Hold your hat, cupcake, because Tuesday, July 31st is the release of Miss Management!  

Dear Miss Behave,
My son is dating this girl named Chloe.  I believe the name is French, and you know what they say about French girls. Anyway, she is terriblyforward.  Why, just the other day, she walked up to my son and told him, “Get in the car.”  No please, no hello, how are you today, Ma’am?  She took one look at my baby and just barked her order, expecting him to jump.  He’s thirty, how is this an appropriate way to address anyone?  Please tell me how to deal with these appalling manners in a way that ensures that she will not become my daughter-in-law.
Sincerely,
-Fed Up
 
Dear Fed Up,
Oh my pet, you simply musttell what it is they say about the French.  I do hope it’s kinky.  
Anyhow, forward women are inright now, my lamb.  So you need to make sure your son is happy, and then turn your attention elsewhere.  I suggest using your obsession with proper manners and maybe joining some kind of club, perhaps a bonsai society?  Pet grooming?  Flower arrangements?  Then, once entrenched amidst jars of hydrangeas and carnations, you should be forward yourself, and maybe ask someone new out for a coffee.  Or, you know, high tea or something.  Own the forward woman thing, darling!
Love and margaritas,
-Miss Behave

Darlings!  My book, MISS BEHAVE, is finally live!!  And to celebrate, I am giving you, my dearies, the chance to win one of two gorgeous necklaces!  So pour yourself an icy-cold beverage and enjoy the read!  You'd look AMAZING in this necklace, trust me, and you deserve it!  Love and Margaritas!!!

Success!  After messing with mashed banana recipes to come up with a faux ice cream treat that wouldn't break my diet, I've finally found a winner!

I made it up myself, my lambs, and you can tweak it at your leisure.

Here it is:

1 cup Plain low-fat yogurt (not Greek)
2 ripe bananas
2 packets Truvia
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract

Mash the bananas and mix all the ingredients together.  Stick the mixture into a freezer-safe container and let it freeze up.  In just a few hours, you will have a creamy, delicious froyo of your own!

Also, I'd imagine that if you put the mixture in a pre-made graham cracker crust before setting it in the freezer, you'd have a rather delicious base for a fruit tart.

​Enjoy, darlings!

Favors and ideas?  I have an idea: don't try to substitute bananas for ice cream.  

Let me go back.  I am watching what I eat.  Typically, this consists of watching way too much food go into my face, but lately, I have been watching portion sizes and things.  It is summer, after all, and darlings, my kids, bless them, really love to go to the pool.  So I would not be the mama in the mumu, I decided to get healthy.  

Which is a problem, because I love my sweets.  So, when I saw a recipe for how you can replace ice cream cravings with frozen, blended bananas, I nearly wept with excitement.

Like a little spring lamb, I chopped and froze all the bananas that we had in the house.  I couldn't wait to throw those bad boys in my Cuisinart.

Well, sure enough, I cough down dinner to get to dessert.  Tossing the banana chunks in my food processor with gusto, darlings, I blended them up.  Bananas and vanilla extract and some honey, oh my.

And the result was a cruel, miserable lie.  Frozen bananas taste like bananas, not ice cream.

There, I have spared you the humiliation of having to learn this lesson for yourselves.  Frozen bananas are wonderful if you are craving cold bananas, but from now on if I want ice cream, I'm going to eat ice cream.  A whole little half cup of delicious, frozen heavy cream and sugar.  

I will just eat it less often and save those frozen bananas for my smoothies.  

​

Isn't it gorgeous????  I can't wait for you cheeky ladies to read it!!

Here's the low-down on the plot, darlings:

 She's great at giving advice, too bad she never takes it…
Piper Anderson wants to be a serious journalist at a serious paper covering serious news. Instead, she’s stuck at the Pendleton Falls Herald, where her massive investigative skills are wasted penning the paper’s advice column, Miss Behave. 
Her shot at a meaty story comes when she’s assigned to write up a profile of a local business, Brookes Jewelers. She is determined to write the piece so she can use the article to impress a real paper.
Unfortunately Hunter Brookes, co-owner of Brookes Jewelers and the Pendleton Falls Herald, is rather persistent, in his own hot little way, that the piece should be nothing more than a glorified sales pitch. 
But when diamonds disappear, Piper may get the chance to do a real investigation, leading her to confront family secrets and worst of all, turn to her mother for help.
Piper soon realizes that there is more to Mr. Brookes than a tight ass and a ridiculous fascination with name tags. Together they deal with roasted pigs, crazy cat ladies, and gun-toting fashionistas.
In all the chaos, they just might find the one thing that neither one was looking for: true love.





​So tell me, what do you think??

I suck at making those zoodles, and I have zucchini bread packed into my freezer like I plan to one day use zucchini bread bricks to fend off zombies in the apocalypse my older son swears is coming.  And yes, I did take away his Walking Dead watching privileges, btw.  

But I still have zucchini, so on Amazon Prime day, I went ahead and bought a food dehydrator and the first thing I made?  Zucchini chips!  And they were terrific!

Here's how I did it:

First, I sliced the zucchini on a mandolin.  Then, I tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper.  Threw them into the dehydrator so that they were touching, turned the thing to 140 degrees for 8 hours and voila!  Delicious chips!  Like potato chips, only green and actually good for you!

If you like, you can make them in the oven as well. Set the temp to 200 degrees and cook for two hours or so until they're crispy.