At Considerable Cost

Today, I'm linking up with Moxie Wife with my Five Favorites : Tipsy Cupcakes, sumptuous and clever British dramas, and fine cowgirl boots. 1. Tipsy Irish Coffee Cupcakes Beautiful photography by my dear friend, Lauren . Is it acceptable that one of my favorites is my own creation?   Because I really love these.   My editor at Bourbon and Boots asked me to come up with a dessert recipe that featured Irish Whiskey in time for St. Patrick's Day.   My kitchen became a test kitchen and friends became willing taste-testers.   I kept trying to achieve enough coffee and whiskey flavor by adding Irish cream liqueur to the recipe.   Hello, the icing already tastes like cream, so I just needed to add straight whiskey to get the flavor I desired.   Adding instant coffee granules to whipping cream for a layer of chocolate ganache gave me the right touch of coffee balanced with the chocolate in the homemade cake. ...

Two books and a movie.  An author, a saint, and a fictional character.   They've all been tossing about in my mind over the past few weeks.   I recently completed two books, Lizzie's War and Shirt of Flame: A Year with Saint Therese of Lisieux .   Both books--one fiction, the other non-fiction--dovetailed to prompt pondering about vocation, love, and desire. Lizzie's War , by Tim Farrington, is beautiful in its rawness and reality.   Set in the late 1960s, the book alternates the story of Mike, a Marine in Vietnam, and his wife, Lizzie, left at home on her own battlefront, trying her best to run the family in his absence and to not lose herself in the process.   For the past few years, my reading has consisted of theology, especially apologetics, and classics, such as Dickens, Austen, and Shakespeare.   All good, but combined with the preoccupation of taking care of my father and dealing with estate matters, ...