The Real Housewives of Olympus

In honor of my new release, THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF OLYMPUS, I'd like to know who your favorite god or goddess is and why. Let's chat pantheons.

Saranna's Italian Chicken Salad Gluten Free

Italian Chicken Salad

1 ball of fresh mozzarella (chunked)
1-2 cooked chicken breasts depending on size, chunked
season with Italian seasoning, garlic, sea salt, a dash of crushed red pepper
1-2 tablespoons of olive oil depending on desired texture

Blend in the food processor and process until you reach the desired texture. I like mine blended smooth. Then spread on Udi's gluten free bread. It's very good toasted.

This can be served hot or cold.

Want to Guest Blog For CC? Got a Chicken Salad Recipe?

My friends, I am here to admit an addiction. I, Dhympna, am addicted to chicken salad. I go out of my way to discover new chicken salad recipes and I know I am not alone.

So, if you have a unique chicken salad recipe that you would to share with Culinary Carnivale, give me a shout. Yes, I am looking for guest bloggers.

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I hope to post a few recipes a week for the next four weeks. To get us started, why don't I give you a play on the classic.

Creamy Classic Chicken Salad:

You will need:


-2 to 3 cups of shredded or cubed cooked chicken (I use rotisserie chicken when it is hot out & I don't want to run the oven)
-mayonaise
-plain greek yogurt
-grapes (halved, or if they are large, quartered)
-diced celery (2 or 3 ribs)
-salt and pepper to taste

I add enough mayo and yogurt to coat. Roughly 1/3 mayonnaise to 2/3 yogurt. Mix everything together and serve on bread or on top of a bed of lettuce (I use mixed greens or chopped romaine).

Yes, my friends, it shall be a chicken salad summer.

Review: Forbidden Pleasure-Lora Leigh

In 2008 I stumbled across  Wicked Pleasure (Bound Hearts) in the local bookstore. The book, about twins who needed to share their female bed partners, was enjoyable enough that when the ebook for Forbidden Pleasure (Bound Heart) was on sale (2.99$ on sale from 7.99--it was a promotion because Leigh had a new book coming out in the series) I grabbed it.

Let's just say that if I paid the full price (it is back up to 7.99$), I would be pitching more of a fit.

*insert melodramatic sigh*

This book had so many problems that I really don't know where to start.

Did I hate it? No. Did I like it? Not really.

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

People have heard of fleeting rumors about The Club. Located just outside Washington, D.C., only its members know where men go when they want to indulge the desire to share their women with a carefully selected male partner. John “Mac” McCoy resigned his membership from The Club when he married Keiley Hardin. Tempting and innocent, sweet and sexy, she would never accept Mac’s desire to share her with another man. However, Mac’s fantasies of sharing his wife haunt his dreams. And his passions. Unable to wait any longer to draw his best friend Jethro Riggs into his marriage, Mac invites Jethro to their home with the intention of drawing Keiley into the pleasures that only be achieved when two men love the same woman. But there’s more going on in Mac’s neck of the woods than a little additional pleasure. A past case, a stalker that likes to playing games and his wife is now in the middle of it all. Passion and pleasure, danger and desire combine as forbidden pleasure becomes an addiction none of them can escape.

Length: Novel
Genre: Erotic Contemporary Romance (m/f/m)
Publisher: Saint Martin's Griffin (2007)

The Good:

The ideas behind some of the sex scenes were hot, but the scenes were swollen with execution issues. Pun intended.

The Bad:

I am having issues organizing my thoughts about this one, so I will go in point form.

1)  The main characters had one note each. Keiley was misunderstood by her husband and curious but, of course, wanted to fight his lifestyle but also wanted it oh, so bad. Mac on the other hand kept thinking about his dark side...WTF? So, in Leigh's universe the only men who participate in group sex are those who are damaged and have embraced their dark side? Um, okay, whatever. Like there aren't any undamaged people engaging in it. *snort*  This stuff gets repeated over and over. AND OVER. I don't see threesomes as dark and wicked, nor do I see the light D/s stuff that Keiley and Mac engaged in as dark. Maybe I am jaded but, really, what the heck. It just seemed like there was a judgmental undertone to the book: men who do this are damaged but want to pamper women who must first fight the naughtiness that is this dark lifestyle. *eye roll*

2) I know people who engage in threesomes and they do not thinkof, nor do they walk around referring to it as, a ménage. First of all menage means a household, so ménage à trois means a household of three.  Yes, popular culture has added other meanings, but seriously, it made Mac sound like a 13 year old boy contemplating sex and reading Penthouse. Keeping in mind that the end result of the story was a ménage à trois, but probably not in the sense of his train of thought when this kept popping up.

3) The conflict revolves around Keiley accepting another man into her life/bed and a case that Mac had been working on three years prior.

Problem is is that the bad guy is totally obvious as is the whole Eye-rollingly so. I also couldn't bring myself to care if Keiley fell in love with Jethro or not.

4) When I read Wicked Pleasure  (which is the book after this one), I did not feel like I was missing anything by not reading the prior books. This book made me feel like there were large chunks, especially about Keiley's past, that I was missing. Yeah, some of it gets explained, but it still made Mac look like an overprotective father trying not to cave into his dark and twisted (*snerk*) needs and Keiley as a whiny, petulant, and swollen  ingenue. *yawn*


Tightening/Swelling/Clenching: I was going to count the incidences of boob swelling and womb tightening, but Keiley pretty much spends the book in this state. It seemed like she was in a constant state of PMS with all of the swelling and tightening.

Typographical & Formatting Errors:  I stopped counting. Seriously. Please keep in mind who published this (St. Martin's) and this book ranged from 8 to 10$. For example: "...he lifted her against her" (page 34 of the nookbook version),  so  "her elbow rammed into her husbands [sic] undefended abdomen..." (page 62). These are just a few and I was skimming at this point.


Cover grade: D

The cover is generic, sort of the erotic romance version of a plain brown wrapper.

Where I got the book: I bought it.

Final thoughts: I would not recommend this book to anyone looking for multiple partner romance. I found that by the end of the book, I was insulted by the whole experience between the "OMG I am such a dark twisted man" premise with the hero and the editorial issues. The editors were asleep at the wheel with this book. Seriously, half the "swollen"s needed to be deleted. If I could ask for my money back, I would.

Yes, I Do Judge A Book By Its Publisher

I was watching a Twitter discussion by an agent  (I cannot remember who, I suppose if pressed enough I could unearth the tweet) and others a week ago about how readers look for books. There were two points made that I would like to address. (Note: You can really tell when something sticks  in my craw if I am still grumbling about it weeks later).

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1) Readers do not judge books by the publisher, that is, readers do not look at a particular publisher's offerings and base their decision on who publishes what.

This is complete and utter hogwash. I do it routinely and having worked in a bookstore, I know other readers do as well. I also think that with digital publishing and the lackadaisical attitude of some publishers in regard to ebook formatting, that this will become more common. After I read a book blurb that grabs my attention, the first thing I check is who published it. I have passed on some books because I did not care for a particular publisher (A note to authors: Yes, I will judge you based on who you decide to let publish your book.)

It only takes a few bad books to harm a publisher's reputation and make readers/consumers decide to avoid another bad experience and not purchase anything more from that publisher altogether.

2) That more choice is detrimental to readers.

I like lots of choice. I like getting lost in the stacks of a large library or a large bookstore and I worry about an agent who whines that there is too much choice and it is oh, so hard to navigate all the choices in a bookstore (seriously, if I recall correctly, I do believe the agent said this). Perhaps this agent is in the wrong business?

Too much choice for readers is detrimental to agents and publishers--it is not detrimental to readers.

Lately, I am exercising my choice more and more away from agented submissions and I cannot help but wonder if the soullessness I have been complaining about lately is due to the normalization and pasteurization that agents have been exerting on their clients. But, I digress...

Edited to add: My googlefu is still strong and I found the convo that prompted this post.