The Key West Woman's Club Cookbook for National Retro Day!

LUCY BURDETTE: Did you know that today is National Retro Day?? I thought this would be a perfect day to talk about the Key West Woman’s Club Cookbook, including the new edition which I edited last year, and is now out in the world!

The first iteration of the cookbook was published in the 1949. It’s a wonderful piece of history even if you wouldn’t go anywhere near most of the recipes. (Turtle steaks anyone?) It’s all written in the handwriting of various women who worked on the book and contributed recipes, and it has wonderful drawings like this one:

As we mulled over the new edition, we knew we wanted to retain the spirit of both the book published in 1949 and the one published in 1988. Although some of the recipes were the same in 1988, the handwriting was replaced by standard typing, and many of the quirky drawings were also removed.

My job was to figure out what should be retained from both versions and then to add in some modern day recipes from current members of the woman’s club. Luckily, I didn’t have to do the work of scanning or anything else technical. I had to choose, organize, and send it off. Here is T-bone helping me with the layout:

My suggestion was to use some of the hand written introductions and actual recipes as intros to each section. For example, we couldn’t possibly leave out this quote:

I had a spare copy of the second cookbook into which I could sandwich photocopies of the old sections that we did didn’t want to lose. I thought we would be overwhelmed with new recipe submissions, but luckily the number was manageable. I included the banana cream pie that I used in Key West food critic mystery number 12, A DISH TO DIE FOR. I wrote that before I got involved with the Woman’s Club, though there are several scenes that take place there. In fact, Hayley finds clues to the mystery in a box of old drawings that has been stashed at the back of a drawer for years and years.

The cookbook team is still working on marketing. As of today, there is no way to buy the cookbook online. However, there are copies available through our local bookstores, Key West Island Books ( 305-294-2904), and Books and Books Key West (305 320 0208). If you are a local or a visitor looking for a copy, they are also available at the Key West Art and Historical Society, the Woman’s Club, and also will be available at the brand new cooking school.

With fellow cookbook teammate, Marlene

We're so glad to have helped save this bit of Key West history. What would you feature for Retro Day?

Cookbooks as Inspiration for Fiction @LucyBurdette

 LUCY BURDETTE: First, I must thank the entire Jungle Red community for celebrating the  publication of A DISH TO DIE FOR—while I was on vacation. This is so not recommended! However the pandemic that will not end uprooted our plans to go to Scotland several times and I had to grab the chance when it arrived. Thank you so much my friends for celebrating without me here on the page!

Before I left on vacation, I was busy writing blogs to help get the word out about the new book, including an article for CrimeReads. The assignment was to write something that would tie into the book without being overly focused on self-promoting. The topic I chose was the use of cookbooks in novels. You might remember that one of the important plot strands in A DISH TO DIE FOR is about an old Key West Woman’s Club cookbook that Hayley finds in a pile of library donations. (In fact, I have two of those to give away today—one is the 1949 edition, and the other from 1988, so do leave a comment!) It turns out I am not the only writer who’s thought of this angle. Mystery writers Ellen Byron, Kate Carlisle, and Daryl Wood Gerber have all used cookbooks as part of the plots and settings in their mysteries. I’ve also mentioned recently a book I really enjoyed called Miss Cecily’s Recipes for Exceptional Ladies, in which the two main characters slowly connect through their mutual love of food, and through the pages of a mysterious cookbook wedged on a shelf in Miss Cecily’s bedroom.

In Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown, the protagonist discovers an old cookbook from the fifties in the basement of their old home, but soon learns that it harbors darker secrets than the recipes for fancy 1950’s dinners. In The Secret French Recipes of Sophie Valraux by Samantha Verant, the mysteries are not of the murderous kind, but instead the secrets of complicated families, after a chef finds handwritten recipes from her grandmother’s collection.

What is it about a cookbook that attracts a fiction writer’s interest? I don’t think it could be the list of recipes, or even their content. The best of these cookbooks showcase the writers’ voice. Often descriptions introducing the recipe reveal a lot about the writer, as well as the times in which it was written. 

In the case of Dish, Hayley learns about Key West in the 1940's and the psychology of women in those older times. The discovery of an early version of the first cookbook adds fire to her rumination about a current day murder. Here’s an example from that first cookbook that shows what I mean about voice:

“Make your appetizers small, pretty, zippy, and easy to handle-for it is very very hard to greet an admiral with decorum when involved with a limp piece of celery overstuffed with soft cheese, and practically impossible to exchange witticisms with the suave novelist when one’s whole being is concentrated on the problem of what to do with olive pits!” From the Key West cookbook 1949

For me, old cookbooks turn out to be a perfect inspiration for fiction, both the plot and the voice. I am now on alert for new ideas—consider the article sent by a friend from a cookbook published in 1926 by the Ways and Means Committee of the Ladies' Benevolent Society of the Westville Congregational Church in Connecticut. The title of the piece? Recipe for Cooking Husbands. 

Do you have a favorite old cookbook that would be fodder for a novel? Can you add another novel to my list? Leave a comment of any sort to be entered in the drawing for the two Key West cookbooks. I will choose winners on Friday!

PS Here are the book discussion questions for Dish that I cooked up, in case you missed them...

What We're Writing (or not) @LucyBurdette #bookclub

 LUCY BURDETTE: Lots and lots and lots going on this month, including finishing Key West mystery #13, writing blogs to help launch A DISH TO DIE FOR, and strangest of all, going on vacation! If we've had any luck, I should be back in Scotland, perhaps even on the overnight ferry headed to Shetland. I have been reading Ann Cleeves's Black Raven to get ready for Jimmy Perez's home island. (You know I'm desperate to go because I'm willing to try to dodge the BA5 version of the coronavirus and a serious tendency to seasickness!)

What I decided to do ahead of time for today's post is show you the book discussion questions I came up with for A DISH TO DIE FOR. I know of a few book groups who've used the questions I developed for DEATH ON THE MENU and earlier books in the series, so I'm providing these hoping the same will happen for the new book...

the beach where Ziggy finds the body

1. There are a lot of real people, places, and food in this book and this series in general. Boca Chica Beach for example, where the body is found, is a real place, as is Geiger Key Marina where Hayley Snow eats and tracks down clues. How do you feel about bits of reality in your mysteries?

2. Hayley Snow meets her new father-in-law for the first time in this book, as Nathan and his father have been estranged for several years. Talk about your reactions to their relationship and their interactions over the course of this book.

3. Hayley Snow and her husband Nathan Bransford are feeling their way in their new marriage, and also in her role as amateur detective and his as professional. Does this seem believable to you?

4. The Key West woman’s club is a real place and the cookbook mentioned in the story is real as well. How did you feel about the use of the old cookbook as part of the plot? Can you think of other books that have used cookbooks as part of the story?

The Key West Woman's Club

5. The relationship between police and citizens has been fraught with difficulties and terrible events over the past several years. How did you feel about the way the police department is portrayed in this book? Does police work in Key West seem different from the work done in other cities and towns around the country?

Lucy with a few of her favorite police officers

6. One of the questions that always comes up for a mystery writer is how many books should there be in a series. A DISH TO DIE FOR is number 12. Discuss your thoughts about long running mystery series. What causes you to lose interest? What kinds of things make you want to beg the author to continue writing?

7. From Rex Stout’s famous foodie hero Nero Wolfe to Virginia Rich’s the Nantucket Diet Murders to Diane Mott Davidson’s Dying for Chocolate, and now the Key West Mysteries, what do you think explains our passion for combining cuisine and crime? Why do you choose to read culinary mysteries?

8. One of the biggest challenges when writing an amateur sleuth mystery is developing a reason for the sleuth to get involved. How did you feel about Hayley‘s stake in solving the mystery of the murdered man on the beach? How would you handle coming across such a scene?

If the discussion lags--or even if it doesn't--I recommend serving this, based on one in the Key West Woman's Club Cookbook:

Banana cream pie

One of the plot strands in this book has to do with the Woman’s Club in Key West, which is a gorgeous old home on Duval Street. I took a tour of the building this spring, and was the happy recipient of the 1988 version of their cookbook. I had also found an earlier edition of the book on eBay, that had been published in 1949. Oh my, the recipes and stories in those cookbooks had my mind racing with possibilities! This banana cream pie was served to Hayley and Martha Hubbard, while they are probing a suspect. I chose to make a graham cracker crust rather than, but any crust is fine. The recipe is based on the version in the 1988 cookbook.

Ingredients

For the crust

One package graham crackers (nine sheets)

2 tablespoons sugar

4 tablespoons butter

For the pie

2 ripe bananas

2 cups whole milk

3 eggs, room temperature, separated

4 tablespoons sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

pinch of salt

2 teaspoons water

1 tablespoon butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the meringue

3 egg whites (see above)

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

2 teaspoons sugar

Preheat the oven to 350. 

To make the crust, smash or whirl the crackers to crumbs. Melt the butter. Stir the butter and sugar into the crumbs and press this mixture into the bottom and sides of a 10-inch pie pan. Bake for ten minutes and let that cool.

For the pudding, separate the eggs and set the whites aside. Beat the yolks until thick and smooth with the sugar, cornstarch, salt, and cold water. Heat the milk until it's about to boil, then stir it slowly into the egg mixture. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the pudding thickens. (About five minutes.) Let that cool a bit and then mix in the vanilla and butter.

Slice the bananas into the pie crust. Spread the pudding on top of the bananas.

Beat the egg whites in a clean bowl with the cream of tartar until soft peaks appear. Continue beating while slowly adding the sugar until peaks are stiff and glossy--about 5 minutes. 

Mound the meringue onto the pudding, arranging it into peaks. 

Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes until the meringue begins to brown. Refrigerate the pie for three hours before serving.

Lucy again: Do you belong to a book group? How do you run the discussion? Any suggestions for tweaking the questions above? (I'll be back on Tuesday to properly launch this book!)

Meanwhile, A DISH TO DIE FOR is in bookstores everywhere right now!

Launch Day: Lucy Burdette's A Dish to Die For!!!

JENN McKINLAY: Waiting for the latest release in a series you love is both grueling (WHEN WILL IT COME OUT?) and thrilling (IT'S HERE! IT'S FINALLY HERE!). Being a long time fan of our Lucy's Key West Food Critic Mystery series is one such rollercoaster ride for me and guess what? IT'S HERE!!! TODAY IS THE DAY!!!

BUY NOW

Now I have the dreaded decision to make. Do I devour the book the day it comes out or read it in small bites? Or should I wait, saving it for a day where I need a pick me up? Maybe I need to read the entire series again before I start the latest book so that it's all fresh in my mind? What to do...decisions...decisions.

Graphic by Christie Conlee

But back to the book! Here's a description to tantalize you:

National bestselling author Lucy Burdette returns to Key West for another delectable dish of secrets, intrigue, and murder.

Peace and quiet are hard to find in bustling Key West, so Hayley Snow, food critic for Key Zest magazine, is taking the afternoon off for a tranquil lunch with a friend outside of town. As they are enjoying the wild beach and the lunch, she realizes that her husband Nathan’s dog, Ziggy, has disappeared. She follows his barking, to find him furiously digging at a shallow grave with a man’s body in it. Davis Jager, a local birdwatcher, identifies him as GG Garcia, a rabble-rousing Key West local and developer. Garcia was famous for over-development on the fragile Keys, womanizing, and refusing to follow city rules—so it’s no wonder he had a few enemies.
 
When Davis is attacked in the parking lot of a local restaurant after talking to Hayley and her dear friend, the octogenarian Miss Gloria, Hayley is slowly but surely drawn into the case. Hayley’s mother, Janet, has been hired to cater GG’s memorial service reception at the local Woman’s Club, using recipes from their vintage Key West cookbook—and Hayley and Miss Gloria sign on to work with her, hoping to cook up some clues by observing the mourners.
 
But the real clues appear when Hayley begins to study the old cookbook, as whispers of old secrets come to life, dragging the past into the present—with murderous results.

Doesn't this mystery sound delicious? This is the 12th book in a series that just keeps getting better and better. 

What's being said: “Key West food critic Hayley Snow proves once again that she understands crime as well as cuisine . . . A complex tale of murder and deceit.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Culinary cozy fans are in for a treat.”
—Publishers Weekly

Now tell us, Readers, what do you do when the latest in a favorite series is released? Read it that day? Wait and save it? Read it in small bites to make it last? Or devour it?

When an Idea Appears #writing @Lucyburdette

 

LUCY BURDETTE: My brain is so full right now—Key West food critic mystery #13 is due 9/1 and I’m trying hard to get the draft finished early. Plus, we are just back from a whirlwind family visit—first to California to see kids and grandkids, and then to Michigan to visit with my 95 year old uncle.

 He is my father’s only brother and they loved each other dearly. My sister and brother and 3 cousins joined him for a yak-fest—lots of old stories were told, from funny to poignant to downright sad and back to funny again. It felt like a wonderful gift to be reminded of how powerful our history and connections are.

Other than that Mrs. Lincoln…A DISH TO DIE FOR  will be out in August and I’m thinking about promotion. In order to do this right, I feel like I need to remember the earliest days when the idea was germinating. First, a little background. Hayley and Nathan’s dog Ziggy find a body on the beach about ten miles north of Key West. It’s a shock of course, and she’s still reeling from this when she remembers she’s agreed to help sort out donated cookbooks for the Friends of the Key West Library. I’d been talking with my writing pal friends Ang and Chris about struggling with the plot. Soon after, Ang sent this email:

I don't know if this would be of any use to you, but I thought you'd find it interesting. I belong to the Historic Florida Page and this came up today. I wonder if they have a copy of the cookbook at your library. It was done by the Key West Woman's Club. What's cool is that the book was written out in longhand. 

And the next day, he sent this:

ANG: I notice the pie recipe is from Eloise Carey Felton. Here is a picture of her. Eloise and her husband owned a restaurant called the Green Turtle. They also had a construction company and there is a Felton Rd. on Dredgers Key. I know. I should be writing. LOL

LUCY: You're too funny! I've got to work this cookbook into my current story. Just have to figure out what this might have to do with the murdered man... put your thinking caps on...

In real life, I found a copy of the old cookbook on Ebay and ordered it instantly. In the story, I determined that Hayley would discover an old copy of the first Key West Woman’s Club cookbook at the library. She becomes intrigued with the possibility that this bit of history might help her unravel the reason that the victim died on the beach. In order to portray this accurately, I enlisted my pal Annette Holmstrom to teach me how she values old books. She does the same for Hayley. Here’s a snippet from A DISH TO DIE FOR:

    Annette crossed her hands in her lap. “Did I overwhelm you? Do you feel like you have enough information to get started? You can set any books aside that you’re not sure about, and I’ll check those over.”

“I think I’m good, though it feels like a lot of responsibility.”

She patted my shoulder and smiled. “I’ll check your work. By the way,” she added, “keep an eye out for loose papers in the books. I’ve found love letters—both received and unsent—receipts, and once an uncashed check for a thousand dollars. We were able to track the owner down and return it, to much gratitude. I’ll leave you to it—have fun and give a shout with questions, okay?”

I begin to sift through the pile of cookbooks. I put two aside that had been signed by a local celebrity chef who’d since moved off the island. Underneath those, I found many copies of the Sunset cooking series (probably worth something at the time but not these days), a stained and obviously well-loved copy of Jell-O recipes (really?), and at the bottom of the box, a cookbook from the Key West Woman’s Club published in 1949. The recipes had been written in longhand and then copied, printed, and spiral bound. Quite irresistible.

I glanced at the table of contents, then flipped to the section listing soups. One caught my eye: green turtle soup from the Garcia family. The green turtles, the introduction read, were named not after the color of their shells but the layer of fat underlying those shells. That color varied according to what they ate. The list of ingredients began with two pounds turtle flippers. I felt instantly queasy. I had recently been reading about the history of green turtles on our island, thinking of pitching an article with a historical angle. I would have to remind myself that an ingredient that struck me as horrifying today was perfectly normal back then.

Green turtle stock had been in huge demand in the late 1800s, not only in local restaurants but across the nation. Key West fishermen were major suppliers, as the turtles were plentiful and easy to catch. The State Department had declared the green turtle an endangered species in the 1970s, and people stopped using it. By then, it was almost too late.

It occurred to me that this cookbook could make a very good article for Key Zest, with a bit of history, a few photos of the pages originally written in longhand, plus my attempts to recreate a few of the recipes. I could probably get my mother to help with the cooking if I needed her. We would not make turtle soup, of course.

I stuck my head into Michael the librarian’s back office. He was sitting at his computer, in front of a wall of bookcases bursting with books and behind a big white sign that read America’s Most Beloved Librarian.

“Do you mind if I borrow this for a week or so?” As I asked the question, I realized how much I wanted to own this cookbook. “Or better yet, once we figure out what it’s worth, I’d love to buy it. It’s giving me an idea for an article, maybe more than one. I’ll treat it with kid gloves. Literally.”

Too late, I noticed Michael was on the phone. He waved and nodded, then covered the mouthpiece. “Sure, take it. Unless Annette determines it’s worth a small fortune, you’ve earned it. See you later this week.”

Question for you Reds, are you intrigued by old cookbooks? Do you have any that you actually use? What do you think about offering a copy of an old Key West cookbook as a giveaway during my book launch events? Any other brainstorms?

I'd love to give away a trade paperback copy of A SCONE OF CONTENTION, hot off the press, to one commenter!

Is the Middle in the Cards? @LucyBurdette #whatwerewriting

 LUCY BURDETTE: I’m grinding along in the muddled middle of Key West mystery #13. Before we made our trip from Key West to Connecticut, I screeched to a halt at a scene where Hayley has lunch with her tarot-card-reading pal, Lorenzo. What would he tell her that could help her solve the mystery or sort out some questions in her own life? 

Believe it or not, it always helps me move the plot along if *I* have lunch with my real friend, Ron, the model for Lorenzo. So I did. Here we are, when I ran across him at Mallory Square.

And here's a bit of the scene featuring Hayley with her Lorenzo, from about Chapter 16 or so. I don't have it all worked out, but it's slowly coming together. (The sentence in caps reminds me later to somehow use this more expertly. Suggestions always welcome, of course!) 

I stopped speaking and slumped into my chair. “Are you having any messages from the universe about this mess?” 

I didn’t really expect him to be able to deliver an answer to that. That’s not how his gift worked. But he sometimes had sparks, bits of light that illuminated the path later on. I leaned forward to absorb whatever he said.

My friend cocked his head like a curious bird. “From what you’ve told me, I would want to know who had access to their knife. And who had a previous relationship with the man who died. And who stood to gain the most from his death. Or who became enraged by something he did when he was alive.” LATER REMEMBER A HINT THAT COMES FROM THIS READING

I sat back in my chair again and crumpled my napkin. “Those are excellent questions.” 

“Did you ever watch that cooking show called Rat in the Kitchen? One of the performing chefs is a saboteur, but nobody knows who it is. The person oversalts a competitor’s sauce or exchanges rotten ingredients for fresh, things like that. This reminds me of that. Although no one gets murdered on the show.” Now he looked a little sad. “It’s not only in Key West where those with the most money run the world.”

“You always come through. How are you doing by the way? I didn’t ask you anything about your life.” Belatedly, I noticed the dark circles under his blue eyes.

Those eyes blinked closed and then back open. “You know that Uranus is in my house, and that means a rocky stretch, a lot of disruption. But I’m coming out of it, I am fine.” He paused. “I will be fine.”

Lorenzo believed deeply in the meaning of astrological charts, and what he saw there, reflected his truth. It was often spot on. This reminded me of what my friend Eric the psychologist always told me. The caretakers in this world could appear to be all together emotionally, but the weight of carrying other peoples’ problems could begin to create tiny fissures in their hearts. Emotional stress fractures, to say it another way. It was important for a caretaker to reach out so that someone could care for them, too. Otherwise, the heart might shatter along the lines of those hairline cracks. Lorenzo, like Eric, was a kind person with a big heart whose first impulse was to carry other people forward when they couldn’t move themselves. 

If you’re interested in other posts about Lorenzo, here’s one from Fatal Reservations.

This one was written as Fatal Reservations was published and it follows the development of Lorenzo (and me and Hayley) across the series. 

I'd love to ask you what else you think Lorenzo might tell Hayley, but seeing as you don't know the story, it's hardly a fair question!

Meanwhile, #12, A DISH TO DIE FOR will be out on August 9, but you can certainly pre-order it now! 

Food Memories @LucyBurdette

Lucy's mom, ready for the party

LUCY BURDETTE: With Thanksgiving in the rear view mirror and Christmas coming fast, it’s not hard to drift back to memories of earlier days. Especially memories of food and family. 

We grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey. My father had a long commute into New York City to his job, leaving my mother as the chief cook after her days teaching elementary school, and taking care of four kids. She didn’t love to cook, but like the rest of us, she loved to eat. She also loved the holidays, when we got together with her sisters and their families. That food was never fancy, but it was good and plentiful, usually anchored by a ham or a turkey. If it was a ham, my aunt Barbara made a mean baked beans dish, and always two kinds of potato salad, one with onions and hard-boiled eggs for most people, and one without for the fussy kids. With turkey, we'd have mashed potatoes and gravy and all the trimmings.

A summer party with Mom, Aunt Carol, and my sisters Susan and Martha

My mother also loved a party. The times Mom most welcomed assistants in the kitchen was while baking cookies for the holidays and preparing finger food for a party--we often hosted a holiday open house for neighbors and friends. She spent days making tiny triple-decker finger sandwiches, choux puffs stuffed with tuna or shrimp salad, fruit salad piled into a watermelon shell carved like a basket, and spritz butter cookies in various shapes and colors. I’m borrowing some of those to use for a funeral reception in A DISH TO DIE FOR. Here's Hayley helping her mother prepare:

“Does old-time recipes mean head cheese, and Spam, and vegetables out of a can mixed with Miracle Whip?” asked Sam. He seemed to love serving as my mother’s first assistant, but he loved teasing her most of all.

“Let’s hope not,” my mother said cheerfully. “We’ll focus on finger foods, since most people won’t be sitting.” She clipped the list of recipes to a stand on the counter. “I asked Cole’s Peace Bakery to slice some loaves of bread lengthwise.” She pulled four loaves of sliced bread out of the brown paper bags on the counter. “My mother used to make little three-decker sandwiches when her friends were coming to lunch,” she explained to Sam. “The fillings were always different, like egg salad in one layer and tuna fish or cream cheese with olives in another.

“At Christmas time she had her bakery dye some of the bread loaves red and some green, so the layers of the sandwiches were multicolored. Do you remember, Hayley?” Her face looked a little melancholy, and her voice was wistful. We’d both deeply mourned the loss of my sweet grandmother.  

How about you Red family? Are you full of holiday food and family memories this time of year?

What We're Writing @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: We've just finished making the transition from Connecticut to Key West--it doesn't seem like it should be that hard, but boy am I discombobulated. And in the middle of the trip, the ebook edition of UNSAFE HAVEN was released, so I've tried to let the world know about that. (Hardcover and audio to come December 7.) 

Meanwhile, I also finished the the first round of edits for A DISH TO DIE FOR, number 12 in the Key West food critic mystery series that will be out next August. Here's the cover--so pretty! Now the second round of edits is in my inbox--I am very happy about how this turned out. I’ve told you a little bit about that book here, and it's available for pre-order now!

But what am I actually writing? The opening for book number 13, which basically at this point has no name, no cover, and don’t tell my editor, but no distinct plot. Writer Edwin Hill proposed an interesting approach to National Novel Writing Month on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. He planned to try to write 1500 words a day for a prescribed number of days and then go back and outline the book based on what he'd produced. Kind of an interesting idea. And it does match my sense over the last few books that I don’t know what a book is about until I’ve written some of it. So we’ll see what Actually Happens, but I will offer you a snippet of Key West #13 and hope you find it intriguing! I'm enjoying bringing Violet and Bettina, the scone sisters from A SCONE OF CONTENTION, to visit Key West...

Chapter Two

Violet and Bettina were the last passengers to disembark. Swathed in plaid wool, they entered the arrivals area blinking like badgers emerging from a den into the light and the crowd. Miss Gloria shrieked with excitement and flapped her glittery sign.

“Welcome! We are so thrilled to have you here in our country.” She hugged them each in turn and they hugged her back. “Give me your coats,” she said, “you’re going to roast if you stay all wrapped up as if you’ve arrived in the Highlands.” I moved forward to take their carry-on bags and pecked them each on the cheek.

“Welcome to Key West!” I said. “Miss Gloria has been dying to show you around our town.”

As I remembered, the two sisters looked very much alike, though Bettina was a little taller and stockier than her older sister and had distinctive pale blue eyes. They had similar haircuts, short gray bobs, and wore skirts that fell to their knees and sensible lace up shoes. 

Once we collected their two enormous suitcases, we loaded up the Buick and headed home. The two sisters oohed and ahhed all the way across town, even though the jaunt from the airport to Houseboat Row was not the most scenic that the island had to offer. 

“Wait till we show you the town,” send Miss Gloria. “You are going to love our bakeries too. Have you ever had key lime pie?” 

We piled out of the car and Miss Gloria herded them up the wooden finger of the dock that led to our boats. Behind them, I dragged the two heavy suitcases. I wondered if they’d brought baking equipment with them to take on their tour. I knew that serious chefs carried their knives with them, but for bakers? A special rolling pin? Pastry cutter? Or an implement I hadn’t even thought of? I hoisted the bags onto the deck of my friend’s home.

“Thank you,” Miss Gloria said. “We can take it from here.” She turned to the ladies. “Hayley offered to cook tonight so you don’t have to go out and face the restaurant scene when you’re so jetlagged. But first we’ll get you settled. I hope you’ll be comfortable in what used to be Hayley and Nathan’s bed. Though if she could cram a six-footer into that space along with a territorial cat, two little ladies should do just fine.”

“Cocktails in half an hour,” I said and headed back to my own houseboat to peel the shrimp and make a salad. I’d gone through a million recipes preparing for their visit. Key West pink shrimp was a no-brainer, but in what form? 

Miss Gloria nixed a few ideas as too spicy and possibly foreign sounding. “I don’t remember eating anything spicy in Scotland,” she’d said. In the end, we’d agreed on garlicky, buttery, Worcestershire-laced baked shrimp with lots of good bread from Old Town bakery to sop up the sauce.

With my prep work completed, I went out to the deck to look for signs of my dinner guests. I was expecting Miss Gloria and the ladies half an hour after I dropped them off. Maybe they'd all passed out and weren't in the mood for dinner at all. But her deck was empty except for T-bone and Sparky, so I popped over and tapped on the screen door. Inside, the three ladies were clustered around Miss Gloria’s police scanner. My friend looked up, a guilty expression on her face.

“Sorry luv,” said Bettina, looking from my friend to me. “Are we running late?"

PS Hallie persuaded me to watch my first-ever episode of the Great British Baking Show and having that in the back of my mind is helping me write my Scottish ladies. I still haven't quite decided why they are touring the US as guest bakers. Suggestions welcome!

What We're #Writing @LucyBurdette

 LUCY BURDETTE: I think the better question might be what I am not writing... Which would be practically nothing because everything is coming together at once! Two weeks ago I finished major edits on the thriller UNSAFE HAVEN, which is coming September in the UK and December in the US. It needed a lot of work and fortunately I had a terrific editor. Then the edits on the edits came back and had to be returned within the week. So that all got emailed to England on Friday the 16th. And I've gotten a few more queries this week. (You can pre-order it through your independent bookstore, or Barnes and Noble, or Amazon.)

Meanwhile, A Scone of Contention is coming out August 10 and that means blog tours! So I’ve been busy with those and hope you will enjoy visiting the various hosts with me--I'll keep you posted about when and where. Regular readers of Jungle Red should mark your calendars for August 18, when you can hear Jenn McKinlay and me talking about our new books with the wonderful reviewer Oline Cogdill, all sponsored by Murder on the Beach. You know that's going to be fun!

But this past week I've been working like a demon on food critic number 12, now known as A DISH TO DIE FOR thanks to my friend Ruth McCarty. Lots going on in this book--Nathan's dog Ziggy has found a body on the beach, Hayley's discovered an old Woman's Club cookbook in the bin of library donations with mysterious historical connections, and Nathan's father is visiting on the island. (Uninvited, as all of Nathan's relatives seem to do, LOL.) I thought you might enjoy a little snippet about the cookbook, since it's been so interesting to read and work into the plot: 

Back home on our boat, I spent the next hour studying the recipes and notes in the Key West Woman’s Club cookbook, searching for the angle I’d use in my article. Rather than being typeset, everything in the book had been written out in longhand and illustrated with drawings that ranged from stick figures to folk art. Then the pages had been copied and spiral bound. I noticed that a good half of the women who had contributed recipes identified themselves only by their husbands’ names: Mrs. Carl Johnson, Mrs. William R. Warren, Mrs. Cyril Marshall, Mrs. Frank E Bowser. 

I could imagine the women, each at her kitchen table, laboriously copying the ingredients for her best recipe and then instructions for preparing it. They’d have their hair pinned up in knots and be wearing dresses with cinched waists covered by frilly aprons. Had there been infighting about which recipes would be chosen, and who the artists might be? The recipes were a funny mixture of old and new, not shy about using canned goods or frozen vegetables, and yet not squeamish about pounding conch until the cartilage released, or cleaning feathers from a duck, or removing the bloodline from a piece of fresh tuna fish. 

One more thing, John came downstairs this morning and said "I just had the worst dream. I was trying to defend you, as lots of people were saying you didn't do anything. I had to scream at them, 'Sure and while she was doing nothing, she wrote 19 books!'"

Isn't he the sweetest guy in the world?? 

Do you own old cookbooks that tell as much about the history of the times as they do about food?