Discontinued Lipstick? Ellen Byron is on the Case!

INGRID THOFT
Today's guest is a renaissance woman of writing.  Ellen Byron wrote for TV, including "Wings" and "Just Shoot Me," has written plays and writing how-to books, and more recently, is the author of the award-winning Cajun Country Mystery series.  She also worked for Martha Stewart in a non-writing capacity!  Is there anything she can't do?  Yes, apparently, there is at least one thing that is stymieing Ellen at the moment.  I'll let her give you the scoop.


ELLEN BYRON: It’s super frustrating when your favorite lipstick color is discontinued. I’ve spent the last year on a fruitless quest to replace a shade Nars stopped making. (Curse you, Nars!) With the launch of my fourth Cajun Country Mystery, MARDI GRAS MURDER and a slate of personal appearances coming up, that quest became urgent.

I recently sold a second mystery series that revolves around a catering hall. My friend Kristen runs Pickwick Gardens, a popular Burbank party venue, so I paid her a visit to do some research. In the middle of asking questions, I noticed her lipstick—and couldn’t take my eyes off it. I finally blurted out, “I love your lipstick. What color is it?” Kristen responded, “It’s called Khlo$ - K-h-l-o-dollar sign.” She paused. “It’s from Kylie Cosmetics.”

I gasped in horror. No exaggeration, I really did. I’m not a fan of reality TV in general and that Kardashian clan, with their first-world problems, body enhancements, and vocal fry  really works my last nerve. Still, there was that lipstick.

When I got home, I fought a losing battle not to check out Kylie’s cosmetic website. “I’m just looking, I’ll never ever buy anything,” I told myself as I typed the address into my search engine. Seconds later, there was Kylie in all her surgically enhanced glory, looking right into my eyes with a Mona Lisa smile, beckoning me to click on “Lips.” Which I did. And let me tell you, whoever designed that website deserves the lion’s share of the gazillions twenty-one-year-old Kylie is raking in. It’s informative, simple, and seductive. 

Did I shop? Oh, I shopped, spending sixty-three bucks on two lipsticks and a Lip Kit. (It comes with a matching lip liner!) I wasn’t proud of myself. I would have been less embarrassed buying dinosaur porn. (Yes, that’s actually a thing. And now half of you will go look it up.)

I became obsessed with the website. I kept clicking on all the pretty pictures. I even watched a ten-minute video of Kylie putting on makeup, which was weirdly mesmerizing. She’s like an American geisha or something, which I hope isn’t insulting to geishas. Or America.
Okay, now to answer the billion-dollar question—because Kylie is like, the world’s youngest billionaire, thanks to people like me spending sixty-three dollars on three lipsticks –how’s her product?

It arrived in an unmarked box. (Which I assume would also be true of dinosaur porn.) And it arrived fast. I ordered on Thursday and had it by Saturday. The box sprang to life when you opened it, with a personal greeting from the gal herself. As to the lipsticks, on a scale of pouty lips, five being the highest, I grudgingly give Kylie three and a half—okay, maybe even four—pouty lips. 

She runs a crack operation, for sure. I loved the texture of the lipstick. The liquid matte lipsticks are so long-lasting I still had the sample swatch on the inside of my arm three days after applying it. (Which is kind of scary, to be honest. It’s more like lip glue than stick). None of the colors replaces the discontinued Nars, although that’s more my problem than Kylie’s. But there are no refunds or exchanges, and that’s a drag.

I’m giving the Khlo$ lipstick to Kristen because it looks better on her than me, and I sent the Nova to my daughter for the same reason. I’ll find a way to put the Ginger Lip Kit to use. But there’s still one question that needs to be answered. I bought Kylie’s lipstick - three of them to be exact. Now how do I get Kylie to buy a copy of MARDI GRAS MURDER?

This post is so timely!  Did you see the news this week that there's a shortage of TAB soda?  What product have you fallen in love with, only to have it disappear?  One lucky reader (in the U.S. only) will get a copy of MARDI GRAS MURDER!

Joan Emerson, you've won a copy of Michael Wiley's MONUMENT ROAD.  Please send your mailing address to ingrid@ingridthoft.com.

MARDI GRAS MURDER
It’s Mardi Gras season on the bayou, which means parades, pageantry, and gumbo galore. But when a flood upends life in the tiny town of Pelican, Louisiana―and deposits a body of a stranger behind the Crozat Plantation B&B―the celebration takes a decidedly dark turn. The citizens of Pelican are ready to Laissez les bon temps rouler―but there’s beaucoup bad blood on hand this Mardi Gras. 

USA Today bestselling author Ellen Byron is a television writer, playwright, and freelance journalist. Her TV credits include Wings, Still Standing, and Just Shoot Me, and her written work has appeared in Glamour, Redbook, and Seventeen, among others. She lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband, their daughter, and the family’s very spoiled rescue dog. A native New Yorker, Ellen still misses her hometown and still drives like a New York Cabbie. This is her third Cajun Country mystery.

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING:  I know, dear readers - it's unusual for us to have two chats back-to-back! But today is Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Carnival, Pancake Day, Shrove Tuesday, and I really wanted everyone to have a chance to share their memories of celebration.
Like Hallowe'en, Mardi Gras is a festival that's been pretty thoroughly separated from its religious origins.  In medieval Europe, it was a time to be shriven (go to confession, which for many was a once-a-year thing) and then to enjoy all the foods that would be forbidden during the coming forty days of Lent: meat, eggs and dairy products. People then and now, however, rarely turn down the chance to get their party on, so Shrove Tuesday expanded from a day, to a week, to a month in some spots, with activities from the always-popular pancake eating to parades to blackout drinking. Its popularity has only increased in the past few decades, becoming, like Halloween, an excuse for a raucous adult fling.
My most, shall we say, celebratory Mardi Gras were in Washington, DC, where I went to grad school and had my first adult job. DC, land of universities, internships, and glamourous low-paying government positions, has an enormous number of young, single adults, and any holiday that can be celebrated with Jello shots inevitably leads to teeming masses filling the streets of Georgetown. One year, I recall a great deal of singing and dancing followed by a trip beneath a flaming limbo pole set up (utterly illegally, I'm sure) in the back garden of someone's group house. In my memory, I limbo'd beneath it with great agility; I suspect in reality it was more of a stagger and crawl before getting poured into a taxi in the wee hours of the morning.
Nowadays, it's all about the pancakes, as my church has a pancake supper followed by a Dixieland Jazz performance every Shrove Tuesday. We have a nice time chatting, it raises money for the youth group, and we're all home abed by nine. Sigh. I never made it to the most famous celebration in the US, New Orleans' Mardi Gras, and I fear that time has passed. The thought of spending vacation time being kept awake by noisy drunk twenty-somethings has lost its appeal.

How about you, Reds? Do you have any memories, bacchanalian or benign, of Mardi Gras?
SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: I have to admit the holiday was only something on the periphery of life until a few years ago, when we discovered the Hubby's father's side of the family is Creole and from New Orleans. So, now in our house it's all great music, great food—crab ettoufée, sazeracs, and King cake—and some second line dancing after dinner with the newly found cousins. Good times! And it must end at midnight _exactly_.
RHYS BOWEN: When I was growing up we always had pancakes on what was called Pancake Day in England. Thin crepes cooked in butter, drizzled with lemon and sprinkled with sugar. Fabulous. It was the only time in the year we had pancakes. For some reason my mother thought it was not right to make them any other time. When I moved to the US and found I could have crepes every Sunday for breakfast--Freedom!!

But I've always wanted to go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Maybe some year I'll get around to it.

HALLIE EPHRON: I hate crowds and I hate drunks. I could get into the food and the beads, I suppose.
LUCY BURDETTE: Tee hee, Hallie, you make me chuckle. I think we would all enjoy the party that Susan is having! The food sounds wonderful. I did go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans one year when I was in graduate school. We borrowed the department's research Winnebago and drove over from Gainesville. (Or was it just a psychology conference but it felt like Mardi Gras?) Anyway, we had a blast. Though there was an incident involving the sheering off of the window on the roof of the RV. I don't believe they loaned it out to graduate students after that...
DEBORAH CROMBIE: I have absolutely no Mardi Gras cred. None. I have been to New Orleans, but not since I was a teenager with parents. No partying... I've had pancake suppers on Shrove Tuesday, but it's not a tradition for us.  Does having seen The Big Easy count?

(I want to have Susan's party!)

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Coming to Susan's! But going to New Orleans for Mardi Gras...yeesh. I love coffee and beignets--can we go with that?

JULIA: Clearly, the Reds need to make a non-Mardi Gras trip either to Susan's or to New Orleans to enjoy the fabulous food sans college students. But for the part day itself...Carnival in Rio, anyone?

How about you, dear readers? What are your Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras experiences? Tell us all, and laissez les bon temps rouler!

Pancakes Make People Happy!

ROSEMARY HARRIS: Back in the 80's there was a restaurant in NYC called Pancakes Make People Happy.
In celebration of National Pancake Day (yes, there is a national day for everything) we're going to put aside nutritional and caloric concerns and indulge ourselves today!
I'd probably denied myself for years before a visit to one of my favorite restaurants changed everything. Some of you may know that The Lakeside Diner in Stamford, CT gets my vote for one of the top ten places to eat in Fairfield County.  (It's also the inspiration for the Paradise Diner in the Dirty Business books.)

The owner, Jane, and Lizandra and the other waitresses have welcomed me and we've all been featured numerous times in local papers about Mysterious Doings in our town. It's all great fun and I've even had a few Coffee and Crime events there. But I feared I was disappointing them with a steady diet of two eggs, scrambled well, sliced tomatoes instead of potatoes. Where's the fun in that? Hubby is chowing down on the Lakeside Special (a little bit of just about every breakfast food) AND a donut and I'm left wondering what's wrong with this picture?

One day a diner at a nearby table ordered something that made my standard meal seem as appealing as a bowl of cold gruel -- Jane's Red, White and Blue Pancakes. Frisbee-sized  pancakes covered with a mountain of sliced strawberries and blueberries and topped with a dusting of powdered sugar. Whipped cream optional. It was enough to make me want to fling my eggs into the lake.

HALLIE EPHRON: Ah, breakfast, one of my favorite topics.
For me it's waffles, not pancakes. And they've got to be homemade (Bisquick), hot off the griddle, really crisp, with unsalted butter and real maple syrup. It doesn't get much better than that.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Um. I love breakfast, too, but I don't like pancakes. I think they're gluey and taste like paste. The THEORY of pancakes is good, and the theory of waffles, too. But I'm not...drawn to them.  Scrambled eggs with cheese and bacon? Yes, ma'am, yummeroo. Or just the bacon. I LOVE BACON. Just saying.
I also make gallettes--which is oat bran, eggwhites and lemon yogurt, fried like a pancake. DELISH, topped with lemon yogurt and raspberries.

RHYS BOWEN: Ah yes, pancake day. We celebrate it in Britain. Growing up my mom would make pancakes every Shrove Tuesday (or Mardi Gras as it's known most places. It was supposedly to use up the sinful things you couldn't eat in Lent)
Now my husband has become famous for Bapa's crepes in our family. He makes them whenever the grandkids stay over. Thin, thin crepes made with lots of butter. I often stuff them with strawberries then drizzle with maple syrup and a dob of whipped cream. Heaven. And Hank, I love bacon too. We treat ourselves every Sunday to a full English breakfast,but not the fried bread--that's bread fried in the bacon fat--too much cholesterol suicide!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Ross is the Pancake King in our house, and, especially in the summer, we often have a veritable pancake buffet: chocolate chip, strawberry, blueberry or plain. I like mine Maine style: blueberry with real maple syrup. Best Maine breakfasts I've ever had are at Jordan's Restaurant in Bar Harbor. Everything you can imagine in Wild Maine Blueberry and portions big enough -- well, big enough to satisfy teenagers. http://www.jordanswildblueberry.com
Rhys, my church is doing a Shrove Tuesday pancake supper next week. That, and our every-other-month pancake breakfasts, are fundraisers for the youth group. We always get a big turnout, which leads me to suspect that most people LIKE pancakes; they're just intimidated about cooking them at home.

LUCY BURDETTE: If I'm going to order pancakes, I like them to be buckwheat blueberry with real maple syrup. But my sister makes a wonderful pancake with cottage cheese and nuts, topped with plain yogurt and maple syrup. It tastes much better than it might sound. In fact I'm going to make some for dinner this week:). thanks for the idea Ro!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I love waffles and pancakes. For the waffles I usually use Arrowhead Mills Multi-grain Pancake Mix, but pancakes I make from scratch, with whole wheat flour and buttermilk (recipe from my old Laurel's Kitchen book.) I don't like white-flour pancakes; I agree with Hank that they taste like glue. In the summer I put fresh blueberries in my pancakes (Rick doesn't like them. I ask you, how can anyone NOT like blueberry pancakes?) and I use unsalted butter and real maple syrup.

But our most frequent Sunday breakfast is French toast. It's a great way to use up the week's leftover whole wheat or multi-grain bread, and I use a recipe I found in Gourmet about thirty years ago. The original recipe called for eggs mixed with equal proportions cream and orange juice. I use milk instead of cream, but add a bit of half-and-half. But the real secret is the dash of Grand Marnier.  And yes, we have bacon a couple of Sundays a month, but I try to do organic.  And now I'm hungry...

ROSEMARY: They are not something I order every week, but dang if they don't MAKE ME HAPPY! So 'fess up. Do you have a favorite pancake dish? One you make or order out? Cranberries? Chocolate chips? Navaho pancakes? What's your pleasure?

(Come back tomorrow when our guest blogger will be Julia Pomeroy, author of No Safe Ground, a cracking good mystery about an Afgan vet who comes home to the US with hazy memories of a crime - or was it?)