March 2021 Newsletter

Life in Mexico

Our doctor has us on that anti-COVID regime where you take mega doses of Vitamins B, C, zinc and an anti-worm medicine for cats. I don’t know if it’s helping the COVID or not, but at least I’ve stopped rubbing my butt on the carpet.

Favorite Recipe; Split Roast Chicken

You can buy split roast chicken cooked in a charcoal pit virtually anywhere in Mexico. But it’s also easy to make at home in less than an hour, and it always comes out moist, tender and delicious!

Split (also called spatchcock, or butterfly), chicken is made by removing the backbone so that the whole chicken lies flat. You can do it at home if you have a good pair of meat shears, but it’s also sold pre-cut in La Comer; if you don’t see one out on the shelf, just ask the butcher to prepare one for you (butterfly translates as ‘mariposa’ in Spanish – easy to remember).

Ingredients

1 whole chicken, backbone removed.

½ cup of butter, soft

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 tsp of salt

½ tsp of black pepper

2 Tsp of parsley, chopped

Two carrots, chopped

2 potatoes, chopped

Directions

Heat the oven to 425F.

Lay the chicken skin-side up in an oven tray that has been sprayed with oil or covered with parchment paper and allow it to warm to room temperature.

Mix together the butter, garlic, salt, pepper and parsley into a paste. Place half the paste under the skin of the breast and legs, and spread the rest on top of the skin. Add in the carrots and potatoes around the chicken.

Roast uncovered for 45 minutes, then cover and allow to rest for 10 minutes before carving.

Enjoy!

TV Series Review

Firefly Lane

Streaming on Netflix

The ten-episode series follows the life of two women from their first meeting as teenagers into their forties.

Tully, played by Katherine Heigl, is the daughter of Cloud, a free-spirited hippie with a VW microbus and a penchant for drugs. Kate, played by Sarah Clarke, is growing up in a traditional family setting where her mom bakes apple pies and dad rules the roost.

Predictably, their lives shape their personalities and their relationship. Tully is driven to be the focus of attention wherever she is, while Kate tries her best to blend into the wallpaper. Each sees the other as part of what they aspire to be: loved, yet respected; independent, yet needed.

The narrative flashes back and forth between their childhoods and adulthood, where Tully has gained fame as the host of national talk show, while Kate has raised a family and now seeks to rejoin the working world.

Naturally, nothing goes to plan. Tully careens between lovers while Kate struggles with the divorce from her husband Johnny and blossoming love for single dad Travis.

The fast-paced shifting back and forth in time and space is a little confusing at first, but series creator Maggie Freeman masters the same editing technique used in the widely popular This is Us, creating a captivating narrative.

Now Available on Amazon

The latest Jack Kenyon Mystery!

Click Here to Order!

FBI AGENT JACK KENYON is squaring off against one of his most intractable foes.

Dev Patek, a renowned nuclear physicist, has been found lifeless in his backyard. All evidence points to suicide, until a letter arrives at Kenyon’s desk, to be delivered only after Patek’s untimely death.

But the dead man letter is in code, a cipher that requires the use of a mysterious manuscript to crack it. The message may reveal who killed Patek, or something far more sinister.

As Jack pursues Dev’s murder, he begins to uncover a comprehensive scheme to steal one of the world’s most valuable secrets, the blueprint to Baron Feargus Morgan’s nuclear engine.

Follow Jack from San Francisco to London as he pursues a host of spies, murderers and kidnappers who will stop at nothing to achieve their goal.

Movie Review

I Care a Lot

Streaming on Netflix

This black comedy is about an unscrupulous legal guardian who preys upon the elderly by getting them committed under her care.

The guardian, Marla, is played by Rosamund Pike, a shark dressed in designer labels. She connives with doctors and retirement-home executives to dupe an over-loaded legal system into giving her custody of elderly patients. Once under her control, she isolates them from their families and bleeds their estates dry.

Marla’s system seems foolproof until she snares an elderly widow named Jennifer (Dianne Wiest). The latter seems like the perfect victim; rich, childless and easily bossed around. What Marla doesn’t realize is that she has entrapped her worst nightmare.

The nightmare in question is Roman, a local criminal boss played in delightfully evil fashion by Peter Dinklage. Jennifer, it turns out, is in charge of laundering his ill-gotten gains, including a stash of cut diamonds. When Roman discovers Jennifer has been stripped of her freedom and stashed away, the result is a cat-and-mouse game between Roman and Marla as they spar for control.

Written and directed by J Blakeson, the real criminal in this tale is the justice system that allows wide-spread abuse of the elderly under the legal custodial system. Although recently highlighted in the news by Britney Spears’ battle to regain control of her life, scores of the young, elderly and sick find themselves in a similar predicament.

Regardless, you’ll find yourself loving to hate and hating to love I Care a Lot.