desired. Homemade chocolate buttercream is my favorite..

Enjoy the cake!

(On second thought, I'd recommend opening a can of your favorite chocolate frosting, so you start eating this cake as quickly as possible.)

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com

Dear Reader Column - June 30, 2022

Dear Reader,

In 20 minutes I'm supposed to be interviewed by an author who's writing a book about happiness. The author's been reading at the book club for a couple of weeks and from reading my column, he seems to think I'm a happy person. Normally I would agree with him. But right now, this very minute, I'm still gnarling and snarling about a business bump in the road that happened yesterday. Part of me wants to continue feeling annoyed, but this author isn't dialing in all the way from Australia to hear a grumpy woman. He wants to experience the happy side of me and frankly that's what I'd like to experience this morning, too. But I'm not really sure how I'm going to find "happy" in twenty minutes. 

My friend Linda always reminds me that happiness is a choice. The first time she made that comment to me, I told her I agreed. But secretly I dismissed it as one of those quaint little sayings that's nice to hear, but doesn't really work in the real world. 

But ever since this author asked for an interview, I've been examining my own happiness and I'd have to say that I agree with Linda. She's right. Happiness is a choice and when I think about it, I do make that choice every day. Sometimes happiness isn't the route I choose, but most days I decide I'm going to work on being happy.

 Work on being happy. It sounds like another entry on my "to-do" list and it is. Choosing to be happy, just like brushing my teeth, is something I have to attend to daily. 

When I'm having trouble finding happiness, like I am this morning, I concentrate on happy memories. They're little things, like when I came home from the hospital after our son was born, my husband turned our living room into a temporary bedroom. He set up our bed and mattress in the living room, so I wouldn't have to climb the stairs. Or the birthday party my son and daughter-in-law gave me. Hats, horns, streamers, a cake, presents and even a pinata was hanging from their high ceiling. We finally whacked it apart on the tenth swing. 

The clock is ticking, it's almost time for the author to call and I'm happy to report...I'm feeling happy.

 Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

* Congratulations to the winners of Guest Author Donald Robertson's new graphic novel, Verissimus, Darien M., Rowshan D., Sharon B., Al H., Mary K., Dorie F. and Lonnie E.

And congratulations to the winners of an advanced reader copy of Community Klepto by Guest Author Kelly I. Hitchcock: Pat G., Jennifer M., Mary G., Tammy S., and  Susie W.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com

Dear Reader Column - June 29, 2022

Dear Reader,

She was a short woman, with a round face, her cheeks had a natural blush when she smiled, and a whitish tint covered her head--she was getting her hair colored--but it was her smile that first caught my attention. 

I was fifteen minutes early and waiting for my hair appointment. I stopped and stared--I couldn't help myself. For a moment I could hardly breathe and I tried to hide my shaking hands. I thought it was her; she looked just like my mother, but my mother's been gone for years. My headset, where's my headset--I turned the music on louder and louder--thinking maybe I could transport myself somewhere else. It was all too much for me. 

Every week I visit the hairdresser. I don't even own a bottle of shampoo, and my mother's to blame. Yes, my mother who washed out every container; "Throw nothing away, buy nothing unless it's on sale, buy the wrong size and make it fit if it's a good price." Oh, how many times did I hear those words? Yet Mom had a standing, weekly appointment at the hairdresser. In fact, I don't ever remember seeing my mother wash and dry her own hair. 

When you live in a small town, like my mother did, the price of a weekly wash and blow dry and a monthly tint were somehow justifiable in her self-imposed budget. Maybe it was because she always worked a full-time job, or maybe my mother was like me--I just can't blow dry my hair into anything that looks respectable. 

But the first year Mom came to winter in Florida, she gasped when I took her to the hair salon on my weekly visit. Thirty dollars for a wash and blow dry, $50 for a haircut, my mother was beside herself. But it was one of the few times in her life she decided to take a chance. 

"Go ahead, cut my hair. Make me look beautiful...something different," she told my hairdresser. And that's exactly what my hairdresser produced--a different Mom stood before me. I barely recognized her. My mother became a different woman that day and she smiled that smile... 

...it's the same smile I see across the room today. She looks like my mother. Oh how I wish she were my mother, even for a minute--just a hug and embrace to feel her arms around me again. 

But all I could do was stare at the woman with the tint on her hair. I walked away from her view. Maybe I'm imagining things. But when I returned, she was still there, and so was that smile. 

That smile from across the room meant just for me--a smile to keep in my heart.

 Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com

Dear Reader Column - June 28, 2022

Dear Reader,

Today’s guest author, Linda MacKillop, lives and writes in the Chicagoland area. She has worked in broadcasting, publishing, taught English at a community college, and delivered many newspapers. Her debut novel, The Forgotten Life of Eva Gordon, came out in May. In this contemporary novel, Eva Gordon is an older woman who wants to run away from her life because her memory is failing, and she's forced to live with her spunky granddaughter whose life is overflowing with misfit Characters.

Be sure to enter Linda's giveaway. (Details are at the end of her column.)

Welcome to the book club, Linda…

Hard Jobs

I spent many years working hard jobs while trying to earn money for college. For a time, I delivered newspapers in the early morning hours. Later I worked the graveyard shift at an old-fashioned answering service, monitoring calls for doctors, AAA, and other businesses who needed 24-hour service. The scariest part of that job? Waking doctors at 2am when your "emergency" didn't fit their definition.

My most risky job experience came while I still had the paper route. People were supposed to pay by leaving money in envelopes, but as anyone who has ever had a paper route knows, collecting from your customers is the difficult, thankless part of the job.

One day, I got fed up with customers who wouldn't pay me and went door to door. Most folks respectively paid me.

Then I arrived at a dilapidated trailer sitting at the outskirts of town. The customer hadn't paid in months, and I was mad. I'd had never breached the chain-link fencing surrounding his place, only leaving the paper in the designated mailbox. But on this day, I opened that gate and marched to the front door. When a scruffy man answered, I told him I was collecting for his newspaper.

"How'd you get in here?" he asked

"I walked through your gate." At that moment, two furious, barking pit bulls raced around the corner of the trailer, charging at me.

"Get inside quick," he said, pulling me inside the trailer.

I'm not sure which of my decisions that day was worse, walking through that gate or allowing him to pull me inside. (Did I mention a serial killer was murdering women in my city? Later we would learn he was Ted Bundy.) But there I stood inside this stranger's home with no way to walk out the front door without being mauled.

He began to laugh. "I can't believe you had the guts to come in here. I'm paying you everything I owe." He left the room chuckling and collected his wallet. When he returned, he handed me a wad of cash before tying up his dogs outside so I could safely leave. Weeks later, I quit the paper route.

When I finished college, thinking my late-night shifts were over, I took a job as a master control engineer for a television station--and, of course, worked the late-night shift until the wee hours of the dark mornings.

Today, I never take for granted my day job writing safely at my desk.

I love to hear from readers and respond to emails. I'm giving away five copies of my novel, The Forgotten Life of Eva Gordon, and hope you enter to win. Just send an email with your mailing address (in case you win) to linda@mackillops.com.

-- Linda MacKillop

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com

Dear Reader Column - June 27, 2022

Dear Reader,

I'm honest when someone asks me, but this is one time, I thought about telling a fib. After all, it's an opinion she's asking for, right? Who's to say what's right or wrong? Yes, they look good on her, but I knew they would look even better on me. But no matter how I tried to justify it, and believe me I worked all the angles, I just couldn't bring myself to tell her that she shouldn't buy them.

It was no use, I was going to have to tell her the truth--"The shoes look great on you, they're to die for. You'd be crazy not to buy them."

Okay, there, I'd said it. Now I could only hope she'd change her mind--please, oh please, oh please, change your mind. Don't buy those shoes, because I'm in love with them and there isn't another pair on the rack.

Yeah, it's petty, it's silly--after all, they're only shoes. But everybody sinks this low on occasion. Flashlights, houses, shoes--we all have our weak moments, and mine was in the T.J. Maxx store in Manhattan.

One of my business appointments had to reschedule, so I had three hours to shop and I spent 30 minutes of my shopping time following the "how do these shoes look on me" woman around the store.

People carry around "undecided" items all the time, eventually deciding not to buy them. I could only hope for such good fortune. I hid behind racks, pretended to look at purses, when really I was keeping tabs on the woman with the $498.00 dollar shoes--marked down to $25.00--hoping she'd ditch them at the last minute, set them down somewhere before she checked out, and I could swoop in for the shopping spoils.

But apparently this woman loved the shoes as much as I did, and the more she kept filling up her cart with discounted treasures, the deeper "my" shoes were buried--never to be seen by "me" again.

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com

Dear Reader Column - June 24, 2022

Dear Reader,

When the UPS man delivered a really big box, I knew it had to be from my daughter because she'd called to give me a heads up that she was sending a combined mother/father birthday and Mother's Day/Father's Day present.

Our daughter says my husband and I are difficult to buy for and she's probably right. But part of the problem is when she calls for gift ideas she just ignores them and tries to buy something unusual. A few years ago, at her insistence, we all agreed that if we didn't like a gift, we should just be honest and exchange it. So with her track record I was petrified at the huge 6' x 2' box that stood before me.

I got my utility knife and slowly cut the tape on both sides of the box.The suspense was killing me. On one hand it was kind of exciting--what could be in such a big box? On the other hand I knew how disappointed she would be when she asked if we liked it and I had to ask her how to exchange it. I planned to fib this one time if it was something I didn't want.

But to my delight, and to my relief, it was a hammock. A perfect gift. I love it. In fact, I like it so much that it's taken center stage in my office for awhile. I think it's the perfect place to read.

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne@DearReader.com

Dear Reader Column - June 23, 2022

Dear Reader,

Several years ago, I asked my son, "What kind of cake would you like me to make for your birthday party?"

I expected him to place an order for a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, because he loves my chocolate pie, and chocolate brownies, and he always used to steal chocolate chip cookie dough when he was a kid. "Hey Mom, look over there.." And when I'd turn and look the other way, he'd scoop a handful of cookie dough out of my mixing bowl. My son loves chocolate.

So when he requested a yellow cake with chocolate frosting--what a surprise! A yellow cake? Every year I've baked his birthday cake and it's never been yellow. I didn't even have a recipe for a yellow cake. So I started looking through some of my old cookbooks. My thinking was, that a cake recipe from a back-in-the-day cookbook, when everything was made from scratch, would have to be a winner. But when I baked the cake the night before the party, it looked dry, and--it didn't look very yellow to me.

So what the heck makes a yellow cake yellow? A good friend and Google came to my rescue. "A yellow cake has egg yolks, a white cake has whole eggs," my friend emailed, and she also included her recipe for a yellow cake. 

I made the cake for my son…with chocolate frosting. It was divine.

Yellow Cake 

6 large egg yolks

1 cup milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 cups plus 3 tablespoons sifted all-purpose flour

1-1/2 cups granulated sugar

1 Tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

12 Tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature, cut into pieces

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray two 9-inch x 1 1/2 inch cake pans with non-stick spray and then line bottoms with parchment paper, then spray again with the non-stick spray.

In a medium bowl lightly combine the egg yolks, 1/4 cup milk and vanilla extract.

Combine the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder and salt) and mix on low speed for about 30 seconds or until blended.  Add the butter and remaining 3/4 cup milk.  Mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat for about 2 minutes and scrape sides of bowl. Gradually add the egg mixture, in 3 additions, beating 30 seconds after each addition.

Divide the batter and pour into the prepared pans, smooth the surface with a spatula.  (Pans will be about half full.)  Bake 25 to 35 minutes or until cake springs back when pressed lightly in center. 

Place the cakes, in their pans, on a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes.  Invert the cakes onto a greased rack.  To prevent splitting, turn cakes right side up. Cool completely before frosting.

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com

Dear Reader Column - June 22, 2022

Dear Reader,

My son stopped by the other day and in the middle of a wandering conversation about life he commented, "It was so good to see Uncle John when he visited last Christmas. You know, I still have one of the semi-trucks that he gave me for my birthday when I was a kid."

Uncle John, my husband's brother, was a long-distance truck driver when our son was young and every now and then we'd get a phone call, "I'll be in the area tonight and I thought I'd stop by." And sure enough later that evening, a big blue semi-truck would show up in front of our house. We lived on what used to be the outskirts of the city, so there was still plenty of room to park his rig. Climbing up into the cab of a semi--it was a dream come true for an eight-year-old boy and his Uncle John always brought a gift, too. It wasn't ever anything elaborate: a toy truck or maybe a T-shirt, but they were keepsakes for a little boy.

"I remember I used to wake up in the middle of the night and look at the semi-truck sitting on my shelf and wonder, 'Where was Uncle John on the road tonight?' I wish I would have told him how much his gifts meant to me," my son said. "Maybe I should buy Uncle John a present?"

But I suggested that instead of buying a gift, he should write down the "Uncle John story" that he just told me. I assured my son that in his Uncle John's mind it would be a bestseller--one of those stories he'd love reading over and over again.

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

* Congratulations to Sue G., the winner of the mini stuffed crab.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com

Dear Reader Column - June 21, 2022

Dear Reader,

Today’s guest author, Kelly I. Hitchcock, is a humorous fiction author who grew up in the

Ozarks but now calls Austin, Texas home. Her work has been featured in Clackamas Literary Review, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and Moms Don't Have Time to Write. Her new book is Community Klepto, set in suburban Kansas City in the early 2010s, Community Klepto--a droll combination of Bridget Jones' Diary and Choke--makes incarnate the characters and shenanigans that go on in every gym in the world.

Be sure to enter Kelly’s giveaway. (Details are at the end of her column.)

Please welcome to the book club, Kelly Hitchcock…

I hated running before I loved it. When we had to do the timed mile tests in PE, I'd be the one walking and sulking the whole time while my little brother lapped me, going for a new land speed record. I wasn't fast (my brother must have gotten some mutant gene that I didn't), and I would never be fast, so I didn't see the point. Also hurdles terrified me.

It wasn't until a couple friends of mine ran a marathon that I thought distance running was in the realm of possibility for me. I didn't have to be fast--they sure weren't--I just had to keep going. I started training when I was living in Kansas City and getting roped into events for Corporate Challenge, because I was in my 20s and couldn't say no to people yet. I refused to do any sprints (not a flat-out refusal, more of a suggestion that someone with a remote chance of sprinting off the blocks was a better choice), but I agreed to run the one mile.

In my heat was a visibly pregnant woman. Suddenly I had a goal. I didn't have to be the fastest; I just had to be faster than the pregnant woman. I ran that mile in a little under 9 minutes, which

was a personal best. The next week, I ran two miles (slower, since I was by myself and didn't have any pregnant ladies to beat). The next, I ran 4. Finally, I registered for the Twin Cities Marathon, reluctantly paid my $50 fee, and started training in earnest.

And I was shocked to find out I didn't hate running after all. I didn't even hate 4 AM, which is when I'd have to start my long Sunday runs to avoid the summer heat. When I was out running early in the morning, it was the only time I could really sit with my thoughts and feelings, feel the breeze on my face, and watch the city come to life. I discovered audiobooks, which meant I could read for hours without being accused of being a lazy slug. I could top off the day with a 2,000-calorie cheeseburger and a nap.

I miss distance running, but my knees sure don't. Now that I'm pushing 40 with two young children, I'd give my left arm to have hours outside all by myself, a 2,000-calorie cheeseburger, or a nap...let alone all 3! But I'll happily settle for nice long walks with nice long books.

I am giving away 5 advance review copies of my forthcoming novel Community Klepto. To enter the giveaway, send an email with a dirty limerick (okay, the limerick is optional) to: kelly@kellyhitchcock.com along with your name and mailing address.

-- Kelly I. Hitchcock

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com