Super Super SUPER Simple Recipes

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HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: So--there are recipes and recipes. For instance, there is the gorgeous voluptuous Julia Child French Onion soup that honestly takes hours and HOURS but it's fabulous, but did I say it takes hours?
And then there are tomato Santas. 

And tomato porcupines. I think that's a potato at the base. 

(I saw these on Funny Food Recipes on Facebook--and it is totally addictive.)

Look at these sailboats! HOW did they think of these?

Anyway. They count as cooking, right? Just ask the amazing and talented Debra Goldstein. Deb is incredible, a real friend of Jungle Red and a truly stalwart member of the writing community. She was president of the Guppies! Fabulous.  AND she was a judge. so she knows everything, and now she's got another wonderful new book. 

But she--her main character at least--knows her limitations. And thats in the realm of...cooking.


Finding Recipes to Avoid Freaking Out in the Kitchen 
            by Debra H. Goldstein

Some people are afraid of spiders, some fear dead bodies. Cooking from scratch petrifies me. 

The irony - I love to entertain. 

Early on I realized there were two easy solutions to my dilemma: host dinners at restaurants or have caterers, long gone before the guests arrive, make their dishes in my serving pieces. This still left me with a problem when I was asked to bring a dish to an event where everyone was expected to contribute to the table. It didn’t take too many instances to educate my friends to automatically assign me bread, soda, paper products, or anything else that needed to be purchased from the grocery store.

Sarah Blair, the protagonist of my Kensington cozy mystery series, shares my fear of the kitchen. For her, cooking from scratch is more frightening than murder. Luckily, she has a twin sister, Emily, who is a gourmet chef. Emily usually comes to the rescue when Sarah needs to serve something, but when she doesn’t, watch out.

For example, in One Taste Too Many, the first book in the series, Sarah knew starting over after her ten-year marriage, from which she only emerged with RahRah, her Siamese cat, would be messy. Things fell apart completely when her ex dropped dead, seemingly poisoned by a taste of Emily’s award-winning rhubarb crisp. 

With RahRah wanted by the woman who broke up her marriage and Emily wanted by the police for murder, Sarah had to figure out the right recipe to crack the case before time ran out. Unfortunately, for a gal whose idea of good china is floral paper plates, catching the real killer and living to tell about it potentially meant facing a fate worse than death – being in the kitchen.

In Two Bites Too Many, the newly released second Sarah Blair mystery, things are looking up for Sarah following her unsavory divorce. Settled into a cozy carriage house with RahRah, she’s managed to hold on to her law firm receptionist job and – if befriending strays at the local animal shelter counts – lead a thriving social life. In fact, Sarah has it more together than her enterprising twin whose plans to open a gourmet restaurant hit a real dead end.

When the president of the town bank is murdered after icing her twin’s business, all eyes are on the one person at the scene with blood on her hands – Sarah’s sharp-tongued mother, Maybelle. Determined to get her mom off the hook and help Emily’s business endeavors, Sarah must gather the ingredients of the crime together quickly to bring the true culprit to justice and once again avoid doing time in the kitchen.

To prep both books, I had to overcome my fear of the kitchen long enough to find recipes using pre-made ingredients that were also funny. 

My favorite one, Jell-O in a Can, which I’ll share with you today, was popular in the 1950’s.

1 20 oz. can of sliced pineapple (the recipe recommended Dole pineapple as it was an ad for Dole and Jell-O)

1 3 oz. pkg. of Jell-O gelatin, any flavor choice

1 cup boiling water

Optional: 1 banana or other type of fruit

Open the can and pour off the pineapple juice but leave the pineapple in the can. Dissolve the Jell-O in boiling water and permit it to cool slightly before pouring the Jell-O and water mixture into the can, over the pineapple. If desired, place the banana or other fruit in the center of the rings of pineapple.

Chill until set.

To serve, run a knife around the inside of the can and tip it out. (Before rimmed flip-top cans, one pushed the jelled mixture through and out using the bottom of the can.) Slice between the pineapple rings and serve.

After all these years, I doubt I’ll ever be comfortable in the kitchen, but I know, especially now that Kensington and I have inked a new deal to continue the series through at least book 5, I’m going to have a ball finding comical, but doable, recipes using pre-made ingredients to share.

HANK: Oh, I have to say. I adore you, Debra, but that sounds AWFUL. :-)  But the book deal? DEE-licious.  Hurray!

(I do like these:)

How about you, Reds and readers? What are some easy fun recipes? Let's say: four ingredients. And they don't have to be as cute as this!

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Judge Debra H.Goldstein writes Kensington’s Sarah Blair mystery series (One Taste Too Many, Two Bites Too Many). She also authored Should Have Played Poker and IPPY Award winning Maze in Blue. Her short stories, including Anthony and Agatha nominated “The Night They Burned Ms. Dixie’s Place,” have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies including Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, and Mystery Weekly. Debra serves on the national boards of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America and is president of the Southeast Chapter of MWA and past president of SinC’s Guppy Chapter. Find out more about Debra at www.DebraHGoldstein.com .

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Taste-Many-Sarah-Blair-Mystery/dp/1496719476

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Bites-Many-Sarah-Blair-Mystery/dp/1496719484

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/one-taste-too-many-debra-h-goldstein/1128297322

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/two-bites-too-many-debra-h-goldstein/1130055243

But I Don't Know Nuthin' About...

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Yay, Edith. Is all I can say. Edith Maxwell, you know her, right? A stalwart here in the Jungle--funny and wise and thoughtful and one of the most centered and passionate people you could ever know. And now, her mysteries are out there in the world for everyone to read--look at that gorgeous cover! Are everyone here is cheering and applauding and so happy for her!

So of course, we had to invite her to tell you all about her new book--but instead, she's really discussing something...else.  Friday, we chatted about hockey here, and I said--whoa, here's something we've never talked about on Jungle Red. Well, today...something else we've never discussed.

On Farming and Birthing

              by Edith Maxwell

Thanks so much, Hank, for having me to visit! I wanted to talk a bit about how farming and attending births are related. Uh, howzzat, you ask? Well, hear me out.

A long time ago and a few miles away, I co-owned a small certified-organic farm north of Boston. I was the  farmer. I had two little boys who attended school and preschool. I had a (now-ex) husband who worked in Boston. I planned and planted, tilled and weeded, composted and cover cropped, reaped and sold. And then started all over again. I had left a full-time career working in speech recognition for a hi-tech (Kurzweil) company to be home with my kids while they were young.

At the same time I also taught prepared childbirth classes in my living room. It wasn't strictly Lamaze or Bradley methods, just trying to get couples comfortable with whatever might happen at the birth of their baby. We practiced relaxing. They talked about those weird pregnancy dreams moms-to-be (and sometimes  dads) have about their baby turning into a rat or losing the child in some dark hallway. We went through all the kinds of procedures that a hospital stay might include and what the physiological process of late pregnancy and birth is. And then we had doll-diapering races between the dads. In addition, I worked as a doula, hiring out as labor support. 

These were sweet and challenging times for me as a farmer, as a mother, as a birth support person, as a wife, even. For the first time in my adult life I depended on someone else for much of my financial wellbeing, farming and childbirth education not being all that lucrative. I loved growing organic vegetables and fruits, and I was good at it. I loved coaching nervous couples to learn all they could about this mysterious process they were about to go through and then trust their bodies to do the work, and apparently I was good at that, too. The hardest and most rewarding work was staying home with my own babies and trying to find something interesting to talk about with my husband at dinner that didn't involve poop or play dates.

Lately I've been thinking about the similarities between growing food and attending births. It's a real miracle to watch a baby come into this world. Women go down into death and bring forth life, every single time. Smooth progress can be interfered with by overly cautious care providers, by a slim-hipped woman with a large-headed baby, by fear, by malnutrition. My job as a doula was to intermediate between the couple and the hospital, explaining procedures to the couple, making sure the medical staff knew the couple's wishes,  helping the mom and dad feel comfortable.

 (Here's a picture of me with a baby whose birth I attended. He is now twenty and just finished his second year at Brown University!)

My job as a farmer was to intermediate between the seed, the soil, the weather, and my customers. Smooth progress can be interfered with by applying insecticides that wipe out beneficial insects along with pesky ones, by rainstorms that wash out the field just after planting, by neglecting weeds until they are bigger than the crop, by trying to grow varieties that don't flourish in this temperature zone, by a drought. 

Both jobs involve a kind of midwifery as well as an element of uncertainty. I'm glad I wasn't completely responsible for the births, and I'm also glad I now have a small backyard garden instead of a one-acre intensive farm. But as farmer and doula, I strived for smooth progress. And mostly got it.

I started writing this farm mystery during the winter before my last farming season almost twenty years ago. I didn't use any of the actual writing when I got going on it again last year, but I used the world I had set up: geek-turned-organic farmer Cam Flaherty, her small farm, the fictional town of Westbury, the chef and local-foods restaurant, and locally sourced murder. I added the Locavore Club and the plucky Girl Scout volunteer, and more. So far the series doesn't include any childbirth scenes, but you never know what might pop into book three or beyond!

Readers, what kind of unusual occupations do you like to read about? Are there any that stretch the imagination a little too much? 

Writers,what's the most intriguing part of your own past that you have worked into your books? Is there anything that's off limits?

HANK: And a copy of A TINE TO LIVE....to one lucky commenter! (And did I say--YAY Edith!) (And we won't even begin to discuss the connections between birthing babies and birthing books, right?)


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Edith Maxwell writes the Local Foods Mysteries.  A TINE TO LIVE, A TINE TO DIE introduces geek-turned-organic farmer Cam Flaherty, a colorful Locavore Club, and locally sourced murder. Edith once owned and operated the smallest certified-organic farm in Essex County, Massachusetts.

Tace Baker, Edith Maxwell's pseudonym, is the author of SPEAKING OF MURDER (Barking Rain Press, Sept 2012) featuring Quaker linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau. Edith holds a PhD in linguistics and is a long-time member of the Society of Friends.

Edith has also published short crime fiction, most recently in the Fish Nets anthology and in Thin Ice from Level Best Books. A mother and technical writer, Edith lives north of Boston with her beau, three cats, and a small organic garden. You can find her at @edithmaxwell,  http://www.facebook.com/EdithMaxwellAuthor, and www.edithmaxwell.com