Welcome to Wordsmith weekly, a weekly blog post chronicling my life as a writer. Read on to find out what’s fueling my words! 😉
This week the rosemary trend continues in Healthy Eats, Sweets & Treats with a roast chicken recipe. I roast one of these at least twice a month to make broth. Over time, I’ve gotten it down to an art. I wanted to share this recipe for people who feel intimidated by roasting an entire bird. It’s easier than you think it is, so easy and so tasty.
In Do.It.Your Self-care comes another skincare recipe. Recently I ran out of all the basics, exfoliant (which I made last week if you’re interested), a basic cleanser and my night cream. This week I will show you all how to make a simple clay cleanser. I’ve noticed more clarity in my skin since I started using clay daily to cleanse my skin. It’s cheap, easily sourced. Tweak a few ingredients and it’s suitable for any skin-type.
From the Book Nook: a review of Water for Elephants. A heartwarming and gritty tale set during the great depression. You’ll laugh and weep at the sweet and sometimes scary love story of the two main characters. I loved it! It’s one of the many books I’ve reviewed on here that I finished in a single sitting; always the mark of a great novel, in my opinion.
In The Writing Corner: the final chapter of my short story, The Unicorn Bounty. One man’s brush with death, and unicorns. I’ll post the completed story to MoonQuill too. FYI: you don’t need to have the app to read it, nor an account. Anyone can read it for free.
If the thought of cooking a roast chicken has ever overwhelmed you, you’re not alone. The first time I roasted one I was sooo nervous. I kept picturing it coming out pink or charred to a crisp and I felt ill-equipped since I didn’t have a meat thermometer. It turns out you don’t need one. You can tell if the chicken’s done by touching it, it should feel firm to the touch without a hint of bounce-back. Read on below to find out how I whip up my famous roast chicken (famous in my household, anyway :-p My boyfriend loves it!)
Ingredients
1 Whole Chicken between 1-2 pounds in size
1/4 Pound of butter, room temp
1 tbsp Garlic powder
1 tbsp Onion powder
1 tsp Dried Parsley
1 1/2 tbsp Dried Rosemary
1 tsp Salt 2 Lemons, cut into slices
Directions
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Take chicken out of packaging and place it in the roasting pan.
Peel back the chicken’s skin surrounding the breast without ripping it and set aside.
Place butter inside a small bowl and add the remaining ingredients to it, stirring it well to combine.
Add 1 tbsp of the butter spice mixture to each breast, carefully placing it below the skin and massage it into place, ensuring the entire breast on each side’s coated.
Take the remaining spice mixture and spread it all over the outside of the chicken, leaving no area uncovered.
With your chicken fully seasoned, take your pile of lemon slices and stuff them into the cavity of the bird, this will give it a light lemon flavor and help keep your chicken moist.
Now that your chicken is ready, truss it.
Using cooking twine, twist both of its legs together and form a noose around them, tying it into a bow once they’re secured.
Place chicken in the heated oven without the lid on the roasting pan.
Cook the chicken for 30 minutes before basting for the first time.
At the thirty-minute mark, bast and turn the chicken over in the oven. This helps it to cook more evenly.
After the first basting, you’ll be basting it at 15-minute intervals for 1 hr and 45 mins if your bird is 1 pound, 2 hrs if its 2 pounds.
Remove the bird at the end of the cook time. Using a spatula, take the chicken out and place it on a carving board.
From there, cover the chicken in foil and allow it to rest for 20 minutes.
Et Voila, your chicken is ready to eat.
Carve it by removing the breasts first, followed by the wings and drumsticks, finishing by taking off any remaining meat bits. The cooked meat will stay good for up to 3 days in the fridge.
*note I generally do a brine beforehand if I want extra juicy chicken but for this blog I wanted to keep things super simple. In the future, I’ll add my brine recipe for those who are interested.
I love calcium bentonite clay. It’s by far the most useful natural skincare product I’ve ever come across. It works well with most skin types and I use it a lot. It has amazing cleansing power, getting deep down in your pores to remove gunk and oil. It works wonders for acne. I used to suffer from cystic acne as a kid. I went to my doctor about it, tried every skincare product on Earth but nothing worked, until I found clay. After using it every day for a couple of months, my skin had completely cleared. It and tea tree oil changed my life.
If your skin needs a remedy, this will do wonders. It’s versatile too, this cleanser. It can be used for cleaning your face and as a mask. In today’s economy, we all need our products to pull double duty, if only to save us some cash. Read on to see how I make my clay cleanser. I hope it works as well for you as it has for me! 🙂
Ingredients
1/4 cup Calcium Bentonite Clay Powder
2 tbsp Manuka Honey
1/4 cup Water
25 Drops Rose Water
10 Drops Neroli Essential Oil
10 Drops Lavender Essential Oil
10 Drops Grapefruit Essential Oil
10 Drops Lemon Essential Oil
10 Drops Helichrysum Essential Oil
Directions
In an airtight jar, add all ingredients, and mix until well combined.
That’s it, you have your clay cleanser! 🙂
When applying this cleanser, do so in tiny circular motions. This helps the product to penetrate deeply into your pores. If you intend on using it as a mask, apply a quarter sized amount to your face, again, rubbing it in with small, circular motions. Leave the mask on for at least ten minutes, or until the product completely dries, then rinse with warm water. Always apply moisturizer after using clay, especially if you have dry skin.
Once safe from their view, I peeled myself from the mire, legs wobbling feebly under my weight and terror. I smacked my mud-stained face several times. “Pull yourself together, Tansley, you fucking coward. You can do this. It’s just a bloody unicorn.”
Face still stinging, I brushed the mud away. Having regained some grit, I squared my shoulders and began navigating into the forest.
Tall wispy trees, white as ash with streaming tendrils of silver leaves, hung over me like ghostly apparitions attracted to the glow of life, their hungry hands reaching. I recoiled from them as I marched on, my fumbling hands seeking to secure my inventory while my eyes kept a vigilant watch for signs of movement. I listed off the items, one by one, relief swelling.
The filtered light making its way through the tree lit my way at first, but as my feet carried me deeper and deeper into the wooded abyss, it choked and then stamped out like a candle snuffed.
The moist air and the trickling rain falling through the canopy above ruined all hope of lighting the way by fire, so I pushed on, eyes blind, hoping they would adjust to my darkening surroundings.
It was no use.
I was cold, dirty, wet, scared, and weak, and the darkness closing in on me sent my stressed and marred mind over the edge.
As an ominous twig snapped in the distance, so did my fragile, fear-laden will.
I became a madman with the horseman of death at his back, running.
I ran scared, feet leading me nowhere.
Aimlessly, irrationally, I ran.
Light, where’s the light? I thought as I glided on clumsy feet through the mud, passed trees, fallen branches, logs, and rain-soaked bushes, tripping, falling, and rising, like a coiled spring that refuses to stay flat.
“There!” I said, the words escaping my lips involuntarily.
A bright break in the ebony shined in the distance, an ominous and almost alien light glinting of silver, purple and blue.
Thoughtless and desperate, I oriented myself to it and started galloping like a wild animal, sure my salvation was at the end of that sprint.
But as the alien light came into full view, it formed into something else, moving. I slowed my pace, a rational thought occurring for the first time since the darkness enveloped me.
Oh my god, it’s coming straight for me, run, run you fool. I did a 180-degree turn and started sprinting at top speed in the opposite direction, this time intending on escaping the forest altogether—a pox on Jarvis and Mikhale they could search these haunted woods for the unicorn themselves, the tossers.
But my rationale was too late, too sudden, and like a moth to a flame, the light followed me, its rustling and twig snapping growing louder as it came closer. Faster, the word peeled in my head, a shrieking bell begging me to move forward, but my feet felt like cinder blocks. The muddy ravine kept sucking me down, slowing my footsteps until my legs felt like rubber from pulling them out.
Huffing and puffing from fleeing, I leaned up against a tree to catch my breath—I couldn’t go any further. Peering around, I realized the thing that tailed me was gone.
Relief flooded through me.
I smiled into the dark, the corners of my mouth pulling into a wide grin as I spotted the lanterns at the entrance.
Safety, light, and safety. But how would I deal with Jarvis and Mikhale? After a few seconds of fruitless pondering, I realized I didn’t care that they, terrifying as they were, would make better opponents than what lay behind me.
The devils I knew, not the trampling mystery, I decided.
Feeling somewhat secure with the light once again guiding my way, I walked with confidence from the tree, more eager than ever to head towards it.
Fear crystalized into survival instinct, driving me forward, propelling me, my body, my mind, my will.
The hope that was lifting and soaring, as fragile as a feather in a windstorm, suddenly sank as something stopped me in my tracks.
Hot, white pain shot through my side, coupled with ear-piercing braying. I looked down at the glowing horn sliding through me, every ridge raking at my insides as it’s withdrawn. The remnants of my end trails hung pierced at the horn’s end as my blood leaked down and rippled out into trickling streams on the nodding unicorn’s head. A vague sense of justice and satisfaction lit its eyes. I collapsed onto the ground, hands at my sides, trying to stop the bleeding. The unicorn stood over me, watching, waiting.
“There it is Mik, get ‘im or it’ll getaway! Finding more bait will be more trouble than it’s worth!” Jarvis said, his words panicked as he and Mikhale came into view, one brandishing an axe, the other holding up a long sword.
Not a friend or cohort, human bait.
Something they’d use up and throw away.
A piece of old trash.
I look down at the gaping hole in my side, a decoy.
Nothing more. I am nothing.
With a single chop of his axe, swift as it was powerful, Mikhale lobbed off the unicorn’s head. Its blood splattered in all directions, intermingling with my own. Dead, dead together, two enemies united in blood.
Mikhale looked upon me with pity, his blood-stained visage burning away the last ounce of strength in me.
My power, my will to live, weak as a house of straw, went up in flames, taking my life’s essence as it burned.
Coldness crept into me.
The swirling darkness, the ebony black that spurred me to flee, had now found its home in my eyes.
My vision darkened. My breath weakened.
Jarvis took out a bowie knife and began sawing away at the horn—his deadly prize—the unicorn’s severed head flopped like a dying fish beneath the ragged cuts, its brain still active despite being separated from the spinal column.
Still fighting, still fighting to live regardless of demise.
Jarvis looked at me and laughed as he said. “You did well, laddie. Couldn’t ‘ave managed this without ye.” He patted my open wound, the salty palm driving pain into my stilled body, the icy hands of death wrapped around me as he touched me.
I couldn’t respond.
There was nothing inside me, no strength to care, no force to answer.
Only death and darkness, then light.
Again, I ran away from my body towards a beaming light, but the light wasn’t ominous or alien. This time, it was comforting, warming, an angel’s calling. I wanted to keep running toward it, toward that warmth, the comfort, but a voice stopped me.
“Too soon,” the voice said, moaning and distant, “Too young, too soon. Too young, too soon. Not yet. This is not how you leave, Tansley. Peace is sweet, but revenge is sweeter.”
With those words, the light dispersed, and I was back in my body.
My dead, bloodied, bloated body had laid abandoned in the woods by two hired goons.
Goons who used me, who treated me like trash, turned me into bait.
Yet, I’m here. Tansley: shadow of life, wayward soul without a body.
To the shock of Jarvis & Mikhale, who stood over my old body ready to take the clothes from my back, and my weapons. The starving buzzards.
Nothing but vultures who pick the flesh from bone.
Scavengers. Murderers.
I said the words aloud. “Murderers. Scavengers.” They echo, a wild horn blasting sonic booms through leaves and branches,
The pair look at me horrified, words shaking as they stammer to respond. “T-t-Tansley?” Jarvis said.
Mikhale chimes in, his voice shaky as he said, “Holy Jesus. I-I-I mean we are—oh my god. We are so sorry, laddie.”
“P-Please d-don’t we are so sorry,” The color drained from Jarvis’s face as I peeled myself from an inky pool of coagulated blood to tower over them, their groveling display of cowardice.
But their words had little effect on me. My body rocked and seethed from their injustice. Incensed hatred ran deep, tempered by no kinder emotions. Only a vengeance, a bitterness, and a bloodlust coursed through me.
Without laying my hands on it, I drew my short sword. At the speed of a bullet, I plunged it with vicious intent into Jarvis’ eyes socket. He screamed out in pain and clutched his eye with one hand and his sword with the other. I withdrew my dagger and swiftly cut his throat.
He went limp, bleeding profusely, as he slumped over into a collapse.
His labored breathing grew weaker and weaker as he buried his face in the mud like a child would his pillow after a nightmare.
Mikhale took off running, not giving his companion a second thought. This time I withdrew a clutch of throwing knives, hurling them one by one at the scampering rogue. The first pierced his shoulder, the second his leg, and the third one jutted through the back of his neck, severing his spinal column. He died in seconds.
As I watched his lifeless body fall to the ground, limp as a rag-doll, the anger which possessed me faded. In its place: tranquility, peaceful serenity, and a sense of completion, and finality flood in.
My old life had expired, dried up, becoming nothing more than leaves on the wind.
Fall had gone. It was the dead of winter, its frosty grasp snuffing out all life until spring brings renewal.
My future yawned before me like the mouth of a cave.
These haunted woods would become my home, this ancient place of wind, wood and earth.
Home.
I walked with gentle purpose deeper into the forest, passed leaf and branch and fallen logs, beyond the bodies, the lives snuffed out. A bloody mess left in my wake with a stilled sense of calm.
It didn’t matter now; they didn’t matter.
Only this place, this ancient wood, and my whisper-soft footsteps.
Just then, the ground beneath me rumbled, shake, and split violently.
Dirt crumbled, rolled and flew in all directions amidst fiery flames, spurting out from the growing opening in riotous colors.
I jumped, trying to leap-frog over the gaping hole wreathed in flame, narrowly missing an endless drop.
As it opened fully, coming to a violent halt, soot-covered fiery hands shot up from the opening and grabbed a hold of me, my legs singeing them as they pulled on me. Their flame-covered grasp burned like hot pokers as they dragged me into the chasm.
Kicking, screaming, clawing, and biting, I fought them with every ounce of strength as they pulled deeper and deeper into the flames to be swallowed up whole.
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Katrina Thompson 
Great suspense in your short story! Surprising ending. I loved Water for Elephants too.
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