Today's letter is S . For more S posts, please click here. Congratulations are in order.  Maybe. I am a new multi-millionaire. Rather, I would be a multi-millionaire if I respond to these e-mails. Morgan David & Associates from Bristol England stated I am the beneficiary of over 8 million pounds. The firm broke the delicate news about an unknown patron with  "Dear Sir/Madam." Chan from China, a former investment banker, wrote that his former employers have asked him to contact me and let me know that if I do not accept $15.7 million dollars from an American account, they will keep the money forever.  All I need to do is give them my phone number and date of birth. Mr. Oyi John, of the Federal High Court of Nigeria, wrote that I must prove I am not dead. Otherwise, someone named Mr. Jones McBolt will transfer $2.5 million from my account into his. There is a hitch. How shall I prove that I am the one and only living Charbel Aad? Mrs. Anthonia Emma h

I picked up The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows,  at the bookstore early last year because the title caught my eye. Really delightful, don't you think? But, I put it down when I read "the German occupation" on the back cover. Let's face it, I don't like to read depressing tales anymore. A few months after that encounter, I read a review about it that made me think "maybe, I'll read it." Using correspondence to move the plot forward intrigued me. Now flash forward to my birthday last December. What do you know? A friend gifted me a copy of "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society." Thanks, again, evil2win . The setting: London and the Island of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands in the English Channel. The time: Several months after the end of WWII. The characters:  Juliet Ashton, an author, and the people of Guernsey. The story: Juliet no longer wants to be thought of as a &

Today's letter is R . For more R posts, please click here . I'm sure this happens to you. You're walking along in the real outdoors. You know the type—where the landscaping was done by Mother Nature. Your being gets attuned with the reality of what's around you. The sky, the topography, the fauna, the flora. Beautiful, oh, so beautiful. Then, maybe you move your head to the left or right. Or, perhaps a slight change in lighting occurs. Something shifts in some weird way that suddenly the natural scene takes on a different reality. Do you see a dead stump or a creepy figure with a rodent crawling up his body? Do you see a small grove of old oak trees, or a battle between foes just horribly ended? Ah, maybe the reality is: You need to get more sleep. Or, maybe the mama's sense is right: "You have too much imagination."

Homicide in Hardcover by Kate Carlisle was a very fun and quick read. It's been a long while since I've read a book in one day. No, not all at once. I would've if I wasn't so responsible. Ha! Brooklyn Wainwright is a bookbinder who lives in San Francisco. She attends a book event where she reunites with her mentor Abraham who had gotten miffed when Brooklyn decided to start her own business. An hour later, he is dead and Brooklyn becomes a suspect. She also is hired to complete the bookbinding job on a very old copy of Faust that Abraham was about to start working on. The copy supposedly has a curse on it and by all the misfortunes that fall on Brooklyn, it may be true. Brooklyn is worried that her mom may be the murderer, so she starts sleuthing on her own. Thrown into the troubled mix is Derek, a handsome British security consultant who has been hired to protect the book. Lots of sparked dialogue go on between Brooklyn and Derek. Also, interesting to the tale is Bro

A few weeks ago, the Mama and I cut back her banana trees and she stripped off the dried leaves. A banana blossom had actually made it through the frosty days. It was quite yummy. The Mama decided to leave quite a lot of the trunks in tact. Usually, she likes to hack them almost to the ground. It shall be interesting to see how tall her tiny groves grows. Here's a close-up of how happy part of it looked last year.

Today's letter is Q . For more Q posts, click here . A couple of letters ago, O to be exact , I griped about the high medical bills we got for the 10 stitches in the husband's finger at our local emergency department. They amounted to over $3,000 for about 45 minutes of medical attention. And, we were there for five hours. The doctor's bill was over $1,600. Man! I thought it would be about $300. After getting the doctor's bill, we questioned all the charges, including the hospital's, which we had already paid. I talked with the emergency department director, who after trying to feed me the corporate line finally listened and understood my complaint. She became outraged at how much the emergency medical service, with which the hospital contracts, was charging. She told me that if we write a letter, she'd be sure to investigate our case. So, that's what we did. We did our homework and learned that the contractor pays temporary emergency doctors who work at

Today's letter is P . Pinakbet.   What a chicken says when it wants to gamble? Nope. Pinakbet. An Ilocano dish with eggplant, bittermelon, tomatoes, and long beans? Yep, that's it. If I happen to have kabocha squash and/or okra, I'll throw some into the mix, too. Depending on my mood, I'll make it with or without pork. On rare occasions, I'll go classic and add a bit of bagoong (fermented, finely ground fish or shrimp). I say rare because that stuff is very salty. Click here for a photo of what pinakbet looks like. How do you pronounce pinakbet? I say pin-auk-bit .  But, you must realize that I don't have an Ilocano accent. Never had. Pinakbet is one of my favorite dishes. When I was growing up, the mama cooked it often during the summer. Except for the onions and garlic, all the vegetables for the dish were freshly picked out of the daddy's garden. I have yet to eat a version that has topped or even come close to the mama's.  And, now, the mama's