Summer with the good and the bad

Just about everyone around the world has had their lives impacted by Covid-19. Here's my list of things that we won't be doing or having done.

• No flowers: we usually go to the local nursery and buy flowers for our urns.
• Nobody to clean the house every two weeks.
• No one to help me in the garden
• Not so much meat for supper
• No interacting with friends and family
• No trips to the ice cream place
• No yard sales (oh, boy--for a thrifter, that's a BIGGIE)

But then there have been some good things, too.

• Our pansies from last year self-seeded, so we do have some flowers after all
• I  baked bread for the first time
• I've been baking quick breads (to use for Mr. L's breakfasts)
• We've been doing more jigsaw puzzles (well, mostly ones we've done before)
• We're still able to patronize our favorite restaurant via takeout
• I've been able to stay on my diet despite bread and quick breads (15 lbs down) 
• I've finished two books and a short story and started another two books
• I've got everything I need to repaint my kitchen cabinets 
• Curbside pick-ups & home deliveries
• The mail still comes 6 days a week

So while this won't be the summer we all wanted, maybe it can still be a good summer.  How will you make your summer special?

Baking with my characters

I was speaking with my hairdresser the other day (got my roots done -- I'm YOUNG again!) and she was telling me that her husband doesn't like to eat. She has to remind him to eat.

A person who doesn't like to eat??????????

I smell cake/cookies/muffins/Yorkshire pudding and I gain weight. Therefore, I live vicariously through my characters who love to bake. Among them: Katie Bonner, Kathy Grant, and most recently Tricia Miles. These ladies are baking up a storm--and they can do it and not get fat because they have an audience they can feed. Katie has her vendors at Artesans Alley, Kathy has been experimenting with recipes for her B&B and feeding her friends Tori, Anissa, Noreen and Paul. Tricia has her employees, Pixie and Mr. Everett (and when you read A Killer Edition, which will be out next year, this will become really obvious.)


But I like to bake, too. And the other day my neighbor, who has a huge garden, put out a little stand for veggies his family can't eat. It's so cute with a colorful umbrella to shade the veggies during the day. And I picked up a zucchini, tomato and a chili pepper. The zucchini was too big for stir fry, but I knew when I picked it up it was destined for zucchini muffins.

Who's my audience? Mr. L. He loves baked goods for breakfast and this will be my second batch of zucchini muffins this summer. In fact, I will need to make a double batch because it is such a big zucchini. That doesn't worry me!  Here's my recipe.

Zucchini Muffins
Ingredients
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 large eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
2 cups finely shredded unpeeled zucchini
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup dried currants or chopped raisins

Preheat oven to 350° In a bowl, combine the first six ingredients. Combine the egg and oil; stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in the zucchini, walnuts and currants. Coat muffin cups with cooking spray or use paper liners; fill three-fourths full with batter. Bake for 22-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack.

Yield: 12 muffins

Who do you bake for? (And care to share a recipe, too?)

==========================================

Recipes to Die For: A Victoria Square Cookbook, was the first companion book I did for my New York Times bestselling  Victoria Square Mystery series. In it, Katie Bonner shares her favorite recipes, and those of her vendors and the merchants on Victoria Square, plus each contributors signature drink and anecdotes about their lives on Victoria square.

Treat yourself today!

Amazon (trade paperback)

Kindle | Kindle Worldwide | Nook | Kobo | iBooks

Nothing says lovin like something from the oven

I was speaking with my hairdresser the other day and she told me that her husband doesn't like to eat. She has to remind him to eat.

A person who doesn't like to eat??????????

If I smell cake/cookies/muffins/Yorkshire pudding and I gain weight. Therefore, I live vicariously through my characters who love to bake. Among them: Katie Bonner, Kathy Grant, and most recently Tricia Miles. These ladies are baking up a storm--and they can do it and not get fat because they have an audience they can feed. Katie has her vendors at Artisans Alley, Kathy has been experimenting with recipes for her B&B and feeding her friends Tori, Anissa, Noreen, and Paul. Tricia has her employees, Pixie and Mr. Everett (and when you read A Killer Edition, which will be out next year, this will become really obvious.)

But I like to bake, too. And the other day my neighbor, who has a huge garden, put out a little stand for veggies his family can't eat--and everything is FREE. It's so cute with a colorful umbrella to shade the veggies during the day. I picked up a zucchini, a very nice tomato, and a chili pepper. The zucchini was too big for stir fry, but I knew when I picked it up it was destined for zucchini muffins.

Who's my audience? Mr. L. He loves baked goods for breakfast and this will be my second batch of zucchini muffins this summer. In fact, I will need to make a double batch because it is such a big zucchini. That doesn't worry me!  Here's my recipe.

Zucchini Muffins
Ingredients
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 large eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
2 cups finely shredded unpeeled zucchini
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup dried currants or chopped raisins

Preheat oven to 350° In a bowl, combine the first six ingredients. Combine the egg and oil; stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in the zucchini, walnuts and currants. Coat muffin cups with cooking spray or use paper liners; fill three-fourths full with batter. Bake for 22-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack.

Yield: 12 muffins

Who do you bake for? (And care to share a recipe, too?)

==========================================

Recipes to Die For: A Victoria Square Cookbook, was the first companion book I did for my New York Times bestselling  Victoria Square Mystery series. In it, Katie Bonner shares her favorite recipes, and those of her vendors and the merchants on Victoria Square, plus each contributors signature drink and anecdotes about their lives on Victoria square.

Treat yourself today!

Amazon (trade paperback)

Kindle | Kindle Worldwide | Nook | Kobo | iBooks

Not so easy entertaining

It's been quite a long time since Mr. L and I entertained people other than family. We used to host a holiday party every year, but that kind of fizzled out. But last week we invited our neighbors for a get-together.

Wow. I'd forgotten how much work that can be. I had to CLEAN the house. The cleaning ladies came on Monday, but our guests arrived 4 days later. With cats, there's always a lot of crud. Puke. Litter. Yeah, they may be the only self-cleaning things in the house, but they make a lot of mess.  And Chester litters the house with the toys he "kills" several times a day. (Oy, those hunter victory cries can make your hair stand on end,)

I finally got to do some baking. I LOVE to bake, but seldom have anyone to bake for and if I did it would just be us eating the stuff and ... CALORIES. So I don't bake nearly as often as I would like. I decided to do two different cookies: chocolate truffles and chocolate chip cookies. I was going to make shortbread and cut-out cookies, too, but then ... I caught a cold. OH NO!  I've done nothing but wash my hands and slather myself in Purel for a week now.

The big night arrived and ... uh-oh, only three of the four arrived at our door.  Mr. H had a stomach bug, which was bad for him, and disappointing for us.

I bought two bags of holiday (red and green) M&Ms -- because, hey, M&Ms. And why not send her children back home all hyped up with sugar, right? (That's a joke.) But -- nobody touched them. Uh-oh. Somebody is going to have to eat them.  (Raising my hand for designated M&M eater.)

Of course, I made my mother's famous "pink" dip, which was a big hit. (She got the recipe out of the TV guide one December back in the early 1960s -- and the ad was sponsored by the Hallmark Hall of Fame TV show.) With the dip we had chips and carrots and celery (the latter two were intended for me, but the cold was getting worse and who wants to eat when they can't taste anything?).

One of the kids complained about a rocky stomach about a half hour in.  I left the room to get something and came back to hear, "And he's vomited six times."

OMG -- I felt so sorry for the kid, who had obviously caught the same bug as his Dad, but then I cringed in horror.  I was already in the throws of a bad cold. Would I get the bug, too?  (So far, so good.)

My neighbor took her youngest home just as the pizzas arrived, and we chowed down with her oldest son, who is a budding artist, so he and Mr. L had a lot to talk about. I showed him some of the paintings Mr. L has done, and he was impressed.

My neighbor came back and we had a good time talking for an hour or so, but then everybody seemed to be drooping. I'd been awake for about 18 hours, so I was definitely pooped. (One of these days I'm going to learn how to sleep through the night).

So our first foray into entertaining in years wasn't such a hit. The next day, the cold hit me even harder. I spent the entire weekend lying in the recliner like a beached whale. But at least I got a lot of editing done on YULE BE DEAD, the 5th Victoria Square novel, which will be out next December (2018).

So, will we be entertaining next year? I've got about 355 days to decide.

Have you had less than successful gatherings? Tell all!

It wasn't supposed to turn out this way

For years, I was able to enjoy the very best quiche in the world at The Sherwood Inn in Skaneateles, NY. It was a quiche like I'd never had before. About 4 inches high with a thick custard center, and usually with asparagus. OMG -- it was good.  And then ... one day, they stopped making it that way. What a bummer. : (

I recently got this very pretty Mikasa quiche pan at a yard sale and that made me determined to try my hand at a from-scratch quiche.  (My mother used to make them all the time back in the 80s and 90s.)

I've been looking for a recipe like that for years, and one of my readers gave me one she thought might fit the bill.  I assembled my ingredients and I figured I was good to go.

My first attempt tasted good, but wasn't at all tall.  (Very pretty pan--but too small. I ended up making omelets with the leftover egg and cream mixture.)

On Tuesday, I was all set to make a tall quiche. I bought a springform pan at a yard sale and it was at least an inch taller than the last.  One tiny problem.  I (again) decided to add mushrooms to the recipe (because I like them) and like Julia Child liked to say, "don't crowd the mushrooms." So while I was browning the crust, I was paying more attention to the mushrooms and ... (BTW, my smoke alarms work really, REALLY well!)

I ended up having a salad for supper that night. (Oh well, at least it had a lot less calories!)

Went a little overboard on the Swiss cheese.  Grated 3 times what I needed.

So Wednesday, I decided to try again.  But this time, even though I rolled the crust thinner, it didn't "take" in the pan. It shrunk. I put in as much of the cream and egg mixture as I could but ... (you got it, I'll be having an omelet for breakfast today). It tasted good, but no thick, creamy custard.

It was taller, but not by much.

I'm now in search for a taller, yet smaller (in diameter) springform pan. I'm determined to replicate that quiche if I have to eat a dozen of them to do it. One of my readers told me about a Mile-High Quiche, and I'm going to try that recipe.

Have you ever had a frustrating recipe that just wouldn't work out?

Baking for St. Paddy!

I know that in Ireland the don't have corned beef and cabbage for St. Paddy's day. And they probably don't have Irish Soda Bread, either; but that's what WE have to celebrate the day, so why wouldn't I want to share our recipes for Irish Soda Bread?

I included this recipe in Booktown Mystery #1, Murder is Binding, and next week it'll go up on the website.  (I'm in the process of putting up ALL the recipes from the Booktown Mysteries.)  But, if you want to try this for Monday (and we sure will be baking it), here's an easy recipe we've put together from a number of recipes. It works well for us!

Ingredients
4 cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1½ cups buttermilk
¼ cup corn or canola oil
2 teaspoons caraway seeds
1 cup golden raisins
1 tablespoon milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Foil-line a baking sheet, lightly grease.

In a large bowl, stir the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together.  In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, buttermilk, and oil together.  Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour in the buttermilk mixture.  Add the caraway seeds and raisins.  Stir until a soft dough forms.

With floured hands, shape the dough into a large ball on a lightly floured board or waxed paper.  With a sharp knife, make an X across the top of the dough.  Place the dough on the prepared baking sheet.  Brush the top with milk.  Bake in the center of the oven until golden brown (30 to 40 minutes).

Serve warm with butter. 

Yum!

How are you celebrating St. Patrick's day?

Foodie Friday: Whole lotta baking going on!

What is it about the holidays that makes us want to eat more cookies (than usual)?

I found a great recipe for dipped coconut shortbread.  (Mmmmm.)  It's been hanging around for so long, I have no idea where I got it from, but it's GOOD.

3/4 cut butter (no substitutes)
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup flaked coconut
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 tablespoon shortning

In a mixing bowl, cream butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy.  Combine flower and baking powder; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well.  Stir in coconut.  Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour or until firm.

On a floured surface, roll out dough to 1/4-inch thickness.  Cut with a 2 1/2 inch cookie cutter.  Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets.  Bake at 300F for 20-25 minutes or until edges begin to brown.  Cool on wire racks.

Eat and enjoy!

In a small saucepan over low heat, melt chocolate chips and shortening.  Remove from the heat; dip cookies halfway into chocolate.  Place on waxed paper-lined baking sheet until set.  Yield:  about 2 dozen.

Looking for a cute little cookbook as a stocking stuffer?  Look no further:  Recipes to Die For.
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iBooks:  http://tinyurl.com/mxabj7f
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Nook:  http://tinyurl.com/6ncwq7c
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