Cold Weather Tea

This week’s post topic is to share a favorite Thanksgiving food or drink recipe. I decided to share a drink that I grew up with: Fruit Tea. It’s so good, and perfect for sipping on a cold night with a book in hand. 

I've been finding this fruit tea already made in my local Publix grocery store, which is amazing. My mom actually called it Russian Tea, and after she passed, we realized we didn't have her recipe. There was a Tang recipe that floated around many years ago (and still floats around) that's similar, but it isn't the way my mom made her tea. After some digging though, I found her version. This is my slightly modified recipe from AllRecipes.Com.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 3 family-sized tea bags (Black tea is best for this recipe--I like mine strong)

• 1 quart boiling water

• 1½ quarts water 

• 6 whole cloves 

• 2 - 4 cinnamon sticks (up to you)

• 1 (12 ounce) can pineapple juice 

• 1.5 cups white sugar 

• 1 teaspoon ground allspice

• 1 (6 ounce) can frozen orange juice concentrate 

• 1 (6 ounce) can frozen lemonade concentrate

Steep the tea bags in boiling water for 5 minutes, then remove. Next, combine 1 1/2 quarts water, cloves, and cinnamon together in a large pot and bring to a boil. Stir brewed tea, pineapple juice, sugar, orange juice concentrate, lemonade concentrate, and allspice into the boiling water to dissolve the sugar. This recipe is great served hot, but it's also yummy served cold. I refrigerate any leftovers (with the cinnamon sticks and cloves left in for added flavor) and drink in the mornings as well! Let me know if you give this recipe a try, and Happy Thanksgiving! ~ Charissa

Beware the Ghost of Holiday Stress

Happy Friday the Thirteenth.

It's two weeks before Christmas and I'm on one coast of the state at a specialty hospital being evaluated for handling the migraines. My father is in another hospital on the other side of the state with his heart rate through the roof and yet another heart procedure in his near future. Welcome to holiday stress.

How are you supposed to survive this nonsense anyway? If you have the ability (and this is definitely a skill) release what you cannot control. Ask for help. Accept that help. Connect with other people. Mix enjoyment into some of the moments of madness. Find a little hole in the wall restaurant that makes that thing you love. Seek out stories. Especially those that connect you to something larger than yourself.  Case in point: In the parking lot of the hotel, a huge brown tabby and white polydactyl cat greets hotel guests with head bonks and purrs. It seems the hotel helps manage a colony of feral and abandoned cats on property. When the last hurricane blew through, the hotel put the colony cats up in one of the hotel rooms to keep them safe. Did that not restore a little faith and lower your stress a tiny bit? (PS: The cat's name is Nala.)

Most of us think in terms of stress being a bad thing. But in the dark of winter when most of us in the northern hemisphere want to retreat from the cold, the gray skies, and from life itself, stress kicks us back into gear. Our blood moves faster. Stress warms us a touch. Chronic unrelieved stress is bad. That’s not the holidays, that's siege. So if your family situation feels like standing up on the barricades, it needs to be addressed. Preferably with a professional. Your well-being and peace of spirit aren't worth days of torture and anguish.

For run of the mill 'too many things on the list and not enough time' kinds of stress, ask for and accept help. Got to change that light bulb way up in the ceiling? Ask for help bringing in the ladder. Or holding the ladder. Don't let the cat talk you into letting her scale all the way to the top. She'll just show off and then bite you when you try to keep her from falling off. Ask me how I know.

Put a silly holiday show on the TV. Or a decorating show. Or a shoot-em up. Whatever is your holiday jam. Rock through that list of yours in the company of people you actively enjoy. If someone is in the kitchen making treats while you finish up the holiday card list, bonus. And don’t forget the power of exercise to keep you from murdering your nearest and dearest. Channel a little holiday spirit with a bracing walk in whichever winter wonderland you occupy.

Any Holiday Is A Good Day To Celebrate

Are there invented Holy Days in my books? Not really. But I do have a bunch of dudes who like to party at the drop of a hat.

In my urban fantasy series The Immortal Spy, the Berserkers celebrate any and all holidays throughout the year, despite having met/battled/been screwed-over by the gods, angels, and Fates behind most Holy Days. The Berserkers are long-lived human men from a variety of cultures, some of whom still believe in the essence of the faiths they once held before becoming soldiers in the Mid World Army. They'll take any excuse to laud the pockets of hope and joy throughout the multiple Mid Worlds they're sworn to protect and defend. Holidays are a good time to remind themselves that no matter how war-weary they are, they're blessed to be part of a brotherhood who fiercely cares for the whole soldier: body, mind, heart, and soul. They're not frat boys who tear up the town and fail to grok the word "no," contrary to pop culture's view of them. They're grown-ass men who've been fighting the good fight for centuries. Holidays allow them to connect with the greater communities in which they're based, so they never lose sight of what they're fighting for. These big, brawny, battle-hardened dudes give back to their neighbors and the needy through hard labor, music, arts, etc. Of course, there's plenty of food, drink, war stories....and maybe the occasional wrestling match.

Finest Holidy Cocktail: Joy

On December 15, eight panicked phone calls and two text messages told me my father had suffered a stroke and was in the hospital. Without surgery, he wouldn't survive, yet the surgeon had to wait 48 hours past the stroke before operating, or Dad would die on the operating table. Then, the day before surgery was scheduled, Dad suffered a much bigger stroke. One that brought the entire ward staff at a sprint.

At 9PM that night, they said, 'emergency surgery.' Dad's vascular surgeon raced to the hospital and shouted down that notion. We had to wait another 48 hours for the most recent stroke lesion to heal a bit. Finally, late Friday night, 12/21, Dad had his life-saving surgery.

When Mom and I went to see him in recovery, afterwards, it was very clear from his reaction that he had not expected to wake up from this one. Not ever.

On Christmas Day, ten days after the first stroke, my father walked (because the hospital couldn't find a wheelchair) out of the hospital under his own power and went home with no appreciable deficit from either stroke event.

So here's the recipe for joy:

1 part relief
2 parts gratitude
1 store bought frozen lasagna put in the oven at the parents' house because all their food went bad over the 10 day roller coaster
1 part getting to say 'I love you'

It's been a strange and miraculous season for us. No matter whether you drink alcohol, or prefer tea (call Miro Tea in Seattle and order up a few ounces of Phoenix Dan Cong), I hope your celebrations have been filled with light and love and second (or third) chances.

Santa Claus Is Coming to Town

"Santa Claus is coming to town."

"Uh huh."

"Santa Claus is coming to town."

"Don't know how it's escaped your notice, Joe, but we're on Mars. Also. Your culture. Not mine. And while technically, the planet does have a north pole . . ."

"He knows."

I rolled my eyes. "When you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good. Yes. Yes. I know the song. What the hell is wrong with you, Joe?"

I shot him a glance, but kept a firm grip on the sample isolated inside the sealed chamber where we performed soil tests in a thus far fruitless search for signs of life. That would be a hell of a Christmas present, should I suddenly take up observing a holiday outside the purview of the Buddhist philosophy I'd grown up with in rural China. Finding life. Life outside of the increasingly odd expedition leader who'd brought me this set of samples from a tunnel bored deep into the flanks of Olympus Mons.

I studied the man. His breath fogged the clear glass shielding his face. Even so, I detected perspiration beaded on his pallid forehead and upper lip. His golden brown eyes didn't quite focus upon me. I frowned and gently set my soil sample back into the stand awaiting the test tube. I wrestled free of the thick gloves that provided my access to the flat gray-brown mud. Actual mud. That meant water. Water meant the remote possibility of life. Even in the lightless depths of the last place on this dead hunk of planet that might retain traces of life-giving warmth from the cooling core. I shook away my curiosity and speculation about the sample and approached my colleague. "You okay, Joe? You don't look so good."

"Oh, you better watch out. You'd better not cry." He reached for my air hose.

Ice dripped down my spine. I started and stepped out of reach. "I'd better not cry? Joe . . ."

"What do you want for Christmas, Mai?" Another slow move, this time for my faceplate.

"That's it." I turned for the door.

He stepped in front of it, trapping me in the increasingly small lab. "What do you want for Christmas?"

I blinked, recalling my stupid wishful thinking - that it would be fun to find life on the Red Planet. I gasped, stared at him, and couldn't stop the whisper. "Life?"

He nodded and stepped closer. "You'd better not cry. You'd better not shout. I'm telling you why."

I swung around an instrument table, scooping up a scalpel. Tiny. Ineffectual. Sharp enough to put a hole in his pressurized suit if he kept trying to get my air supply away from me. "Joe! Stop it! You're sick! Running a fever. That must be the problem. We've got to get you to the infirmary. You need treatment. Who knows what a simple infection - - " I stopped mid-sentence to listen to what I'd said. "Infection. My God. Life. Infection. Is that it? I won't find life in that sample in there because somehow you breached containment. You're hosting -- whatever."

"You'd better not cry. You'd better not shout."

I reeled. 'Don't shout.' He meant don't call out for help. My heart quaked and I couldn't get my breath. How could I not? Joe might die. And if he did, my first chance to catch a glimpse of an actual Martian organism would die with him. Yet if I alerted the rest of the base, a round of antibiotics or antivirals later, and I'd have lost my chance just the same. "If I don't tell anyone," I began, "will you let me take a blood sample? I want to see."

His teeth flashed in a grin. He caught my wrist in a tight grip that set my teeth on edge. Prying the scalpel from my fingers sliced through his gloves. Blood seaped through the cuts. My breath came in short, useless bursts. I yanked against his hold. No effect. He cut my suit and me where my gloves met my pressure suit. My blood welled up. I yelped.

"Santa Clause is coming to town." He smeared pressed his bloody fingers into the cut on my wrist.

The Origin of Elves: Flash Fiction

He could hear them. Their rages. Their threats. Their tantrums and tirades. The words flowed down sewers and rattled under bridges. They clinked along chainlink fences and skittered over concrete alleys. They flew on wings of rancor and fear into the darkness where sunlight never reached.

They came to him.

Every pernicious word uttered by a child lingered in the cavern, etching the name, date, and location on cold stone walls. Every new naughty child caused a hair to grow upon his lanky body. The more caustic the brat, the darker the hair. The crueler the crime the longer his horns. Whenever the whelps drew blood his nails grew, thicker and sharper.

He danced his talons along the balustrade and surveyed the workshop below. Thousands of tormentors, bullies, and  unholy terrors labored over toys, games, and technologies they would never own. Oh how they toiled, their grimy malnourished little bodies bent and hunched. Not a word dared to be spoken, not a tune braved their misery.

Only when they'd truly repented would they be set free. He was in no rush to let them go. Good laborers took time to train. And patience. He had an abundance of one and none of the other. Plus, as the population expanded, so did the workshop. He was always shorthanded.

Lo, the holy days were finally here, when the children of the world faced the consequences of their words and deeds. Time to replenish the workforce.

He shouldered his bottomless bag and plucked a hair from his chin. The magic of the season opened a portal to the first of many new Entitled Little Vicious Evil Shits.

Elves.

Beware Krampus. 

Tonight, he is coming to town.*

*Krampusnacht was last night, 12/5. Call it literary liberty.