Home for the holidays hop buttonHi all–

Welcome to the Home for the Holidays Blog Hop! Do you KNOW what you can win? Wow!

  • A $450 GC
  • A book from EVERY one of the 75 authors participating! Including my F.A.S.T. Balls

How do you WIN this fantabulous prize? 

  • Leave a comment with your EMAIL (don’t miss this last part. Yes, i may know your email, but the grand prize deciders don’t, so you need to list it!)
  • The winners will be decided from all the comments left on all the blogs in the hop.

You can also win a prize here on my blog! Since the theme of the Hop is holiday food, i’ll HeartsandFlour_ByTaraLain_453x680give away the winner’s choice of my books with a food theme. For MM lovers, there is Hearts and Flour. For MMF lovers, you can win Genetic Celebrity! (If you have both of those, we’ll work something out.)

To enter to win my prize — please do one of the following:

  • Sign up for my email newsletter (see the signup on this page)
  • Like my FB Page
  • Like my Amazon Page

We’re supposed to share our favorite holiday recipe. This is funny, since my idea of a good meal is going out to dinner!  LOL. Or conversely, having some raw veggies, a piece of cheese, and some nuts. I’m so not a foodie. I love making scrambled eggs with feta cheese and chopped Roma tomatoes. Actually, i love eggs in all their manifestations — poached, boiled, fried, omelets, and, above all, scrambled.

sugarcookiesBut, in the spirit of the holidays, i will share a recipe i love to EAT. I don’t love baked goods as a general rule. I’m an ice cream girl. But i do love crispy cookies. My grandmother used to make the thin, crunchy sugar cookies at the holidays, so here is a recipe i got from Taste of Home in case you want to indulge.

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

5 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup 2% milk

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with milk. Cover and refrigerate for 15-30 minutes or until easy to handle.
  2. On a floured surface, roll out dough to 1/8-in. thickness. Cut out cookies into desired shapes. Place 2 in. apart on greased baking sheets.
  3. Bake at 350° for 10 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Remove from pans to wire racks to cool completely. Yield: 8 dozen.

**********

TL_GeneticCelebrity_coverinAnd also on the topic of YUM, here’s a scene from my MMF menage, Genetic Celebrity. This is a foodie scene. The book gets much hotter — with food!  LOL Enjoy!

Excerpt: Genetic Celebrity by Tara Lain; MMF Menage with Food!

Available at   Amazon and all other retailers

 Tommy Riley loves cooking and the simple life. But his passion for Angie “Booky” Edelson is anything but simple. Beautiful, ambitious, hard-driving and 10 years older than Tommy, Booky represents all the things Tommy has tried to leave behind. Besides, she only seems to love him for his food! Then Tommy’s boss brings home Shay Shaleen, a pierced, tattooed, androgynous street kid for Booky to turn into a top male model. Tommy sizzles for the beautiful guy but Shay gets caught up in the flattery of a famous fashion designer. Why does Tommy have to fall for two people who can’t love him back? Is there a recipe for blending with these genetic celebrities?

“Oh God, Tommy. Oh God. Oh God. Yes, yes! Mmmmmmmm.”

Tommy grinned. “That good?”

“Oh God, yes!” Her mouth opened wider and stretched…around his wooden spoon. Her pretty red lips pursed just a bit, and he caught a glimpse of the tip of her tongue. Was he a pervert for wishing those lips were stretched around other parts of him? Hell, the age difference wasn’t that great. Ten years. Big deal. Roan, his boss, was thirteen years younger than his wife, Em.

Booky collapsed against the granite counter, clutching her chest. “I think you make this even better than Roan, darling. And I don’t say that easily.”

He rinsed the spoon in the stainless steel sink. “So stay and have some with me. Roan’s supposed to come later.”

“Do I dare? That will be the third time this month I’ve missed Mama’s family dinner. She’ll kill me and ask questions later.”

He fished into the steaming pan and grabbed a sliver of chicken. Okay, try to resist. Slowly he walked toward her, step by step, waving the piece of meat in his fingers. “Chicken cacciatooooooore. Peppers, onions, tomatoes. Mmmmmmm.”

She squeezed against the counter, fending him off. “Tommy ‘Tick Tock’ Riley. You’re a home wrecker.”

“Capers.”

She pressed her arm against her forehead. Booky did drama like nobody else. “Oh God, I love capers.”

Lots of capers.” He stood in front of her. They were practically eye to eye. It would be nice to tower over her, flex his big alpha-male muscles and watch her swoon. Too bad it wasn’t gonna happen in this life. Five feet eight and his cooking were all he had, so he’d better use them. He wafted the morsel under her nose. “Smelllll the goodness.”

She followed the movement with her nose like a hypnotized cobra. “Oh, poor Mama.” Snap. She grabbed the chicken in her teeth and chewed. Eyes closed, moaning. Hell, he’d like to elicit that reaction with other pleasures.

The big brown eyes opened. “She’s going to forget what I look like. I’m such a bad daughter.” Dramatic pause. “I’ll call her and say I’m eating with you tonight. Again!”

Still chewing, she walked around the island counter that separated the kitchen from the huge open space of the loft. She grabbed her purse from the sectional couch and fished out a phone. He got a wink as she dialed.

It wasn’t likely anyone would ever forget what Booky Edelson looked like. Her gleaming black hair fell to her shoulders like a curtain of ebony, and the liquid brown eyes peered out from under straight bangs. Bold features, they called them. A long straight nose and full lips. She was slim but curvy with generous breasts and a round butt. Yeah, if you saw her, you never forgot her. And the in-your-face appearance matched a personality just as big.

Why did he adore her? She was everything he said he was tired of and didn’t want to be. Aggressive, ambitious, pushy. Just like his parents. Plus, even though he’d always liked women too, he’d pretty much been with men since he was sixteen. His family really hated that. He sighed. It didn’t matter anyway because she only loved him for his food.

“Hi, Mama.” She listened for a minute. “Yeah, that’s why I’m calling. I’m at Roan’s, and, uh, he has some things for me to do.”

She looked up at him. “Yes, Tick Tock is here.”

She didn’t say anything for seconds, but she looked like she was trying to get a word in. Mouth open, closed. Open.

“Yes, he’s cooking dinner but…”

She shifted and actually seemed to cringe. Booky cringing? Her mama was a force.

“Mama, I have to work.” She listened. He could hear her mother’s voice squawking out of the cell phone. “I’ll see you next week. Bye, Mama.”

She clicked off. “See what you did?” She adopted her best Jewish-mother voice and struck a pose. “So what would a daughter of mine want to be eating with her ‘just friend’ instead of coming home for dinner where she might get herself a makher for a boyfriend?”

Tommy laughed. “What’s that mean? It sounds dangerous.”

“It kind of is, but it means a person who makes things happen. A mover and shaker. Mama has this doctor she’s been trying to fix me up with for weeks. I keep escaping. She’s pissed.” She bounded around the island. “Okay, I’ll make the salad.”

“Hey, I don’t want her to be mad at me. If I ever get to meet her, I don’t want her to kill me too.”

She rinsed the lettuce and stuck it in the lettuce dryer. “Mama doesn’t mind me hanging with you. She just wants me spending more time with a good Jewish doctor with marriage on his mind.”

A doctor who was thirty-seven instead of twenty-five. A mover and shaker. Just like everyone always wanted him to be. Shit. “Why are you resisting? Don’t you want to get married?”

She stopped ripping lettuce and cocked her head. “I’ve been married.” She shrugged. “You know, I kind of think I want something I’ve never had. Something not written down in Mama’s book of marriage.” She grinned at him. “That’s weird, isn’t it?”

He stashed some plates in the warmer. “No, actually. It makes perfect sense. Just like I’ve always wanted something my family didn’t have written down in their book of success.”

***********************************

Most important, be sure to leave a comment WITH YOUR EMAIL to be eligible to win the grand prizes and my prize. Every blog you enter is another entry in the grand prize drawing. So here is the link to find all the participating blogs and sponsors!

http://www.theromancetroupe.com/p/home-for-holidays-blog-hop.html

Hop ON!!!