How I Won My Husband.... Braciole
This is considered eight servings, however my husband wouldn’t agree.
Ingredients
• ½ cup bread crumbs
• 1 cup shredded pecorino romano cheese, plus more for serving
• ½ cup fresh basil, chopped
• ⅓ cup shredded provolone cheese
• ½ cup fresh Italian (flat leaf )parsley, chopped
• 8 cloves garlic, minced, divided
• kosher salt, to taste
• freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1 lb organic grass fed- flank steak
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 medium carrot, chopped
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 28 oz crushed tomato, 1 can or prepared tomatoes from garden
• 2 dried bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano
• ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1 lb orecchiette pasta, or polenta, cooked, for serving, optional
• ¼ cup fresh basil, cut into ribbons, for serving
Preparation
• In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, pecorino Romano, ½ cup chopped basil, provolone, parsley, 5 minced cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, and the olive oil. Stir and set aside.
• Lay the flank steak on a cutting board. Season both sides with salt and pepper. Cover the meat with a sheet of parchment paper. Using a meat mallet or rolling pin, pound the steak until its ¼ inch thick. This is a good opportunity to release some tension!
• Remove the parchment and sprinkle the bread crumb mixture evenly over the steak.
• Starting from the bottom, roll the meat into a log. Using butcher’s twine, tie up the roll so it holds its shape while cooking. Season with salt and pepper.
• Heat the canola oil in a large Dutch oven over high heat. When the oil is shimmering, add the steak roll and, without moving it, cook until a dark brown crust forms on one side, about 3 minutes. Turn the roll and repeat until all sides and the ends have been seared. Remove the roll from the pan and set aside.
• Preheat the oven to 350°F
• Add the butter, carrot, onion, celery, remaining 3 cloves of garlic, salt, and pepper to the pan and cook until caramelized, about 5 minutes.
• Add the white wine and stir to loosen any brown bits from the bottom of the pot. Cook until the wine reduces and the pan is slightly dry again.
• Add the tomatoes, bay leaves, oregano, and red pepper flakes. Stir to combine.
• Return the beef roll to the pot. Cover and bake for 1 hour, flipping the roll halfway through (if the sauce is drying up too much, add more crushed tomatoes or water), until the beef is tender.
• Slice the Braciole and arrange on a serving platter with the sauce. Serve the Braciole with orecchiette or polenta. Garnish with grated pecorino Romano and fresh basil. Enjoy!
Trudy Hicks Ghost Hunter
Case One -The Deceit
Trudy Hicks Ghost Hunter
Book One
Lori Zaremba
Case One -The Deceit
Trudy Hicks Ghost Hunter
Book One
Lori Zaremba
Genre: Paranormal Mystery
Publisher: Limitless Publishing
Date of Publication: 2/12/2019
Number of pages: 337
Word Count: 78500
Tagline: Some secrets are meant to stay buried.
Book Description
My job? I hunt ghosts. Not to prove they exist—because I already know they do—but to figure out why they’re still here.
My first big case leads me to a mansion on the Chicago Gold Coast, the previous home of a wealthy socialite who lived there until she accidentally fell to her death in 1927.
I’ve never been this determined—and excited—to solve a case like this one before. Pity I’m forced to work alongside a man whose sole purpose is to debunk paranormal activity. But the worst part? He’s gorgeous, and the more we work together, the more I realize I might be falling for him.
Together we’re delving deeper and deeper into the spiritual world. But the more secrets we uncover, the more pissed off these ghosts become; and that’s when I start to realize…we might be in way over our heads.
Excerpt:
Looking once
again across the table at Jason, she noticed he was listening to his two-way
radio.
“I’ll go check
it out,” Trudy heard him say as he excused himself.
“Is everything
all right?” Paul started to rise from the dinner table.
“Everything is
fine. Sit and relax. I have to go and check one of the cameras.” Jason slipped
from the room.
Trudy caught up
to him at the base of the stairs. “What’s going on?”
He looked at her
warily. “One of the cameras on the third floor caught the door of your room
slamming shut.”
“Oh, I left it
open for the dog when I came down to dinner.”
“Jasmine?” He
raised a questioning brow as he referred to the golden retriever who was sound
asleep under the dining table.
“No.” She bit
her lip and tried not to laugh at his puzzled expression. “I left it open for
the other dog that was whining and scratching at my door.”
“Oh, I see, the
imaginary one,” he quipped, climbing the stairs two at a time. Trudy was almost
at a sprint to keep up, careful not to slip in her high heels. They finally
reached the third floor. The air was so thick that Trudy could barely move her
legs and felt the hair on the back of her neck rising in warning.
“Shhh. Did you
hear that?” A door slammed from inside her room.
“What the hell
was that?” Jason said as he reached for the door, looking down at her.
“It’s probably
just a little mouse,” she said, causing him to frown down at her before slowly
turning the knob.
They entered the
room as quietly as possible, and a blast of frigid air struck them. Jason
reached over to flip the switch for the light. Everything was normal. They
quickly searched the room for any signs of a disturbance. The room was just as
she left it, and the door to the bathroom was open as before. She couldn’t
figure out what made the slamming noise that they heard.
“Uh, were you
typing an email earlier?” Jason asked, looking at her laptop.
“Oh, yeah, to my
mom. I forgot.”
“You better take
a look at this.”
Trudy looked at
the screen and saw her email was
still up. She
had written, “Hi, Mom. We’re at the house. All is well. Please...” That was
where she stopped when she’d been interrupted by a phone call, and that was
where it looked like the email went wild with,
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEGGGGGG
GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG.”
The two letters
repeated the whole way down the page. “How is that possible?” she questioned.
“Maybe your keys
are stuck.” He bent down to get a better look at the keys then tapped them to
see if they were sticking.
“Please, there’s
nothing wrong with the keys. Someone was playing.”
“Who?”
She rolled her
eyes. “I’m not talking about a human.”
“You think a
ghost did this?” Humor danced around his mouth as he tried to keep from
smiling.
“Well, it
certainly could be a possibility, and it is the reason we’re here.”
“Not we, you.
I’m here to look at things rationally.”
“Rationally...really?”
She was irritated, folding her arms over her chest and glaring at him. “What
was rational about the events that led us into this room? And for the love of
God, what was rational about what happened to you in the basement?”
Jason sat on the
bed, elbows on his knees, and looked down at the floor. “I don’t know, but I
plan to find out.”
She looked at
him for a moment and could almost feel his confusion. He was a bit lost in all
this chaos. She sat beside him and mimicked his pose. Trudy elbowed him on the
arm, and the simple touch sent a thrill racing through her body. “I guess we
have our work cut out for us.”
His gaze settled
on her half-smile. “At least it won’t be boring.”
Her heart did a
somersault. “Yeah, I don’t do well with boring.”
Feeling brazen,
she leaned over and planted a quick kiss on his mouth. His eyes widened in
surprise, and Trudy jumped up, grinning from ear to ear.
“Let’s go, Mr.
Young. They’re probably wondering what’s happened to us.” She was halfway out
the door.
Jason grabbed
her hand before she could reach the hall and spun her around. His lips claimed
hers before she could grasp what was happening. Trudy felt his hand on the
small of her back molding her to him, while his other hand gently held her
head. She felt a thrill like never before, and just as her knees started to
give out, he released her.
“Better hurry,
Gertrude. Wouldn’t want anyone to think you were trying to take advantage of me
in this here grand bedroom.” He smiled into her eyes, and once again she was
lost. She shook her head to clear it and get some control of her senses.
“We better go,
or I’ll be taking advantage of you.” She laughed, and he did too. She loved the
sound of it. She glanced over her shoulder. “I hope that damned camera of yours
was turned off.”
As they headed
out the door, Jason walking just behind her, he grimaced when he saw the red
light on the camera on and grunted, “Oh, shit.”
About the Author:
Lori Zaremba is a full-time Internet Sales Manager and writes Web Content as well as providing Copy Editing for businesses in the Greater Pittsburgh Area. Lori has published short ghost stories on Your Ghost Stories, as the Haunted_Cleaner and on her website lorizaremba.com
On her website, lorizaremba.com, Zaremba refers to herself as the ghost magnet and briefly describes her encounters with departing spirits.
Lori began writing her fiction story as a creative offering of why a ghost would haunt. Before long the story became a novel Case One: The Deceit in the Trudy Hicks Ghost Hunter series.
Lori currently lives in the suburbs of Pittsburgh with her husband Wayne and two fur babies Jaxson and Stewie.
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