Cooking with the Wenches: Holly Trent's Meatroll.

Fellow wench, Holly Trent, shares her Tex-Mex Meatloaf. Yum! Take it away, Holly.

This meatloaf spin-off has ground up tortilla chips. Its airier texture is due to rolling the meat rather than patting it into shape. This dish is a perfect substitution for pickier eaters, and the cheese in the middle adds a little something for the kiddos.


Holley’s Tex-Mex Meatroll

2 lbs. lean ground beef
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. mustard powder
½ tsp. cayenne pepper
½ tsp. ground black pepper
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (can substitute Pepper Jack)
3 cups crushed corn tortilla chips
¼ cup mild salsa

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Mix meat, egg, and seasoning in a bowl. On waxed or parchment paper, pat the meat mixture into a rectangle as wide as your loaf pan or slightly less wide than the width of your paper if you're baking on a cookie sheet.

Cover the surface of the beef with the tortilla chips. Just eyeball it. You don't need to use the full three cups - just make sure you have good coverage. Spread the cheese over the top. Pretend you're building a pizza.

Take one end of the paper and roll the meat as if it were sushi, but don’t catch the paper in the roll. Gently tease the roll to the end and carefully transfer to a greased pan. Pat the ends so they're rounded and the ingredients inside don’t fall out.

Brush the top of the loaf with salsa. Water it down a bit if doing so makes it easier to spread. Cover with foil. Mold it against the roll a bit to provide structure to the meat holds its shape as it cooks.

About 45 minutes in—when the roll has firmed but not completely cooked—remove foil. Apply another brushing of salsa.

Bake until a thermometer reads 160°F. Let the meatroll rest for at least ten minutes before cutting.

While your dinner is baking, check out Holly's fun FREE READ Boughs of Halle only at Musa Publishing and recapture the joy of Christmas.

Ex-hipster Erin Posey is too cool for Christmas. But, when her mother announces she’s driving up to North Carolina to visit her prodigal daughter, Erin engages in a last-minute scramble to deck the halls of her bungalow.

In a night rife with frustrations, a tree salesman named Halle takes pity on the frazzled school photographer and helps her get into the holiday spirit. When the tree’s twinkle lights turn on, the magic Erin feels doesn’t have a thing to do with the joyous season. She knows she needs to mend her strained relationship with her mother, so once all the tinsel has gone on, she sends Halle on his way.

The handsome stranger has got quirky Erin pegged better than anyone she’s ever met. She wants him to return, but is her charm like mistletoe? Does the magic exist only when she’s up close, or will thoughts of her be enough to draw Halle back for a New Year’s kiss, too?

To claim your free copy of Boughs of Halle please click HERE.

Nancy here again. I really enjoyed Boughs of Halle. It's one of those stories that makes you believe in hope when life seems determined to make you miserable.

Holley Trent is the author of Executive Decision, Mrs. Roth’s Merry Christmas, and Her Resident Jester – all available now from Musa Publishing's Calliope Romance Line.

To see all of Holley Musa Publishing books, please click HERE.

Learn more about Holley Trent on her blog and follow her on Twitter.

Holley Trent's Low-Fuss Summer Salad

from Holley Trent

Happy summer, everyone! This easy cold salad is great for potlucks and outdoor parties, and travels well. Combine everything except the dressing the night before to save time the day of your event.

Holley’s Low-fuss Summer Salad

2 cup pearled barley, cooked tender but not mushy
2 small tomatoes, diced
1 large cucumber, diced
2 green onions—whites and greens—sliced thin
¼ cup lemon juice
¼ cup olive oil
1/8 tsp. cumin
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tbsp. water

Drain cooked barley and allow to cool.

Toss barley with tomatoes, cucumbers, and green onions. If serving the next day, cover and refrigerate.

Half an hour before serving, mix lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, and cumin with water in a small jar with lid. Shake well. Pour over salad and mix gently.

Serve salad at room temperature.
Easily serves 8.

*Mix extra dressing if you like a less dry salad.
**Salad can be easily doubled or tripled.

Here's a brief intro of my latest release for your reading pleasure.

The psychic didn't go looking for love, but she should have seen it coming.

Marcia Andrews is a freelance psychic consultant. Sick of living hand to mouth, she accepts a contract with Raleigh Police. A new gang called The Cardinals is terrorizing The Triangle, and Marcia gives the department an edge in tracking them.

Help that she is, one cop isn’t so keen on her involvement, and makes sure she knows it. Detective Nat McCoy would rather see Marcia in his bedroom than the bullpen. The gorgeous Scotsman isn’t the typical chauvinist pig, though. He’s keeping a secret that even the psychic doesn’t anticipate.

A close encounter with a Cardinal’s bullet knocks Marcia off her game when the police need her most. She loses hours to trances and ghosts haunt her sleep. She can hardly function, and everything she thought she knew about playboy McCoy suddenly seems questionable.

McCoy thinks he knows the cure for what ails her—him. But can she trust him?

Love by Premonition is available for purchase now at the Musa store and also at third-party vendors such as Amazon.com and All Romance eBooks.

If you’d like to stay up to date on my progress with its spin-off, visit me on my blog or follow me on Twitter. Holley Trent is the author of Executive Decision, Mrs. Roth’s Merry Christmas, and Her Resident Jester – all available now from Musa Publishing's Calliope Romance Line. To see all of Holley Trent's Musa Publishing books, please click HERE.

Pen Names with Guest Holley Trent

Today we're visiting with Holley Trent, a fellow Musa writer. Holley blogs at http://holleytrent.com, and she's talking about a bit of craft and marketing.

***

Thanks to Nancy for letting me visit, and for the opportunity for a bit of confessing.

“Holley Trent” seems like a perfectly typical name, right?

You can’t tell much from it, though, but you probably assume I’m female (I’ve never met a man named “Holly” or “Holli” or “Hollie” or whatever permutations folks are daydreaming up nowadays).

True. I’m a girl. If you guessed that, you get a gold star (it’s scratch-and-sniff and smells like winning).

“Holley Trent” is my nom de plume. I use a pen name for a few reasons, the first of which is that I spent about ten years doing web writing. I don’t even want to know what kind of hits come up if I were to Google myself right now. What I do know is that I don’t want my romance readers
to search for my name and find some article I wrote five years ago about lace-front wigs or treatments for foot fungus. That’s not sexy.

Second, my real name is really girly and young-sounding. It’s one of those names in which there are NO sixty-year-olds alive who have it. It’s actually a pretty damn good name for a romance writer now that I think about it, but that’s about where the stereotyping ends. I’m neither as chipper as my name sounds nor as cute. My first name is something a lavender unicorn
should have. I fit more surely into the “sturdy workhorse” classification (however, if you’d like to brush my mane I won’t stop you).

Third, I’m a bad, bad girl. Some of my stories have naughty bits, and I know folks back home Google my name every now and then to see what I’m up to. How do I know? Because they find me on Facebook and then tell me everything about me they have no reason to know. Eventually, someone in the know will slip up and other people will find out that Holley Trent = Sturdy Workhorse. I’d like some time to tighten up my Facebook privacy settings before that happens (which seems to require a manual the size of a Manhattan phone book to accomplish).

Last, I have plans to write in other genres. My urban fantasy stories will probably go under my Holley Trent name, but the young adult ones will need to be separated. I don’t want some poor kid to get confused and stumble into some literary raunch.

And if you’re wondering, “Holley” is spelled that way for a reason. If you ever meet me in person, I’ll tell you why. In the meantime, you can practice spelling it by staring at the cover my debut Musa Publishing release Executive Decision. (That was a shameless plug in case you’re
wondering.)

Executive Decision. . .

Headhunting has never been so fun!

Secretary Ellen works in a headhunting office that handles most of its business by phone. When one job candidate, a marine engineer named Christian, drives to Edenton to assess the firm’s legitimacy, he recognizes Ellen from something she thought was well in her past. When the sexual magnetism between Ellen and Christian boils over on the waterfront, their tryst leaves them both feeling unsatisfied.

Christian sees Ellen as the mermaid of his fantasies and wants to build on their chance encounter, but does Ellen want to be caught in his net or will she swim off to get her satisfaction elsewhere?

Find it at Executive Decision at Musa Publishing.

http://musapublishing.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=4&products_id=284
or at other fine eRetailers. Find *me* at http://holleytrent.com/blog .