Karen’s Killer Fixin’s
**AUTHOR SPECIAL**
with BONNIE McCUNE!

Welcome to my Friday bonus feature called Karen’s Killer Fixin’s **Author Special**!! Today, in lieu of one of my own recipes, I’m going to introduce you to a new author who will share one of her favorite recipes. Not only will you and I occasionally learn how to make something new and delicious, but we’ll get a chance to check out some wonderful authors. Introducing author, BONNIE McCUNE, and her favorite recipe for NEVER-FAIL CHILI.

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FALLING LIKE A ROCK
BY BONNIE McCUNE

Blurb

When you’re ‘falling like a rock,’ you’ll risk anything.

Unloved and unemployed. That’s Elaine Svoboda, after she’s sacked, then flees across country to her boyfriend who drops her flat. Teetering on the abyss of disaster, she calls an old friend who invites her to a tiny mountain town with fresh prospects. There she meets rugged, hunky Joe Richter-Leon, mayor of Falling Rock.

Maybe he can help her find a job. Maybe they can become friends, even share romance. Sparks fly immediately, but major obstacles make a new life on the ashes of the old appear impossible. Joe’s consumed with challenges like the dismal local economy and an impetuous sister. Elaine butts heads with him at every turn in the rocky road. Are her bungling attempts to help the problem? Or does she remind him of a greedy, selfish ex-wife?

Before they can build a new life on the ashes of the old, she must overcome a few obstacles like a broken ankle, an eating disturbance, his stubbornness, and her own fears. She’s smothering her hopes when a battle with a forest inferno illuminates their true feelings and desire.

Funny and frank, poignant and perceptive, when two people are “Falling Like a Rock,” they learn surrender sometimes means victory.

FALLING LIKE A ROCK
BY BONNIE McCUNE

NOSY NELLY SNOOPS WITH NO SHAME

The books that stick in my memory are those that have real people in real life situations, even if they’re fantasies or mysteries. They face problems, defeat them or are defeated by them, live, learn, change. I love immersing myself in their stories, and I laugh or cry with them. Years ago I rode the bus while reading A Tale of Two Cities,and tears streamed down my face when Sydney Carton faced the guillotine. I bonded instantly with a woman pouring over Jill Shalvis while waiting for car repairs.

In other words, I’m a Nosy Nelly. This antiquated term means someone who’s so interested in other people’s business that she sticks her nose in everywhere. Since I don’t dare indulge myself by peeping in my neighbors’ windows, I restrict myself to books. Since my life has a finite limit and I’m not a time traveler, books let me make endless trips to fascinating eras and equally entrancing personalities. Since I’m not a millionaire, I don’t spend a penny on my voyages through books.

Visual artists enable their viewers to see things in a new way. They open their eyes. In the same manner, writers enable their readers to think about the world and life in new ways. They open their minds. So my greed for knowing about the extraordinary lives of ordinary people brings me rewards in addition to entertainment. How could I learn how a soldier in Viet Nam dealt with the armed conflict except through The Things They Carried?Catch a glimpse of a future I hope we can avoid in The Hunger Games? Get a sense of the restrictions life held for a Regency belle through the novels of Mary Balogh?

“God is in the details,” and for writers, the details they include breathe life into their characters and plots. While some of us win Powerball, make the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl, or trip up the stage to accept an Oscar, the great majority of us do not. We cheer ourselves with smaller victories–winning at church Bingo, welcoming back a soldier, finishing our first 5K. That’s what I’m interested in reading about, and, not surprisingly, what I’m interested in writing about.

About Author Bonnie McCune… 

Bonnie McCune has been writing since ten, when the Saturday Evening Post rejected her poetry. Her passion is fiction and Falling Like a Rock her second novel. Her blog, “ordinary people, extraordinary lives,” shows we don’t need to be flamboyant or rich or aggressive, on television or splashed over the Internet, shrieking foul language or parading in flashy clothes, or even simply annoying, to be interesting.  For years, she entered recipe contests and once attended the Pillsbury Bake Off.  Had she been nine inches taller and thirty pounds lighter, she might have been an actress.

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Links to Bonnie’s Website, Books, & Social Media:

Website: www.BonnieMcCune.com

I hope you enjoy the recipe Bonnie is sharing with us today on Karen’s Killer Fixin’s. Happy eating!

Karen

P.S. We’re at 265 recipes and counting with this posting. Hope you find some recipes you like. If this is your first visit, please check out past blogs for more Killer Fixin’s. In the right hand column menu, you can even look up past recipes by type. i.e. Desserts, Breads, Beef, Chicken, Soups, Author Specials, etc.

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NEVER-FAIL CHILI

A Note from Bonnie: Meals should be easy to prepare, adaptable, inexpensive, nutritious, and so easy children can make them. That’s my philosophy, and I’ve lived it. My children slung hash for one dinner a week from the time they were 12.  The chili recipe is an example of achieving all my aims. It also incorporates my mother-in-law’s secret to speed up the process–drop the burger into the soup in raw chunks.

 

1 lb hamburger
1 onion, chopped
Large can beans (plus small can, if desired)–chili, pinto, kidney
Choose 2 or 3 of the following:  large can of tomatoes; 16 oz tomato sauce; tomato paste; 3 large fresh tomatoes, chopped.
Several T. red chili powder
Garlic powder
Salt and pepper
Water as desired

If desired–corn, green beans, chopped green pepper, other kinds    of chilis, chopped celery tops

Also if desired, chopped cilantro, 1 t cumin

In large kettle, heat the various kinds of tomatoes and beans to the boiling point, adding water to desired soupiness.  When it starts boiling, drop hamburger in, bit by little bit, stirring occasionally.  Add everything else that you want.  Cook 45 minutes to several hours, adding water as needed.  You also can cook this a day or two before you need it, then heat it up.

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**SPECIAL GIVEAWAY**: Bonnie is giving away one eBook copy of FALLING LIKE A ROCK to one lucky reader who comments on her Karen’s Killer Fixin’s blog. Thank you, Bonnie, for sharing your story and recipe with us.

Don’t miss the chance to read this book!