Punkin Love

 

1. Edvard Munch called his most famous painting Der Schrei der Natur (The Scream of Nature).

2. Pennywise the Clown was portrayed by Tim Curry and Bill Skarsgård.

3. The Electric Chair was part of Andy Warhol's Death and Disaster series , beginning in 1962.

4. Mary Shelley's maiden name was Godwin. Wollstonecraft was her middle name.

5. Shirley Jackson called herself a "practicing amateur witch" and bragged about the hexes she'd placed on disagreeable publishers.

6. Jay Anson claimed The Amityville Horror was based on true events.

7. Anne Rice says Dickens, Hemingway, Shakespeare, the Brontë sisters, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Stephen King influenced her work.

8. Red Dragon was first published in 1981.

9. Gaston Leroux wrote Phantom of the Opera. It was first published in French in serial form, in March of 1910.

10. Mrs. Danvers has been played by Kristin Scott Thomas, Diana Rigg and Dame Judith Anderson.

Plain Block

 

In the mood for a Halloween trivia quiz? I'll post the answers tomorrow morning:

1. Who painted The Scream?

2. What was the name of the clown in Stephen King’s It?

3. Who created the 1968 artistic work  Big Electric Chair?

4. Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley. What was her middle name?

5. Which American horror writer is responsible for The Haunting of Hill House, The Lottery and The Sundial?

6. Which 1977 novel became a series of 11 horror films between 1979 to 2013?

7. Who wrote The Vampire Chronicles including the 1976 novel Interview with the Vampire?

8. Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs was a sequel, What was the first book in the series?

9. The Phantom of the Opera has become two very different Broadway musicals. Who wrote the original novel?

10. In Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, what was the name of the sinister housekeeper?

Twenty-five Picket Fences

 

When I use ground turkey, I usually combine it with stronger flavors – like chili and cumin or oregano and garlic – to hide its turkey-ness. This recipe does just the opposite.

 

Turkey Loaf

 

2 tablespoons butter

1 cup diced onion

1/2 cup diced celery

1/2 cup diced carrot

1 teaspoon salt, divided

Ground pepper to taste

1 teaspoons sage

1 1/2 cups unseasoned stuffing mix

3/4 cup chicken stock

1 1/2 pound ground turkey

1 beaten egg

1/2 cup cranberry sauce

1/4 cup ketchup

2 teaspoons Dijon

 

Preheat oven to 275F. Sauté vegetables and seasonings in butter; cool. Pour stock and stuffing mix into bowl; stir in cooled vegetables. Fold in egg and turkey. Press into loaf pan, then unmold onto baking sheet. Bake for 25 minutes. Whisk last three ingredients together and spread over top of loaf. Return to oven and bake another 20 minutes. Cool 10 minutes before cutting. 

Four Knaves

 

Usually by this point in the year, we’d have seen several dozen movies on the big screen. But by almost any standard, this has been a most unusual year. In January, we saw Doolittle, because we like Robert Downey Jr. and we love the Hugh Lofting books: a mistake on both counts. In February, we caught Sonic the Hedgehog (Jim Carey’s a delightful bad guy) and Call of the Wild (Harrison Ford should have passed on this one). We saw Onward and Emma in March right before the pandemic shut everything down. Since then, some of the films we’d been looking forward to have been released digitally, but most have just been postponed.  A few have trickled into the very clean, very empty cinemas; the ones the studios knew wouldn’t do well. It’s a catch-22. The good flicks won’t come back until there’s an audience for them, and there won’t be an audience until there’s something worth watching.

Twenty-five Turning Leaves

 

“The other day on a plane I thought, ‘I wonder if there’s keys to the plane? Do they need keys to start the plane?’ Maybe that’s what those delays on the ground are sometimes. When you’re just sitting there at the gate, maybe the pilot’s up there in the cockpit going, ‘Oh, I don’t believe this. I did it again.’ They tell you it’s something mechanical, because they don’t want to come on the P.A. system, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to be delayed here on the ground for a little while. I, uh, this is so embarrassing. I, I left the keys to the plane in my apartment. They’re in this big blue ashtray by the front door. I’m really sorry. I’ll run back and get them.’ You see the technicians all running around underneath the plane. You think they’re servicing it, but they’re actually looking for one of those magnet Hide-A-Keys under the wing.” – Jerry Seinfeld, Is This Anything?

Puerto Rico

 

“When I was a child, Frank Talley, a member of the Church, offered to help my family fly from Puerto Rico to Salt Lake City so we could be sealed in the temple, but soon obstacles began to appear. One of my sisters, Marivid, became ill. Unsettled, my parents prayed about what to do and still felt prompted to make the journey. They trusted that as they faithfully followed the Lord’s prompting, our family would be watched over and blessed—and we were. My family’s trip to the temple years ago was difficult, but as we approached the temple in Salt Lake City, Utah, my mother, full of joy and faith, said, ‘We are going to be OK; the Lord will protect us.’ We were sealed as a family, and my sister recovered. This happened only after the trial of my parents’ faith and in following the Lord’s promptings.” – Elder Jorge M. Alvarado

Four Ports

 

Baked Rice Pudding

1 cup leftover (cooked) white rice

1/2 cup sugar

1/8 tsp salt

1 quart milk

1 tsp vanilla

3 eggs

1/2 cup raisins

Nutmeg to taste

Preheat oven to 350F. Add sugar, salt, milk, vanilla and eggs to blender. Blend egg mixture until well combined. Coat baking dish with melted butter or cooking spray. Add egg mixture to cooked rice and in baking dish. Place in oven hot water bath and bake 2 to 2-1/2 hours, stirring occasionally. Remove from oven and let cool before serving. Store any leftover pudding in refrigerator.