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HALLIE EPHRON: Seems like I spend a fair amount of time grazing among the various streaming offerings, and occasionally striking gold. Britbox is my favored pasture, and I have just started watching an absolutely fantastic series: RIOT WOMEN.
It "ticks all the boxes": great cast, fantastic acting, and most of all fabulous (funny, wry, believable, ...) writing. And it's been green-lighted for a second season.
No surprise that it comes from the pen of Sally Wainwright.
She's an amazingly prolific English TV writer, producer, and director. She is known for her dramas set in West Yorkshire, such as LAST TANGO IN HALIFAX and HAPPY VALLEY.
She's also the creative behind my all-time favorite British police procedural SCOTT AND BAILEY.
And now three cheers for RIOT WOMEN. It's about five iron-willed women of a certain age, each some version of damaged goods, who come together and form a rock band. A PUNK-rock band! Singing their own material that channels their anger and creativity and can bring tears to my eyes.
Profound stuff when you wipe away the tears of laughter.
It gets off to a roaring start with a failed suicide attempt (life intervenes)... It swings from tense to hysterically funny to insightful to profoundly sad. Always affirming life and hope and sisterhood.
As one of the women (Beth) says of their band: "We sing songs about being middle-aged and menopausal and more or less invisible."
Let's just say that it had me standing up and cheering at my television screen.
Anyone else out there watching RIOT WOMEN? My one advice is: when it seems to be going dark dark dark, hang in there with it.
What else is atop your watch list at the moment?
HALLIE EPHRON: Where do you come from, and how much of that place still beckons? Whose genes did you inherit?
These are fundamental questions that we mystery writers ask of our characters, and often of ourselves.
We travel to the places where our mysteries take place, all in an effort to get the details right. But traveling to the places that shaped our own ancestors or our characters' pasts is a special challenge.
Introducing Kathy Chung who makes that challenge a lot easier and so much more fun.
For two decades Kathy has been conference coordinator for the annual Surrey International Writers Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. It's a fabulous several-day event (regularly featuring luminaries Diana Gabaldon, (until recently) Anne Perry and Donald Maas, just for example.)
Each year I so look forward to being welcomed to the conference by Kathy. She's lovely, competent, able to put out twelve competing fires at the same time.
What I didn't know is that Kathy is also a qualified genealogist specializing in Scotland, North America, and the rest of the United Kingdom. Today she's branching out, applying her organization and genealogical talents to a new venture that has me wishing I had ancestors from Scotland...
KATHY CHUNG: All the work I love best is some combination of puzzles, stories, and connection: researching and writing novels, genealogy, and planning conference and events to bring people together to learn, explore, and connect.
My own roots are Scottish, and I've been lucky enough to make several research trips to Scotland and to study family and local history at the University of Dundee. I've combined my love of bringing people together in a supportive environment to learn - and my years of experience planning the Surrey International Writers' Conference - with my love of genealogy and research in what to me is a dream job: offering supportive small-group research trips to Edinburgh.
At the end of 2025, I launched my new business, https://scottishgenealogy.ca, to offer small groups of amateur family historians from North America who have Scottish roots week-long research trips in Edinburgh. The first one is coming up in June.
The first trip is coming up June 13-20, 2026.
Explore your roots in the country of your ancestors or research your Scottish novel setting while getting a feel for the sights, sounds, and culture of Scotland. Connect with other people who love disappearing down research rabbit holes. I hope you'll join me!
HALLIE: This sounds so great and has me wishing my genealogical past wasn't rooted in Russian shtetls.
And asking: Are you interested in chasing down your own genealogical past and visiting the place(s) that are implanted in your DNA? If you could travel to discover your ancestors, where would you go (time? place?) and what would you want to know?
HALLIE EPHRON: I'm sure I'm not the only one who frequently needs a quick bite -- not a meal but SOMETHING to keep my energy up until I have time (and the inclination) for the next meal.
Granola bars, of course, fit that niche. But have you had any lately? My experience is that they either taste like sawdust or a block of sugar. On top of that, they're pricey.
So I was thrilled when The New York Times ran a recipe for "energy bars" -- chopped nuts and dried fruit, glued together with some flour and egg, seasoned with cinnamon and salt. Baked, cooled, and cut into bars. VOILA!
I made my own version with nuts I had the fridge. Almonds, pine nuts, walnuts, and pistachios. But it would have been fine with pecans and unsweetened coconut or whatever other nut-like substances you like and have on hand.
All I had in the dried fruit department was raisins, but now I'll stock up on some dried apricots and dates and cranberries to give it more zest next time out.
I wouldn't swap out the maple syrup, and it needed all that sweetness. And surprisingly the small amount of salt is a lovely touch.
So here's my version of "energy bars." Very nutty. Not too sweet. And helped me use up last bits of nuts I had hanging around in the fridge. Making it extremely economical.
INGREDIENTS
Oil
2 eggs
4 T maple syrup
1/2 tsp of kosher salt plus a bit more
4 T flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 cups nuts - use whatever combination you love or happen to have on hand
1 1/2 cups of dried fruit (apricot, dates, raisins, cranberries, whatever you like or happen to have)
PREP
1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Prep the pan: Lightly oil the bottom and sides of an 8x8 metal baking pan; line the pan with parchment (or foil); lightly oil the surface of the liner
3. Coarsely chop the nuts and dried fruit (raisins and cranberries don't need chopping)
4. Whisk the egg and maple syrup and salt in a large bowl until smooth.
5. Add flour and cinnamon. Whisk til smooth.
6. Add nuts and dried fruit. Mix.
7. Spread the mixture in the pan
8. Bake about 30 minutes or until it's nicely brown and firm to the touch. Sprinkle with a little kosher salt.
9. Cool completely IN THE PAN on a rack.
10. Slide out the slab and cut into bars.
I stored mine in zip-lock bags, but a tin or any airtight container will do.
Put it where you can GRAB AND GO.
So what's your go-to for a speedy (non-cooking) breakfast and mid-afternoon snack? Maybe there are some decent tasting, ready-made, affordable "energy bars" that I haven't yet discovered.
