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

Cakes, Cookies, Pies? It's your choice today!

Can you imagine a world without calories? Nah, neither can I.

BUT ... can you also imagine how sad it would be to live in a world without dessert?

Just think, no cakes, no pies, no cookies, no pastries, no ice cream, no cheesecake, no fruit. It's enough to make you cry! Luckily, that's not the world we live in.

You can go to the grocery store or bakery and indulge yourself and/or your family, or you can take the satisfaction of making dessert yourself.

Recipes To Die For: A Victoria Square Cookbook can help.  Katie Bonner, of the Victoria Square Mysteries, has put together a collection of recipes for breakfast, lunch, happy hour (in the form of signature drinks), and dinner -- but most enjoyably, for teatime and dessert.

Pies, cookies, cakes -- you name it, she's made them and collected recipes from friends and fellow merchants on Victoria Square to share with readers and friends.

So maybe just for this one day -- indulge yourself. Make something wonderful for your family. Katie is glad to lend a hand!

Trade Paperback

Kindle

Kindle Worldwide

iBooks

Kobo

Nook

Smashwords

So, what's YOUR favorite dessert?

I like to write cookbooks

And so it's National Homemade Cookie Day!  Naturally, I WANT to participate, but then I looked in the mirror and saw the size of my butt and decided I would enjoy the day "virtually" instead of actually eating any cookies. That doesn't mean I can't enjoy it vicariously.

Like working on my Lotus Bay Cookbook. (No title for it yet.)

The real question is -- why work on a project that isn't likely to bring me any money and certainly not many people will buy or read it.

BECAUSE I WANT TO!

There, I said it.

I love cookbooks, and if it was feasible, I'd do a real one -- like Susan Branch's Heart of the Home, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary. I can't draw/paint like she can, and adding color photos to an ebook is prohibitively expensive. (Did you know authors get charged per download of our books?)  Anyway, it's a fun project and so I putter at it.

I puttered at Recipes To Die For: A Victoria Square Cookbook several years ago and, quite frankly, the sales suck. I'm lucky to sell 5 or 6 a month. But I'm really proud of that little cookbook. The trade paperback edition has little black-and-white clip-art illustrations, some of which were drawn by Mr. L, like the cow to the right. (In the book, the dialog balloon over Bossy's head says "Moo!")

In Recipes To Die For, I included an anecdote to go along with each of the recipes. Surprisingly enough, it was hard. I know the characters pretty well, but I wasn't as familiar with the lesser characters, and having to come up with ideas about their personalities was more difficult than I thought it would be.

My friend Ellery Adams suggested that I start the book with Signature Drinks.  Now that was fun. I had to read the entire Mr. Boston Official Bartending Guide (Mr. L collects them and we have at least 4 different editions, some of them pretty old) to find the exact drinks that would go well with the characters' personalities.  Conrad Stratton's favorite drink is the Corpse Reviver. (Yes, there really is such a drink!) And Mr. Collier, from Collier's Funeral Home, drinks Zombies (maybe in hopes of keeping those not-quite-dead away from his funeral parlor). See, there's lots of fun stuff stuffed into that little book, which is why it was fun to write.

Check it out on my website.

Anyway, over the summer, I've been puttering on two cookbooks; one for Lotus Bay (and features food that you'd find in a B&B, because that's what Kathy intends to open), and the other for the Jeff Resnick series. That would be mostly Brenda's recipes. It wasn't something I planned, but I noticed that in my books, she make a LOT of soup, so it will feature more soup and dinner recipes.

Okay, so if you've read either of those series, what other recipes to do think Kathy and Brenda should include in their cookbooks?

P.S. I've made all the Booktown Recipes available to readers on my website.  Go to the site, look under the Angelica's Recipes drop-down menu, and you can find them from every book in the series.  Just click this link.

Foodie Friday: Ruminations on Rhubarb

I had a load of fun putting together y little cookbook RECIPES TO DIE FOR: A Victoria Square Cookbook together. The odd thing is, most of the recipes are ones I really do use over and over again. (It's kind of nice to have them all in one place.)

It's springtime and for me that means fresh rhubarb. What an odd vegetable.  I never thought about it as a vegetable, since the only thing I use it for is desserts and chutney, but it really is a veggie, and the leaves are very, very poisonous.  (If you value your liver, never, EVER eat them.)  But the stalks are just fine to eat--and EXTEMELY tart! We've got rhubarb up the wazoo and I've been even tossing it in my green smoothies.  (Yes, VERY TART indeed.)

Mr. L is partial to rhubarb crisp. Here's my favorite recipe

Ingredients:
1 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup quick cooking rolled oats
½ cup melted butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon
4 cups sliced rhubarb
1 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350°. In mixing bowl, combine the brown sugar, flour, oats, butter, and cinnamon; mix together until crumbly. Press half of the brown sugar and oats mixture into a buttered 8-inch square baking dish. Top with the sliced rhubarb. In a saucepan combine 1 cup granulated sugar, cornstarch, and the 1 cup of water and vanilla. Cook together until the liquid is clear, then pour over the rhubarb. Top the rhubarb with remaining crumb mixture and bake for 45 to 55 minutes. Serve warm, and if desired, with a scoop of ice cream or a dollop of whipped cream.

Yield:  4-6 servings.

Mmm-mmm good!

And in case you are interested in RECIPES TO DIE FOR, here are a few links.

Watch the video!  (Made by Ellery Adams and me!)

Trade PaperbackKindle US
Kindle Worldwide
Nook
iBooks
Kobo
Smashwords

P.S.  New recipe up on my Lorna Barrett Website from Bookmarked for Death.  Find it here!

Related articles

Hey, It's Foody Friday

Foodie Friday: Dahl ain't Dull!

Foodie Friday: Dahl is never dull!

Believe it or not, a few years ago when I asked my publisher if I could write a Booktown Cookbook I was told no. They wouldn't know how to market it.  (Huh? What's with that? They're a book company!!!)  Anyway, they've now seen the light and are going to do a cookbook filled with recipes from various cozy mystery series, which will be out in September.

(AND GUESS WHO WAS NOT INVITED TO PARTIPATE???

That would be me.)

Of course, that disinterest didn't stop me from writing a cookbook, either. Only I wrote one for my Victoria Square series. (Recipes To Die For.)

I admit it: until recently I've haven't been as interested in cooking as I am in baking. But lately I've taken a BIGGER interest in preparing food from scratch simply because I want to know what is in my food, and processed food is just not good for people. It's full of sugar and salt we don't need if we want to stay healthy.  (And you know what, it's FUN!)

I'm trying to integrate legumes and pulses into my diet. (Lentils are pulses.) I also happen to love Indian food, so earlier this week I made curried lentils (also known as dahl).  OMG -- it was sooo GOOD! Indian food looks scary to prepare because it seems like there are a million ingredients (mostly spices), but I decided I wanted to eat dahl and make it myself.

Here's an easy recipe. I didn't have any garlic cloves or ginger, so I substituted with a teaspoon each of the powdered stuff and it tasted just fine. (Indian food is very forgiving.)

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive or sesame oil
1 cup finely chopped white onion
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh ginger
4 cups water or vegetable broth
1 cup dried lentils, rinsed and picked over
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon turmeric
¼ teaspoon cardamom
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
2 tablespoon tomato paste
scallions, chopped (Optional as garnish)

Directions:
In a 3-quart stockpot or other medium-sized soup pot, heat the sesame oil over medium heat. Once the oil is hot, add the onion, garlic and ginger. Cook, stirring often, until the onions are translucent, about 6 minutes.

Stirring constantly, add the water or broth, lentils, spices and salt. Bring to a low boil, then turn down the heat to low, cover and let the mixture simmer for about 30 minutes, or until the lentils are very tender.

Stir in the tomato paste until well combined. Cook for 10-12 minutes more, or until the mixture is the desired temperature and consistency. Serve hot on rice.

Yum! (You better believe I'll be making this on a a regular basis.)

What's your favorite ethnic food?

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.
Trade Paperback:  http://tinyurl.com/9j8page
Kindle:  http://tinyurl.com/mcmrtlf
iBooks:  http://tinyurl.com/mxabj7f
Kobo:  http://tinyurl.com/m5pnuml
Nook:  http://tinyurl.com/6ncwq7c
Sony:  http://tinyurl.com/k3o7aaa
Smashwords:  http://tinyurl.com/l77fwfj

A Cookbook With A New Look

Sometimes we make mistakes.  It's a good thing that some mistakes can be corrected.
For example, the cover for Recipes To Die For: A Victoria Square Cookbook.  The picture I chose for the original cover.  It was ... okay.  The cover designer did a great job with my poor choice.  She added a little noose to my name, she made a nice "sign" for the cookbook, but for some reason the whole thing just didn't "sing" for me.  But, up it went.  Sales have been lackluster.

I've been thinking about changing the cover for a long time.  What held me back so long?  The box of bookmarks I had made up.  You see, I've only used about half of them.  But finally I decided--the heck with that.  I want my cookbook to find its way into the hearts and homes of my readers, so I started hunting for a new cover picture.

I don't have the resources of a big publishing company.  They have a marketing department.  There's just me.  I don't have a marketing degree.  I don't have years of experience when it comes to marketing a book.  But I do know when it's time to change a cover.  I spent a couple of days going through stock photo sites, trying different keywords, until I came upon one that seemed to work.  Next up, getting Mr. L to play with the concept.

My second choice of cover was a purple-blue close up of a silverware pattern.  Mr. L said right off the bat, "I don't think that's it."  But he was game to try.  He was right.  He liked my first choice, and I think it worked out well.

It's already up on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords, and should eventually filter through to the other e booksellers.  The new cover should be up for the print version in a couple of days.  (It takes longer to do than an E cover.)

So, what do you think?  Do you like it better than the original cover?  Would you be enticed to buy the book with its new cover?

No more burgers!

Last week I went to the Malice Domestic mystery conference and the Festival of Mystery in Oakmont, PA.  That meant traveling.  Traveling seems to equal fried food.

Why is it you can't get a decent meal on the road?  I swear, if I see another burger and fries any time soon, I'm going to have hysterics.

The big treat of the Malice Conference is the publisher-sponsored dinner at a very fancy restaurant.  The food is impeccable, but it's terribly rich.  We waddled away from the table.  The one time I actually got to eat healthy was breakfast at the hotel.  I ordered the world's worst oatmeal.  Adding raisins, milk, and even brown sugar didn't improve it.  One of my table mates ordered a continental breakfast which came with a HUGE bowl of granola.  It was only sprinkling the oatmeal with the granola that made it edible. Consequently, I was glad to get home and eat real food.  (Dorothy was right.  "There's no place like home!")

Speaking of real food, I came home with a few bags of author swag from the conference.  What's that got to do with food?  The Cozy Chicks are giving away their leftover swag (which is in my possession) to anyone who writes a review on Amazon or Barnes and Noble for their cookbook, The Cozy Chicks Kitchen.  (Each packet includes bookmarks from all the Cozy Chicks, plus a bonus recipe and adorable teapot cookie cutter.)  To get your swag, you must email the Chicks at cozychicks(at)gmail(dot)com and tell them where the review is posted.  Don't forget to include your snail mail address.

Since I've got author swag left over, too, I figured -- why not ask for the same thing.  Put up a review for my Victoria Square cookbook, Recipes To Die For, and email me at LLB(at)LLBartlett(dot)com and tell me where you posted the review and include your snail mail address.

These cookbooks are filled with wonderful recipes -- the majority of which do not include food being immersed in cooking oil.  If you haven't tried them, maybe now you will.
.

Green Beans For Me!

Oh, how I lamented the loss of half of my bean crop.  Mr. Bunny (Groundhog ... whatever) ate HALF of my beans.  Nipped them right at ground level, ate a couple of leaves, and left the rest of the plant to die on the poles.  Mr. Bunny got dispatched to the Police Academy (thanks to Animal Control) and the rest of my bean crop was safe.

And boy, as a memorial to their eaten brothers, have these guys gone into overproduction.  We're up to our eyebrows in beans.  But then, I always overplant because I expect Mr. Bunny's relatives to eat at least some of them.

It's been very difficult to pick the bean crop.  Hurricane Irene didn't bring any rain our way, but we sure got a LOT of wind and it blew over not only the bean poles, but the tomato cages, too.  Everything's a mish-mash and it's hard to get in and find the beans.  But Friday we picked half a grocery bag of them because there's no way we could eat them all now.  And thus began the job of freezing them.

Since it's been so hard to pick the beans (there's a fence to contend with, plus we're trying to grow new grass on the other side of it), a lot of them are far too big and tough to eat.  No problem!  We've had problems getting seeds for the variety of beans we prefer. And, in fact, most of this year's crop was from seeds I collected two and three years ago.  They came up just like clockwork.  The pile of beans on the right are just some of the ones I'm drying for next year's seed crop.


After blanching, they went into the ice bath (which in this case happens to be the top of my Tupperware cake tote).

By the time we'd sorted through the beans, we got six bags to freeze.  I estimate we'll have at least that much to do today, too.


Yeah, we could buy a bag of frozen beans for $1.99 that would probably last us for 2-3 meals, but this is so much more satisfying.  I guess only another gardener would understand.

What have you frozen or canned from your veggie garden this year?
===============================
By the way, today I'm guest blogging on my friend Dru-Ann Love's blog, Dru's Book Musings about my new cookbook, RECIPES TO DIE FOR. I hope you'll come by to see what Katie Bonner has to say about the book.
.