Friday 29 October 2021

It's OFFICIAL LAUNCH DAY at Tales with Tasha - A Spine Tingling Ghost Story

Tales with Tasha - OFFICIAL LAUNCH DAY

OFFICIAL LAUNCH DAY
at Tales with Tasha

The mico!fiction countdown is complete and it's time for the first official long video on my new, narrated fiction YouTube channel:

Tales With Tasha

Tales With Tasha - Spine Tingling Ghost Story

Ali works at the Chatham Historic Dockyards as a night security guard. He's new at it, but he likes it, and it suits his university schedule. There's only one rule that seems weird: Do not do rounds between 3 and 3:05am. It has to be a joke, right?

Come on over and enjoy the spine tingling ghost story I have in store for you.

Please come and subscribe and help me get to 1000 subscribers - the first YouTube milestone.

πŸ’–Thank you so much.πŸ’–



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Two books covers - one with a woman firing guns above the title "Assassin's Blood" the other with a woman screaming and glowing with the title "Curse of a Banshee"

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Saturday 23 October 2021

Tales with Tasha - New YouTube Channel is Live! Lots of lovely fic...

Tales with Tasha - New YouTube Channel - book, eBook and background of open books.

Tales with Tasha
New YouTube Channel Is Live!

It's finally time! I've had to put the launch off twice because of other things coming up, but it is finally ready to go. Drumroll please ...

Drumroll

πŸ’–My new narrated fiction YouTube channel, Tales with Tasha is live.πŸ’–

Tales with Tasha - book, ebook with open book background

Timetable

We are starting today (Sat 23rd Oct) with a countdown of micro-fiction to the official launch, this Friday, 29th October. Every day there will be a new horror based short in honour of Halloween, building up to a longer, ghostly tale on launch day.

  • Saturday - Creepy Horror (micro drabble)
  • Sunday - Comedy Horror (micro drabble)
  • Monday - Werewolf (comedy) Horror (micro drabble)
  • Tuesday - Evil Twin Horror (micro drabble)
  • Wednesday - Monster Horror (micro drabble)
  • Thursday - Zombie Horror (micro drabble)
  • FRIDAY launch - Ghostly Horror (short story)
Please come on over and subscribe so you never miss a story. There will be vampires, romance, fantasy, sci-fi and paranormal - all the genres you would expect from me.
And if you enjoy a story, please give is a thumbs up, it really helps the algorithm - thank you πŸ’œ. Even better, leave a comment.

Every week from now on there will be 5 vids:
  • 4 micro fiction shorts (100 words) Mon-Thurs
  • 1 longer story episode (between 2k-4k words) Friday

Format


You get the dubious honour of seeing me in the flesh. All the micro fic are done with the YouTube shorts app on my phone, so it's just me and the camera. For the longer fic, you will also have to put up with me at the beginning and the end so much for that plan - I'm going full audio to begin with because my camera style is terrible, but the actual fic part is me narrating with page animation so the words are on the screen for those who want to be able to see them too.

Bow down before my Adobe After Effects skills! πŸ˜‚πŸ˜œπŸ’–

I don't know about you, but sometimes when I am listening to a story, being able to follow along on the screen helps me take it in. Hence my choice. It also means I don't have to worry about what I look like when trying to read thousands of words πŸ˜‰.


This Week & Beyond


As I mentioned above this week's genre is horror in honour of Halloween, but next week it is dragons and magic, and you'll have to wait to find out what is the week after that. So there will be a lot of variety to keep everyone entertained. It's YouTube, so none of  my naughtier fiction will be on the channel because I don't want to be banned πŸ˜‰, but the fics will range from suitable for all to teen.


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Two books covers - one with a woman firing guns above the title "Assassin's Blood" the other with a woman screaming and glowing with the title "Curse of a Banshee"

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Monday 18 October 2021

Recipe: Delicious & Healthy Instant Pot Potato, Garlic & Rosemary Soup #Vegetarian #Vegan #GlutenFree

Recipe: Potato, Garlic and Rosemary Soup, with image of instant pot behind

Delicious & Healthy Instant Pot Potato, Garlic & Rosemary Soup

This is a lovely, hearty and healthy smooth soup that you can add crunchy things like croutons to, if that is what you like. Would also be lovely with nuts or pine nuts or roasted pumpkin seeds - anything like that. It uses coconut milk for some extra creaminess as a delicious alternative to cream or milk.

Now before you say, but I don't have an Instant Pot, never fear, you can make this on the stove top just as easily, except you'll probably have to give it a stir every now and then. Simply follow the instructions using a large saucepan on the hob and cook the potatoes until they are tender.

Vegetarian / Vegan / Gluten Free

Serves 6 hungry people min, and will keep in the fridge/freezer

Equipment

Required

  • 5.7 lt / 6 quart Instant Pot (or you could halve the recipe if you have the smaller one)
  • or a large heavy base saucepan
  • trivet
  • wooden spatula
  • 1lt / 4 cup jug
  • Stick blender of stand blender
Optional if you're not worried about how smooth the soup is

  • sieve
  • large bowl
  • silicon spatula
  • ladle

Ingredients

  • 2kg/4.4lb potatoes of your choice (I used Albert Barlett Rooster Potatoes)
  • 1 bulb/head of garlic
  • 1 large white onion
  • 1.5 tsp dried rosemary
  • 1lt/ 4 cups low or no salt veggie stock (I use 2 good quality stock cubes and boiling water) - chicken stock would work too if you're not worried about it being vegetarian.
  • 1 can (400ml / 1.7 cups) coconut milk
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 1 tbsp oil for frying
Potato, garlic and rosemary soup in an instant pot.
Instant Pot Potato, Garlic & Rosemary Soup

Instructions

  1. Peel and chop the onion and garlic roughly (it's going to be blended so doesn't need to be fancy, just small enough to fry off).
  2. Use the sautΓ© option on the instant pot on high - add in the oil and the onion and fry off until translucent (make sure to stir often of it will stick).
  3. Add the garlic and fry for another minute or so.
  4. Set aside in a bowl to cool.
  5. Deglaze the bottom of the Instant Pot with a little of the stock.
  6. Put in the trivet (because potatoes are heavy, they can cause a burn notice if they all slump and stick to the bottom, so having the trivet in the way makes this much more unlikely).
  7. Peel and chop the potatoes into small chunks and add to the Instant Pot.
  8. Blend the onions and garlic (optional - I did this so I didn't have to blend the soup as much at the end) and add on top of the potatoes.
  9. Add the rosemary. To get the most flavour out of my dried rosemary, I like to grind it down in my pestle and mortar before adding it, but you can just add it whole if you prefer.
  10. Add the can of coconut milk, the stock, and the salt and pepper (go easy on the seasoning, you can always add more at the end, but you can't take it out).
  11. Close the lid of the Instant Pot and choose the Pressure/Manual option and cook for 15 mins.
  12. When the cook time is done, release the pressure - this will take a while because the pot is pretty full.
  13. Lift out the internal pot to the counter and take out the trivet using a fork. Give it a few minutes to begin to cool before either blending with the stick blender or blending in batches in a stand blender. It can splash when blending, so letting it cool is a good plan - I have a lovely burn from where I failed to do this when making pumpkin soup last week.
  14. Optional - Pass the soup through the sieve into a large bowl, using the ladle to get it out of the instant pot and the silicon spatula to push it through. It shouldn't take long, but if you don't want to do this part, you can miss it out, I just hate little bits in a smooth soup that I didn't deliberately put there πŸ˜‰.
  15. Return the soup to the Instant Pot and check for seasoning, add more if necessary. It can be left on keep warm or simply reheated when it is needed.


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Two books covers - one with a woman firing guns above the title "Assassin's Blood" the other with a woman screaming and glowing with the title "Curse of a Banshee"

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