A Cover, At Last! (Plus, Romance for Valentine's Day!)

There it is, in all its glory!  OK, bad pun.  My heroine - the owner of the gift shop, and the parrot - is Gloryanna Martine, Glory to her friends.

Sorry it took so long.  There were a couple changes, and tweaks along the way, but I am delighted to have a real, final, gorgeous cover to share with you.

The book is available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and bookstores everywhere.  It's also available in ebook.  And if you want a signed copy, I'll be at Malice Domestic the end of April, or you can order a copy from my local bookseller pal, Sheldon McArthur at North by Northwest Books.

Number-one Fan and husband Steve jumping in here...

The post above was supposed to go out Sunday, but got stuck in the pipes somehow, so Christy asked me to play tech support and knock it loose for y'all.


While I'm at it, I'm going to remind you good folks that Christy (writing under her real name of Christina F. York) has written three contemporary romance novels, Loaves and Kisses, Dream House, and Dory Cove.  And given that it's Valentine's Day, it seemed like a good excuse to give them a quick plug.  All are available in ebook form, from Amazon (links below) and all other major ebook vendors, including Nook, iBooks, Sony, Kobo, etc.  There are also still a few copies of the Five Star print edition of "Dream House" out there too, if you're quick about it!


Enjoy!

Cooking Up A New Series - Part Two - Hush Puppies

Actually cooking some of the recipes for MURDER IN A SHOT GLASS was one way of making sure I understood the action in the cooking scenes.  Once I was set up with the proper ingredients - or reasonable substitutes - I was ready to start cooking.

The banana pudding was already made and we'd actually had some last night.  It's even better the second day, when the vanilla wafers have softened and the flavors have blended from sitting in the refrigerator overnight.

I prepped the catfish, salted it, and set it to soak in a buttermilk bath while I worked on the hush puppies.

First I needed self-rising cornmeal, one of the ingredients I didn't actually find in my shopping expedition.  Self-rising simply means the cornmeal already contains a leavening agent, in this case salt and baking powder.  According to the information I found online, all I had to do for each cup of cornmeal was replace 1 tablespoon of cornmeal with a tablespoon of baking powder and add a half-teaspoon of salt.  (Thank you, Food.com!)

I mixed the cornmeal and self-rising flour, sugar and garlic powder and added the onion.  My husband was leery of too much onion, and I dialed back the amount the recipe called for.  Then I added eggs and buttermilk, and I had hush puppy batter.  It looked thin, and I had my doubts, but I dropped a spoonful in the hot oil.

Now THAT looks right!

I was right, it was way too thin.  I had little crumbles of cornmeal batter, not a beautiful hush puppy.  At that point I double-checked the recipe, verified I had used the proper amount of each ingredient, and decided I needed to fix the mixture.  I added some more cornmeal and baking powder, until I got a batter that had the consistency I expected, and tried again.

This time things went much better.  The dough formed little balls in the hot oil instead of falling apart like cardboard in a heavy rain.  The fryer would only hold 4 or 5 at a time, but I waited patiently as each batch made its way from gooey dough balls to golden brown globes of corn-y goodness.

My husband taste-tested one of the first ones and pronounced it edible, much to my relief.  In fact, after a couple tastes, he said it could stand a little more onion.  Since I like onions I quickly added a couple heaping spoonfuls of minced onion and stirred it into the remaining dough.

Patience is not one of my strong points, but these were well worth the wait.  As you can see, they tumbled out of the fry basket onto the paper-towel-lined plate all golden brown and crunchy.

It took quite a while to cook up all the dough I'd made, but in the end I was rewarded with a baking pan full of lovely hush puppies.


Since I had a problem with the consistency of the original recipe I am not going to post it here - at least not until I have a version that works properly.  But in the meantime, here's a link to a Food.com recipe for hush puppies, similar to what I made.  There's also a link to a Paul Prudhomme recipe that I want to try.

In the meantime, here's a photo of the final result.  I think they came out looking good, and they tasted great in spite of the experimental nature of the recipe.

But that catfish was still soaking in buttermilk, and my work was far from over...

(To be continued...)

Cooking Up A New Series - Part One

I'm working on the new series, and doing a lot of research to make sure I get the details right.  Research can be challenging, it can be fun, and sometimes I need to ask for help.  Right now it's all three.

One of the things that will run through the series is a weekly dinner for Glory and her friends Karen, Ernie, and Felipe.  In MURDER IN A SHOT GLASS the foursome are focusing on traditional Southern cooking.  For me this means learning some new ways of cooking (challenging), tasting the food (fun), and finding authentic recipes (help!).

Fortunately, my mother-in-law (a wonderful lady) was born and raised in southeastern Alabama, just north of the Florida panhandle.  She was my first call when I started looking for recipes and she didn't disappoint me.  I now have a list of things to try.

But before I could start cooking, there was the problem of rounding up typical Southern ingredients in a small West Coast town.  Especially a small town on the beach, with limited shopping opportunities.

To the Internet for help!!  I found instructions on how to make your own self-rising flour and cornmeal, and also discovered advice about using masa - readily available in a town with a large Latino population - as corn flour (when you look at the label, the words "corn flour" are right there).  At this point I'm guessing that  "corn flour" is probably the functional equivalent of "fine ground corn meal."

I hope.

Armed with this knowledge, I made a trip to the "big city" in search of supplies.  I found self-rising flour, several varieties of cornmeal, and a bag of masa.

Back home I consulted with my husband - an escaped Southerner - about what to try first.  We decided on a few of his all-time favorites: fried catfish, hush puppies, and banana pudding.  I've made a lot of banana pudding over the years, and I even had all the ingredients on hand, so that was no problem.

Catfish was another matter.  We managed to find some frozen fillets at the market, in portions large enough to feed a half the town.  Fortunately the woman on duty at the meat counter was kind enough to break up the package and sell me just a pound of fish.  (Which was still quite a lot for two people!)

Now that I had ingredients - or at least instructions on how to make substitutes - I needed the proper utensils.

The first problem was getting an appropriate fryer.  We considered using a pot on the stove, but I had a couple concerns, first and foremost being temperature control.  I have a lovely new stove, but keeping hot oil at a consistent temperature can be a pain, and requires a good thermometer and constant monitoring.  I needed an electric deep fryer.

I hit the local Goodwill looking for a deep fryer, but struck out.  I went in the Bi-Mart next door, hoping to find one of those miniature fryers that wouldn't set me back too much.  For once luck was on my side, and I found a nice sized one on sale for $30.  I have no idea where I am going to store this thing, but it was a great price, so we dragged it home.

Back home I now had ingredients and tools, all I had to do was cook...
(To be continued!)