Jamie Ding... does the name ring a bell?

AND THE WINNER of yesterday's giveaway,  a copy of A POISONOUS POUR by Maddie Day, is Susan! (Susan, please send your contact information to Edith at edith@edithmaxwell.com)

HALLIE EPHRON: Raise your hand if you've heard of Jamie Ding?

I have, I have!

For the past month I've been tuning into CBS at 7:30 and following his trajectory as a contestant on “Jeopardy!”

Episodes have followed a pattern with Jamie (he's got the kind of approachable personality that makes me want to refer to him as Jamie) gathering momentum and buzzing in first, over and over, making modest wagers, and calmly answering (asking!) correctly, question after question, on every topic imaginable... and clobbering his two opponents. 

Rarely guessing wrong and without breaking a sweat.

But last week, after 31 wins, he lost.

His streak is the one of the longest in “Jeopardy!” history and he finished with more than $880,000. His nemesis was Greg Shahade, an International Master in chess who was lightning-fast on the buzzer.

Jamie calls himself as a “faceless bureaucrat.” He tended to look faintly surprised whenever he got an answer right. And his easy banter with Jeopardy host Ken Jennings was priceless.

He has the ideal nerd pedigree, asthe son of a neuroscience professor and a high school math teacher. He competed on high school quiz bowl team. Went to Princeton and has a job (he calls himself a bureaucrat, and I'm quite sure he is meticulously great at it) where he's working to address the housing crisis (and a social conscience!)

Didn't watch Jeopardy regularly until recently. Didn't start practicing to be a contestant until earlier this year.

A true Everyman.

As his clothes attested his favorite color is orange. And he's cool, calm, collected,  with a reliable intuition about where the daily doubles lie...until this final game.

A fan on Substack opined: “Put Jamie Ding on the $20 bill." As for me, I think he should run for president. And a cocktail in his honor wouldn't be amiss.

Do you follow Jeopardy and have you been watching Jamie's incredible winning streak? 

Edith Maxwell (aka Maddie Day) asks: WHY CAN'T I? (#BookGiveaway)

HALLIE EPHRON: It's always a pleasure to welcome Edith Maxwell, in her myriad of guises, back to Jungle Red. Today she's celebrating her newest mystery, A POISONOUS POUR, the third Ceci Bartom mystery, which releases TODAY!

EDITH MAXWELL: Thanks for inviting me back to the top side of the blog, Hallie. I’m so pleased to celebrate A Poisonous Pour, the third Cece Barton mystery, which releases today!

The beautiful Alexander Valley is in the northern part of Sonoma County about ninety minutes north of San Francisco. It’s a rich wine-producing region but less well known than Napa. For this series, I made up the town of Colinas (appropriately ‘hills’ in Spanish), which I plopped down in the valley somewhere near Geyserville, Cloverdale, and Healdsburg. (Don’t look too hard at a map – another town doesn’t really fit.)

I needed to populate Colinas with businesses, restaurants, markets, and churches. By now, three books in, I wish I could visit some of those fictional places! First, I invented the Vino y Vida wine bar, which Cece owns and manages.

I pictured a cluster of antique adobe buildings backing up to the Russian River. The buildings have been reinforced and modernized. Vino y Vida (which mean, yes, ‘wine and life’) has a polished hundred-year-old redwood bar inside and an outdoor patio perched above the riverbank with a big old live oak tree shading it.

Wouldn’t you want to have a glass of wine or two there?

Two of Cece’s friends are a couple who relocated to California from cutthroat jobs in publishing and finance in New York City. Henry Cruvellier owns an art gallery in another of the adobes near Vino y Vida, and his husband Ed Ramirez, who’s from the area, owns and runs Edie’s Diner. Cece eats at the fifties retro diner a lot, and it’s good local place to pick up gossip.

My inspiration for the diner was the real Edie’s, where I ate many years ago a few hundred miles farther south in Corona del Mar, California. Ed’s version features more avocadoes and includes menu items like salmon bacon, perfect for pescatarian Cece.

My mouth waters when I think up some of the meals she orders, and I wish I could perch on one of the red stools at the counter next to her. I even include the real diner’s slogan, “God bless America and Edie’s Diner, too.”

Another fictional place Cece frequents is the Hoppy Hills brewpub. It has a side patio, and strings of hop-shaped lights give the area a warm glow. The beers are excellent, and they serve things like deep-fried artichokes. Yum.

JJ’s Automotive is featured in several of the books. Josie Jarvin only works on cars made before computers were in the engine compartment, and Cece takes her sixty-six Mustang convertible to Josie for service. As befitting California, Josie can open the back of the garage to essentially work in the fresh air. If I still had my dad’s sixty-seven VW Bug, I’d take it there.

There’s also a Japanese restaurant in Colinas run by Cece’s friend Yukiko, and a gourmet market and deli, Exchange Bakery and Gourmet Provisions. Their slogan is, “The Source for All Your Wine-tasting Picnic Needs—Except the Wine.”

Cece and friends head to the weekly outdoor farmer’s market on Sunday afternoons. In addition to year-round fresh produce, she shops at Sam the Cheese Man’s stall, picks up local olive oil and fresh bread, buys wine from the police chief, and always ends with a visit to Tia Tamale, the tamale food truck.

When I write those scenes, I don’t understand why I can’t teleport myself in space, time, and reality to grab my own fresh hot tamale in a little paper boat.

Photo credit Sharon Hahn Darlin, CC BY 2.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0]

Readers: What’s a favorite fictional place you wish you could visit? I’ll send one commenter a copy of the new book.

A POISONOUS POUR: At the Memorial Day weekend classic car show and wine tasting, northern California wine bar owner Cece Barton witnesses heated discussions with local vintage car owners and overbearing association director Regan Greene. After Regan is later murdered, Cece once again enlists her twin, Allie, as her partner-in-sleuthing to clear the name of Cece’s elderly but muckraking neighbor. But they have to act quickly to investigate various suspects in the case before the trail goes sour.

Maddie Day writes the Cece Barton Mysteries and other gentle and historical mysteries; as Edith Maxwell, she writes Agatha-Award nominated short crime fiction. She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America and a proud lifetime member of Sisters in Crime. Originally a fourth-generation Californian, Maxwell/Day lives north of Boston with her beau and their cat Martin, where she writes, cooks, gardens, and wastes time on Facebook. Find her at edithmaxwell.com and at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen.

Picky, picky, picky...

 

HALLIE EPHRON: It’s nearly impossible to find a decent bagel in New England. I say this as someone who grew up in California within striking distance of fabulous, authentic Jewish delicatessens (Nate ‘n Al’s, Linney’s…) and then in Manhattan (Zabar’s, H&H, Russ and Daughters, Katz’s, Barney Greengrass…)

My ideal bagel is small (think hockey puck, NOT frisbee). Yeasty, with a shiny, crackly crust and a dense interior. Chewy! Close your eyes and you’d never imagine you were eating a muffin or a cookie or a piece of cake or the heel of a french bread.

I confess I’m addicted to the New York Times WIRECUTTER feature where they compare brands of everything from bed sheets to fever thermometers to… bagels. So that’s where I went hunting for a frozen bagel (no, there will never be good locally made bagels here, sad to say) readily available in my supermarket.

Sure enough, their #1 recommendation which I found at my local Stop ‘n’ Shop, delivers the goods. Ray’s New York Bagels! The quest for them took me to the BREAKFAST foods in the freezer section. (Did you know you can buy frozen scrambled eggs? Bleh.)

Thawed and toasted with some good cream cheese! It’s the closest thing to the taste of my childhood.

What’s a taste from your past that you haven’t found in any of your local food stores?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: The quest for a good bagel is SO important! And I am thrilled to hear about Ray’s, thank you.

My grandmother made delicious chopped liver, and that’s impossible to find. I remember Teaberry gum, oh, and Juicy Fruit, but I think those went away. We used to go to a deli called Shapiro's–isn't that a coincidence?--for corned beef sandwiches, and not only the corned beef but the rye bread used to be better. (But Indianapolis is not New York, I know.)

Hmm. Cokes used to be better, didn’t they?. And Fritos.

JENN McKINLAY: I went to school in New Haven and there simply is no pizza on Earth like New Haven brick oven pizza.

I’ll put Wooster Square’s Sally’s Apizza and Pepe’s Pizzeria up against anyone anywhere anytime. I’ve never found a pizza I love as much as the white clam pie at Pepe’s, cut into squares as God intended. Wait, maybe the squares are Sally’s. Lucy, do you recall which is which?

LUCY BURDETTE: You’re right Jenn, the squares are Pepe’s and their white clam is outstanding. I like the crispy pepperoni even better!

From my childhood, my sibs and I all yearn for a sausage and pepper sub that came from a deli downtown. Have never found exactly that sandwich again. As for bagels, we are very lucky to have a good bagel shop in both CT and Key West. I’ll take you to the Key West shop next winter Hallie!

HALLIE: I'm in!!

I know you already have world class doughnuts in Key West, plus every possible iteration of Key Lime Pie, including my favorite with a graham cracker crust and whipped cream on top.

RHYS BOWEN: When I go back to England I always have to have childhood food treats: good fish and chips, sticky buns, Crunchie bars.

Luckily they still all exist. But the snack called Twiglets that I used to love is now made differently and doesn’t taste right.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Maybe this is why I've never been crazy about bagels–maybe I've never had a really good one! I do love bagels and corned beef–salt beef in Britain–from the famous shop in the East End called Beigel Bake. As for childhood things, I've never had a Snickerdoodle cookie that tasted as good as my grandmother's.

I'm with Rhys on the British things that America doesn't get right. Fish and chips, sticky toffee pudding, and especially chocolate. Cadbury's US doesn't taste like Cadbury's UK. Nor do American KitKats taste the British ones. Those are my secret vice whenever I go to England, so maybe that is a good thing…

HALLIE: So what about you? What's a taste from your past that you long for, or is something miraculously still available, just as good as you remember it??