The Ariel Quigley Mysteries & Companion Cookbooks
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The Ariel Quigley Mysteries & Companion Cookbooks
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Ariel's ViewA Mysterious Newsletter from
ArielQuigleyMysteries.com
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Volume 1, Number 6 |
August 21, 2006 |
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Welcome & Weather Report |
Visit our Online Calendar
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Today in History |
Published bi-weekly, weather permitting.
When you've finished reading, visit our
home page,
for links to photos, contests, recipes,
and other awesome treats!
Welcome to new viewers
-
especially our new friends from the conferences we attended this summer,
and friends from the past who have come to visit and play.
BREAKING NEWS!
We sent a short story
to EQMM.
"A Certain Slant of Light"
is the first of what we hope will be a series of short stories
that looks at the adventures of Gypsy Donovan, a female Chicago cab
driver.
Keep you fingers crossed for us!
We've written a
cookbook!
A Killer Cookbook #1: Recipes to
Accompany The Chef Who Died Sautéing
contains recipes for all the
food mentioned in the novel.
More in the newsletter.
Ariel's 2nd adventure
will be with our editor next week!
The Lawyer Who Died Trying
(January, 2007)
Ariel's romance
heats up,
but she also finds herself involved in a custody case,
a group of women who write rather rude limericks,
an investment that may have a few difficulties,
and a black magician!
Who killed the lawyer, and why?
UPDATES
September 22nd, 2006
Tours & Events: Updated
Where We've Been So Far: Updated
Convention Activities: Updated
Contest#1:
A winner has been chosen!
Contest #2: Win a
cookbook!
Please take our
survey,
so that we can make the site and the newsletter as interesting as
possible!
What We've Been Up To (Our Madcap Adventures)
My apologies for the long wait since the last newsletter for those who hang on our every word! V.5 is finally here, with all the normal features.
There is so much to report, we decided to do this part on separate pages, so that you wouldn't be totally bogged down with our verbiage!
The Summer of '06:June 9-25 (On the Road, Part 1)
The Summer of '06:July 2-31 (On the Road, Part 2)
Pictures from ConMisterio
...and a bit of a rest, kind of!
Honora—Back in my Recliner
As soon as we got back from RWA conference, I started a round of doctor's appointments that culminated in a total knee replacement on August 14th. After 4 days in the hospital, I was sent home to a regimen of exercise and physio-therapy that consumed much of my time for the next 3 weeks. Among other things, I had to spend 1-2 hours 3 times a day on a CPR machine, which pumped my leg up and down, with ever more stretch and bend. I'm doing pretty well now, and can get around the house with no support, and go for walks with just a cane. And it's a good thing, too, because we drive to Madison, WI next Wednesday for Bouchercon!
Susan - News from the Garden
While we were on the road I had an industrious 14-year-old watering and weeding for me, so I came home to trees and plants that had grown up a bit, and a wonderful crop of tomatoes and green peppers, which we are still enjoying. I've had very little time to work in the garden, though, with 3 writing projects to complete, as well as helping Honora through her surgery and therapy. Now the weather has turned cold, and I expect the next big task will be leaf-raking. I'll probably be contacting my 14-year-old again...
Where We're Going...
Conventions
Check out our panels on the Convention Activities page.
Book Talks & Book Signings
And yes, we do put on our chefs' costumes for book talks!
Places
If you're local to any of these places, let us know!
And I've updated the Tour and Events page to reflect a very busy fall!
Check our Tour and Events pages to see where we're heading for the rest of the year - we will update it regularly as we figure out just where we're going to be. And if you'd like us to head to your area, let us know where you live, and what bookstores or libraries we could do a signing in, and we'll try to get there at some point. Nowhere on the continent is totally out of the realm of possibility, even though some places may be a bit hard to reach!
A Recipe from Bibi's Kitchen
We've written a cookbook!
Responding to overwhelming
pressure from our fans (both of them!)
we've put together a 48 page cookbook.
A Killer Cookbook #1: Recipes
to Accompany The Chef Who Died Sautéing
contains recipes for all the food
mentioned in the novel,
spiced with a bit of information and humor.
Cost: $12.95
This book will be out soon - sign up below to be notified when it is available.
Your Name:
Your Email:
Ariel's sister Bibi lives on a farm and grows her own vegetables. As the tomatoes and green peppers ripen, she makes her own salsa, which she freezes and uses in a variety of recipes all winter. Her chili is one of these. Bibi also really doesn’t like recipes.
“I just like to cook what I like to cook,” she says. “When I have a pot—one of those 5-quart ones—full of tomatoes over from what I need fresh, I make salsa. I fill a stock pot half full of water and bring it to a boil. I get the tomatoes ready by removing the stem end with a sharp knife and cutting a cross through the skin on the bottom. Then I put them all into the boiling water for 3-5 minutes, until the skin loosens. I take them out of the pot with a slotted spoon and place them in a large bowl, then I drain the water from the pot. Next I peel the tomatoes, discarding the skin. I cut them into small chunks, using a plate rather than a cutting board, because there is a lot of liquid now, and I don’t want to lose that. I put them all back into the pot, seeds, liquid, and all. Somewhere here I’ve chopped 3 large onions and a large green pepper and crushed 2 or 3 cloves of garlic. I cook the onions for a few minutes in butter until they’re soft, then add the garlic and green pepper, and cook it all for another couple of minutes.
“Then I add the onion-green pepper mixture to the tomatoes in the pot, throw in a bit of seasoning—but mostly I leave that until I use the salsa—and simmer it all gently for a half hour or so. Then I take it off the heat and let it cool down. I get a bunch of quart freezer bags ready, and put about 3 cups of the mixture into each bag. A trick I use to make it easy is I put the bag into a container before I ladle the salsa in. That way it doesn’t topple over while I’m doing it. Then I remove all the air and seal the bags. I lay the bags flat on a baking tray—you can stack about 3 at a time if you alternate directions—and put the tray in the freezer on a level surface. When they are frozen, I stack them in a corner of the freezer until I need one.”
Ariel's Metaphysics Corner
Part 4 - The
High Priestess
© 2006 Honora Finkelstein
Dressed in virginal blue and white, the High Priestess of the Tarot represents the purest form of the feminine polarity. In Jungian terms, she is the anima of every male’s fantasy, which is encountered only in dreams or in meditation. For both genders, she represents Intuition, an understanding of the true nature of reality that often surprises us when we’re least expecting it, such as when our rational mind is asleep and we’re able to access the subconscious symbols of dreamtime.
Looking for all the world like Mozart’s Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute or perhaps a painting of the Virgin Mary, but with a more ancient pagan goddess headdress, the High Priestess wears the horned crown that represents the phases of the moon, suggesting both that night and dreams can bring us unexpected truth and also that all things are mutable and ever changing under the moon.
Many cultures view the moon as feminine, because it reflects passively rather than shining actively. But don’t be fooled into thinking it’s less important because of this reflective nature. The moon controls the tides on earth, and the dress of the High Priestess flows down and around behind her, becoming one with the waters on the face of the deep. Again relying on Jungian symbolism, water often symbolizes the subconscious, which can only be tapped by trusting our right brains and our intuition, both of which are usually considered part of our "feminine" gifts, regardless of our gender.
The High Priestess sits in the Temple of Solomon, between two pillars marked with a B and a J. One pillar is black and one is white. Like the two halves of a Yin-Yang circle, the two pillars represent the two polarities we must face as we live our lives on earth—masculine-feminine, right-left, up-down, dark-light, pleasure-pain, etc. Solomon was supposed to have been the wisest of all earthly rulers. Coming to terms with the two polarities and recognizing in every moment the need to learn to balance between the two is a mark of true wisdom.
Behind the High Priestess is a tapestry of pomegranates and palm leaves. Together, the pomegranate and the palm may represent two other aspects of the polarities of taking on form and living a life on the physical plane. The positioning of the pomegranates we can see above and around the High Priestess suggests that if we could view the whole tapestry, we would recognize it as a Kabbalistic Tree of Life. As the Tree of Life represents all of life, so what we can access through our intuition is all knowledge—past, present, and to come.
However, in mythology it was six seeds of a pomegranate that Persephone ate when she was in the underworld that required her to spend six months of the year underground. Hence, eating the pomegranate seeds for Persephone was like Adam and Eve eating the apple in the Garden of Eden—eating is the one thing humans do that requires engagement of all five senses. We smell the food, we see its color, we touch it with our fingers and our lips and our tongue, we hear it as we bite into it, and then of course, we taste it. Hence, the pomegranate, like the apple, may represent the lure of the senses in conscious physical life.
The palm was the shade tree of the Middle East, where Tarot symbolism was born, and its gifts were many and varied, offering everything from food and medicine to building supplies. In its role as a healing emollient there is always a balance to be struck between the pleasures and pains of life. As a bringer of the balance, perhaps the palm represents the rare and varied gifts of the subconscious world of intuition.
The High Priestess wears an equal armed cross on her bosom, suggesting control over the four directions, the four cardinal points, the four corners of the earth, the four elements. In her lap is a rolled scroll, upon which we can just read the letters "TARO," further suggesting she has as part of her sacred trust access to all the wisdom of the Book of Books. Again, the symbol suggests past, present, future. And as has been pointed out by many scholars, Taro (or Tarot) is an anagram for Rota, meaning "wheel" and for Tora (or Torah), which represents the five most sacred books of the Jewish people. All Orthodox Jewish men must read passages from the Torah daily so that they have read all five books once throughout the year, starting over at the beginning of each new year. Stan Tenan, who has done some amazing research with the hidden messages in the Torah, has suggested the true purpose of this daily ritual is to bring about an "ego death" through the recitation of passages in a meditative state. Hence, it is a "wheel" of life that teaches a yoking to one’s Divine nature.
How can we ever really know the truth of life? By trusting the High Priestess and getting in touch with our own intuition.
Fan Corner
Please sign our GUESTBOOK and let us know what you think of the book, our website, this newsletter - what ever!
We're hoping more people will try out our little "survey" - so we'll run it for a few more issues. Click on the link to vote on some truly momentous issues.
Also, please feel free to chat with us regarding anything at all. We'll reply to all our email, and try to answer all your questions, share some adventures, have some fun.
Contact us
by email: authors [at] arielquigleymysteries.com
Contact us by web form:
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