Insights and Inspiration to Excavate Your Glinda Within!

Wrapping up a wild and frenzied chapter of my TV career in Toronto, the only direction I knew I was heading - cue the urbane cowboy saga - was West. All fancy-pants campfire coffee and mountain top vignettes aside, the compass didn’t afford much in the way of additional insight as to what I was actually going to do with my life once I got there. Oi vey. The car packed, my life’s possessions in tow…I had 3 days and 2,700 miles to figure it out.

No problemo, n’est pas? Ha! In this fast-paced, gotta-find-my-groove world, I felt just a wee bit under the gun to come up with a life-changing game plan. Not the most conducive vibe to inspire one’s next career incarnation, but it was what it was.

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‘Creators of Cool’ Reveal Their Success Secrets

The Breast Friends Do Some Dishing About Their Best Selling Cookbooks. Having raised over $700,000 to help individuals in their fight against Cancer - Making a Difference Has Never Tasted So Good.

Four years ago we were ten women trying to console a good friend that had lost 2 wonderful young sisters to cancer. Our initial intention was to put together and sell a small community cookbook to raise funds to make a donation. Margaret Meade once said ‘that there is no more creative force in the world than menopausal women with zest.” Let me tell you these women have zest. We cooked and ate and took pictures and ate, and laughed and typed and retyped and ate. In the end we had not only compiled a cookbook -we had done our own photo shoots, amassed tons of information about breast cancer, obtained permission from the dozens of sources to reprint it, gathered humour and quotes about women and hired a printer, a shipper, a graphic artist, a photographer, formed our own publishing company, put together the book and gained many pounds.

We got out our check books and it took us ages to muster the confidence to actually order 2500 books. At that point most of us believed that we would have books in our basements for the next 20 years. The first shipment was gone in a month - so we thought we would try one more time and we ordered again. We waited a long six weeks for those books to arrive and they lasted exactly three days.

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Breast Friends Release “Breast Wishes” The Third Serving in Their Best Selling Trilogy

They’ve done it again! Good things come in threes, and these books are definately a good thing. These are the same ten women that started this journey, a few more grey hairs, many more wrinkles, 9 more grandchildren, 4 more retirees, and certainly more wisdom about cancer. During the last four years they’ve listened to thousands of women’s stories about their fight with cancer. They’ve had the pleasure of spending time with women affected by this disease, from all across Canada. Their first book was written to help deal with grief - sisters, friends and a mom lost to breast cancer. Their second book was written again in the midst of grief - this time, a husband lost to melanoma, and special family and friends lost to other cancers. Breast Wishes was written to celebrate the thousands living in spite of this gruelling disease- Survivors, Warriors, Women of Strength.

This is a book of hope; their focus is on life and the positive steps, small but positive happenings in cancer treatment. The women they discovered on their journey have taught them so much. They are truly amazing. They are the Women of Strength this book is dedicated to and who inspire us all on our life journey and whose stories they have shared among the recipes in the book. Net profits from each book are donated to cancer agencies, equipment, research or patient needs.

Glinda Girl Trunk Show Temptations

The Breast Friends’ Chocolate Chip Cheese Ball

The glindas and I took to the road last December for a trunk show in Lloydminster, AB; the home of my very first professional career move…a writing producing gig at CKSA television. And my cousin Koree was very much the hostess with the mostess! Together we spent many a summer not only working tirelessly to perfect our waterskiing techniques, but also as attentive students while her Mom, imparting her domestic knowledge, tried to teach us the fine art of perogie making. Please note that ‘tried’ is the operative word here.

While that was the first and last time I attempted to make perogies from scratch - consider yourselves safe - Koree and I both inherited this Cheese Ball recipe from her mom courtesy of the Breast Friends cookbook. Her mom is one of the infamous menopausal women with zest, aka the glindas behind the best-selling Breast Friends cookbooks. Their third book became a national best seller even before the print had dried. Now that is mmm mmm good.

Bon appetite!

Chocolate Chip Cheese Ball

Not your garden variety cheese ball! This is sweet and can be served as a dessert or in an evening appetizer buffet.

1 - 250 g package cream cheese
1/2 cup butter
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons brown sugar
3/4 cup icing sugar
3/4 cup mini chocolate chips
3/4 cup pecans, finely chopped

An assortment of graham crackers, biscotti, thin chocolate wafers or vanilla wafers for dipping.

Beat soften cream cheese, butter and vanilla until creamy. Slowly add sugars until blended. Stir in chocolate chips. The mixture will be very soft and must be placed onto a piece of plastic wrap, formed into a ball and refrigerated for at least 1 hour. Roll ball in pecans. Serve with assorted sweet crackers.