Happy Easter

 

Wishing a lovely holiday to everyone who celebrates!

Cheers,

Aspasia

Happy 2026!

 

Wishing you all a wonderful new year!

Most of 2025 was, frankly, awful. Things started to improve toward the end, though, and I'm hoping that continues. Here's to a new year and better things...

Cheers,

Aspasia

PS: Start the new year with a new book!

Love Lies Bleeding

Bleeding Heart

*Blood Magic

*Tooth & Claw

(Links take you to all available stores. Books marked * are free everywhere other than Amazon. Love Lies Bleeding and Bleeding Heart are also available in paperback.)

 

Happy Solstice!

 

Image found here.

At the darkest time of the year, the light returns. Whatever you may celebrate, I wish you light, warmth, and good company!

Cheers,

Aspasia  

PS: The holidays are a great time to do some reading. Give my books a try!

Love Lies Bleeding

Bleeding Heart

*Blood Magic

*Tooth & Claw

(Links take you to all available stores. Books marked * are free everywhere other than Amazon. Love Lies Bleeding and Bleeding Heart are also available in paperback.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

 

Photo by Autumn Mott Rodeheaver on Unsplash 

 

Autumn is my favourite time of the year: the weather, the colours, the leaves, the crispness in the air, cozy sweaters, the food, and the holidays! Halloween rules, of course, but you can't go wrong with Thanksgiving, either. We had our dinner yesterday at my sister's house. I thought I'd share a few photos of the feast (I came early and helped with the prep)...

 

The massive charcuterie board that went the entire length of the table--it was impossible not to snack! There was a variety of crackers, cheeses, deli meats, pepper strips, baby carrots, grapes, fresh figs, and dried apricots. One end had a bowl of hot pepper jelly (excellent on a cracker with brie) and the other end had a bowl of hummus, homemade by my niece. 
 

The platter in the background is full of homemade spanakopita, which is a Greek spinach-cheese pastry made with filo. Everyone agrees my sister has perfected the recipe.

This was my dinner (starting at the bottom and going clockwise): mashed potatoes; homemade cranberry sauce; green beans with almonds; roasted cauliflower; mixed greens salad with beets, apples, and goat cheese; and glazed carrots. There was also a butternut squash soup.

I meant to take more photos, like of the soup and the dessert table, but I was distracted and forgot (oops). The food was all excellent and I'm looking forward to leftovers. The company was also good, which is really what it's about. I hope all who are celebrating this weekend are having a fantastic time!

What I'm thankful for: getting to enjoy another beautiful autumn.

Are you celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend? What are you thankful for? Share in the comments...

Cheers,

Aspasia

Don't forget to follow me on my official site: AspasiaSBissas.com, and  if you're looking for your next read, I've got you covered!

 

Love Lies Bleeding

Bleeding Heart

*Blood Magic

*Tooth & Claw

(Links take you to all available stores. Books marked * are free everywhere other than Amazon. Love Lies Bleeding and Bleeding Heart are also available in paperback.)

 

Happy New Year

 

Photo by olia danilevich on Pexels.com

I don’t think it’s too much to hope for a better year in 2022, so I’m sending you all my best wishes for good things ahead!

There are a few different New Year’s traditions in my family that come from our Greek culture. The one I’ll be indulging in tomorrow is making Loukoumades, or Greek doughnuts. These were a highlight of the holidays growing up, and I thought I’d share my mom’s recipe. Enjoy!

Loukoumades (Greek Doughnuts)

This recipe makes enough for at least 6 people. Feel free to halve the amounts to make less.

Like with clouds, it can be fun to try to figure out what the different shapes remind you of

(Apologies for the lack of precise measurements– my mom was one of those cooks who just knew how to make things. Luckily the recipe doesn’t need to be too precise.)

2 highball glasses/tall drinking glasses of warm water

3 soup spoons yeast

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 soup spoons vegetable oil (or olive oil, if you want to be authentic)

2 to 3 highball glasses/tall drinking glasses all-purpose flour

Mix together water, yeast, salt, and oil in a large bowl. Add flour, mixing in thoroughly. Batter should have a similar consistency to pancake batter (not too thick nor runny). Cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and let sit until mixture has doubled in bulk.

Once the batter is ready, pour vegetable oil several inches deep into a saucepan (don’t fill the pan more than halfway). Heat oil over high heat. To test if it’s hot enough, carefully drop a small amount of batter in; if the batter floats and oil bubbles around, you’re ready to start making the loukoumades. (If the batter immediately turn brown, the oil is too hot. Turn it down and test again in a few minutes.)

Lower heat to medium-low. Carefully drop in scant tablespoons of batter (the loukoumades puff up, so you don’t want to make them too big). Don’t crowd the pan. Fry loukoumades, turning them until they are lightly golden and crispy. Remove them with a slotted spoon and place them in a bowl or large dish lined with paper towels. Continue until you’re out of batter, adding more oil to the pan, if necessary.

SYRUP

2 cups unpasteurized honey

3/4 cup to 1 cup water (depends on whether you prefer a thicker or thinner syrup)

Simmer water and honey together in a small saucepan for 3 to 4 minutes. Lower heat to minimum and keep warm.

TO SERVE:

If you prefer crispy loukoumades like I do, pour some syrup into an individual bowl, sprinkle with ground cinnamon, and dip loukoumades into the syrup as you’re eating them.

If you prefer softer/sweeter loukoumades, place them in a serving bowl. Pour the syrup over them and sprinkle with cinnamon. Eat while still warm.

You can also reheat loukoumades in the oven at 350F (175C) for about 15 minutes. Loukoumades are best eaten the same day.

How to Pronounce:

 

Wishing you a sweet 2022,

Aspasía S. Bissas

[Follow me on my official site: AspasiaSBissas.com] 

Happy Canada Day!

Photo by Brett Sayles, pexels.com

Happy Canada Day to all Canadians, no matter where they find themselves on 1 July!

Did you know that Canada Day is not our independence day? It's Canada's birthday (happy 152nd!) July 1st marks the anniversary of Confederation, or the day the first four provinces officially joined to create the Dominion of Canada.

Long weekends are also the perfect time to catch up on your reading (how else are you going to digest all that BBQ?) Take advantage of Smashword's sale and get my novel Love Lies Bleeding for half price (and Blood Magic, as always, is free). Stop by my official website and say hi too! Support Canadian indie writers and have a good day 🍁

If you want to learn more about Canada, watch this short video by a couple of resident experts:

Happy Solstice

Wishing everyone a happy Winter Solstice! Welcome the return of the light...

Image from http://www.freeimages.co.uk/

Dye! Dye! Dye! The Perils of All-natural Easter Egg Colours

When I was young I used to love dyeing eggs. Every year it would be a huge production, resulting in masses of vividly coloured springtime fertility symbols. Fast forward a couple of decades and things aren't what they used to be. Holidays aren't as big of a deal anymore, in part because there are fewer of us than there used to be. I still love dyeing eggs, although I've had to scale way back. Where my mom and I used to colour dozens of eggs, this year I had to limit myself to 18 eggs total--and I only used that many because I wanted to get a good variety of colours.

That was a mistake.

The last few years I've been experimenting with natural dyes. My theory was why use man-made chemicals when nature provides? Well, it turns out that sometimes nature kind of sucks. The colours are muddy. There's no shine. The flaws on the eggshells are emphasized. It's a lot of (stinky) work for disappointing results.

This year was extra disappointing because I'd had some high hopes for potential new colours. Besides the two natural colours I already knew worked (turmeric for yellow and red cabbage for blue), I decided to also try the supposedly proven suggestions from a blog that shall remain unnamed. I should have known that her information was crap when I saw the bright, smooth colours on her eggs--there was no way those came from natural dyes. But hindsight is 20/20 and I'm a trusting soul (why would anybody lie about their egg-dyeing methods?) who lives in hope. Based on her advice, I used spinach for green, grape juice for purple, and beets for pink. Do you see any green, purple, or pink eggs below?

The grape juice resulted in a weird blackish shade. The beets, although producing a gorgeous red liquid, tuned the eggs the colour of natural brown eggs. The spinach was so obviously useless I just ended up putting those eggs into the red cabbage liquid since I knew that would at least work. After a lot of boiling and soaking and draining and drying--and a huge mess--I ended up with 18 dull and patchy springtime fertility symbols.

The experimenting is over. Next year I'm going back to commercial dyes. I will have reds, greens, bright blues, yellows that won't have turmeric residue stuck to them. I'll be able to shine them with oil because the oil won't wipe the weak colour right off. It will be glorious and festive and might even inspire me to revive some of the other childhood traditions that have fallen by the wayside. And from now on, I'm going to be a lot more skeptical about what I read online.

From L to R for the three eggs in front: beet juice, red cabbage, turmeric

I ♥ my vintage egg dish

Toward the back, between a brownish beet egg and a blue egg, you can see the result of wasting grape juice to try to colour eggs.

[Edited to update title and for minor phrasing. Follow me on my official site: AspasiaSBissas.com]

Before the Dawn

Photo from freeimages.co.uk

 First I'd like to wish everyone a happy, healthy, and generally fantastic 2014!

Now on to the less pleasant side of life...

For those of you who know me or have been following my posts, you know we've been trying to sell our house. Well, we did it. On 20 December, with much happiness, we accepted an offer. On 21 December, Toronto was hit by an ice storm. And then we were hit by official incompetence and apathy. I won't get into details but I will say that if proper and sensible measures had been taken by those in charge, a lot of suffering across the city would have been avoided.

After several days of freezing temperatures and no heat or power in our house, and despite the SO's valiant efforts, the inevitable happened. A water pipe on the top floor of our house burst. The SO had checked on things at midnight and did what he could to warm things up. We stayed at his dad's place, since he at least had heat. When the SO returned to the house at 6 am he found our house had been destroyed.

Thankfully, no one was hurt. The cats, the SO, and I are healthy, safe, and coping. But two floors of our century home need to be completely gutted, which leaves me gutted emotionally. The top floor will also need repairs. Miraculously, damage to our belongings could have been much worse. The bookcases took the brunt of the water and nearly all the books remained dry. On the other hand, the piano my now-deceased father gave me when I was eight was right under the main gush of spewing water and most likely can't be saved. It's just stuff, but some stuff means more than others.

The insurance company has been fantastic--moving lightning fast and being so supportive. Workers were in there almost immediately drying things out and beginning demolition. They're packing and storing what wasn't affected and doing their best to salvage whatever can be saved/refinished/restored. They've also put us up in a nearby condo, so we have a place to call home in our own neighbourhood while repairs proceed. I'd also like to add that if your insurance company offers you the option of paying a little more yearly in order to restore a historic house to historic standards should something devastating happen, take it! I'm so glad we did. The original details might be gone but something just as good (or as close as possible) will be returned to us. That will make all the difference.

Our sale is now up in the air. The buyers are debating whether to cancel the whole deal or to take advantage of the mess and have the house renovated to their liking. If they cancel we'll just have to try again as soon as the house is ready. If they decide to go ahead with the sale then we need to figure out where we're going to go (the deal closes 24 January). Unfortunately, when this happened my excitement at going to Nova Scotia evaporated in a haze of panic. The thought of something like this happening while I'm alone in an unfamiliar place (the SO would be staying behind to work and tie up loose ends) horrifies me. Yet my dream of living by the ocean hasn't died. Clearly we still have a lot to figure out.

Right now life is about staying positive and hopeful while looking forward to the future, which really isn't a bad way to start off a new year.

Book Review: Handmade Gifts

Every year for Christmas/the Solstice my family and friends can count on getting a plate of homemade cookies and candy from me. I've received some great compliments over the years (the best being when my cousin told me my melomakarona--Greek syrup-soaked walnut cookies--were just like our grandmother's) but I don't think the recipients enjoy the treats nearly as much as I love making them. There's something utterly satisfying about making gifts. Taking the time and using your skills and creativity to make something is so much more meaningful than running to the store and picking up some impersonal item that, really, they could just go buy themselves.

Which is why I was more than a little enthused when DK sent me a copy of Handmade Gifts to review. Every year I vow to make more than just treats for the people on my gift list, but I never seem to manage it. Part of it is that I somehow always leave it too late (I swear time accelerates after Labour Day), but the bigger part is simply a general lack of ideas. There are only so many scarves and bath salts a person can handle, and searching through reams of craft books and magazines and blogs for projects gets pretty tiresome. But one solid book of awesome projects? I can handle that.

Handmade Gifts is divided into sections, each focusing on a different category of gifts: For the Home, Jewelry, Bags and Accessories, Pampering Gifts, For Pet Lovers, and Edible Gifts. There are also sections on Gift Wrap and Crochet Basics. The book includes templates, variations for each gift, and (one of the things I love about DK books) lots of detailed photos and clear instructions. The gifts aren't limited to Christmas, either--these are good for any occasion (even for yourself--I promise I won't tell).

As soon as I started looking through the book I knew I'd be making a lot of these projects. More often than not in craft books of the past the projects looked as though they were designed by (and for) Victorian spinsters or five year old kids. I don't know about anyone else but, much as I'd appreciate the thought and effort, I wouldn't be thrilled at being the recipient of a ruffled tissue-box cover or a plastic-canvas brooch. But in Handmade Gifts the projects look great--not only will your giftees be happy to get what you've made them, but they'll actually use it. Even better--the projects are doable. You don't need a degree in advanced soldering or obscure equipment and tools.

So what kinds of projects will you find in Handmade Gifts? Personalized journals, decorated ceramics, mosaics, really cool silver clay jewelry, knotted scarves (for you non-knitters), retro clasp-frame bags, luxury soaps, travel candles, applique pet portraits, colorful macarons (you know--those super trendy cookies that people pay ridiculous prices for), and more. The gift wrap section shows you how to make boxes and containers for your gifts, as well as printed gift wrap.

And if you're not particularly crafty but you have a friend who is? Get them the book. Maybe you'll be lucky and end up getting one of the gifts back!

[Edited to remove dead link. Follow me on my official site: AspasiaSBissas.com]

 

Happy Halloween!

And Happy Samhain too. May this night bring you many sweet treats, magic(k)al moments, and reconnection with friends, ancestors, and spirits alike...

Our only decoration this year is some bunting I made. Keeping your house ready for potential buyers at a moment's notice doesn't offer much in the way of fun, unfortunately.

 

 

 

 

  Photos ©Whimsy Bower

[Edited to add photo credit. Follow me on my official site: AspasiaSBissas.com]

Pumpkins and Spiders and Ghosts--Oh My

Preparations for the move are coming along. I have packed my last box (until the house sells anyway)! Decluttering really isn't a fun process; not only is it a lot of tiring work but "clutter" is a large part of what makes your house your own. Buyers might like to see a neutral canvas, but I definitely don't like living in one. Oh well. Everything's being moved into storage now in anticipation of cleaning, staging, and (finally) listing. Meanwhile Nova Scotia beckons tantalizingly and I have to resist the urge to run around in circles like an idiot because I'm so overwhelmed with excitement.

I've also made and listed two new buntings for my Etsy shop :) And I re-took some of the earlier photos, which I wasn't happy with. What do you think? (Click on photos to go to the listings, where you can also see more photos.)

Part of the new Pumpkins and Spiders and Ghosts (Oh My) Bunting

Moon button detail

Star Button detail on the new Poe-inspired bunting

New photos for the Bats and Spiderwebs bunting

New photos for the Pumpkins and Ghosts bunting

 Photos ©Whimsy Bower

[Edited to update info. Follow me on my official site: AspasiaSBissas.com]

Halloween Bunting

I've made another Halloween bunting, this one with a bats and spiderweb fabric. I think the larger bats have a bit of an Art Deco look to them.

The hanging loops are decorated with black cat buttons :)

Front

Back. The bunting looks good from both sides, so it can be hung anywhere.

And it's available in my shop :)

[Edited to update link. Follow me on my official site: AspasiaSBissas.com]

Happy Victoria Day!

Me via text this morning:

>There was something in the air last night.
>The moon was bright.
>Fernando?

The SO's response:

>Those were fireworks.

 

It's good to share the silliness sometimes :)

HAPPY VICTORIA DAY!

Mayo Clinic (How-to Homemade Mayonnaise and an Egg Salad Recipe]

I know it's a little late to be posting Easter egg photos (unless you celebrate Orthodox Easter) but for me Easter eggs mean egg salad, and this year that led to me making my own mayonnaise. Heady stuff, I know.

 

This was my second year experimenting with natural dyes. I got the best results with red cabbage (blue) and turmeric (yellow). I should have taken some of the blue eggs out sooner in order to get a more pastel shade but...hindsight. I had less success with onion skins (the short soak was supposed to make orange eggs but they ended up looking like regular brown eggs) and green tea. The tea eggs came out a slightly greenish brown shade, again too close to regular brown eggs. So I put them in the blue dye and ended up with a bizarre army green shade. Next year I'll try not to let Easter sneak up on me. And hopefully next year I'll also be able to find beets! The lack of red/pink eggs pains me.

 

Anyway, on to the Mayonnaise. This is one of those things I've been wanting to make for years. I kept hearing how easy it was and how it blows commercial mayo out of the water. Since I finally had the opportunity I went for it.

The ingredients that initially go into the processor are an egg, an egg yolk, flour, sugar, lemon juice, water, and vinegar.

 

After it's all blended:

 

The recipe I used takes the step of gently cooking the egg mixture (I'm assuming as an anti-salmonella measure), but as it required constant stirring I couldn't take a photo. I ended up with a slightly thickened liquid, which I placed back in the (washed) processor, along with dry mustard powder, a pinch of cayenne and kosher salt.

 

After another quick blend:

 

As I started slowly adding the oil (a bit of olive and a lot of sunflower) I was still skeptical that this watery mixture was going to turn into mayonnaise. But somehow, when all the oil was added and I took off the lid, I found this:

 

Mayonnaise! Cooking is magic...


 

Egg and Herb Salad

4 hard-cooked eggs, chopped
4 tbs mayonnaise or sour cream
1/2 tsp salt, or to taste
1/4 tsp paprika
1 tbs chopped chives or green onion
1/2 tsp dried, crumbled dill weed (or 1/2 tbs fresh, chopped)

Combine all ingredients well and chill until ready to serve between slices of buttered bread.

Serves 2

(I made the egg salad with home-grown dill and onions, as well as the mayo, and served it on homemade bread. I feel so domestic! On another note, this has a shelf life of 3 to 4 days, while commercial mayo lasts forever. What the heck do they put in that stuff?)

Photos by Whimsy Bower  

[Edited to update title and for formatting. Follow me on my official site: AspasiaSBissas.com]