Beach Eats: EXPENSIVE COOKIE LESSON

<<Fourth in a continuing series exploring the tastes, histories and crafts of favorite food items mentioned in THE BLONDS AT THE BEACH Mystery Series…>>

          Sam disconnected <<the phone call>> and turned to me.  “Polly says she’ll tell us if you’ll give her your Aunt Izzy’s secret recipe for Chocolate-Chip Cookies.”

          “What secret recipe?”

          “A recipe for the hands-down best chocolate-chip cookies on earth.  It was Mizizzy’s trademark dish, what she brought to every potluck.  Nobody could ever duplicate the recipe, and your aunt guarded the secret the way Coca-Cola keeps a lid on their ingredients.  Polly wants to bake the cookies and sell them warm from the oven.  Unless you intend to take that over as your signature dish.”

          “I don’t bake,” I reminded her.  “I’m a really good eater, though.”

~Excerpted from BLOND FAITH

  

Beach Valentine's Day-Hot Chocolate to DIE for!!!!

Ah, tis the day to celebrate LOVE!  AND CHOCOLATE!

And why do love and chocolate go together?  Research has discovered that “Chocolate gets right to the heart of sexual pleasure by increasing the brain’s level of serotonin, the feel-good brain chemical. Serotonin plays a major role in positive mood, emotional health, proper sleep and balanced appetite, contributing to numerous behavioral and physiological functions.”

So if you're in need of a dose of serotonin, along with the best feel-good drink around, try this one for Chocolate Hecho à la Espalola , which translated means “The Spanish made chocolate.”  But what it really means is “drinkable melted chocolate that will make you feel wicked and divine and goooo-ooo—ood!”

Chocolate Hecho à la Espanola

4 -1/2 cups whole milk (divided)

1 pound semisweet chocolate (I used Ghirardelli)
      broken into bits

1 tablespoon cornstarch

¼ cup sugar

½ cup fresh whipped cream

Bring 4 cups milk to a boil over high heat.  Remove pan from heat and add chocolate and sugar.  Stir regularly until chocolate is melted.

Mix cornstarch with remaining ½ cup milk.  Stir into chocolate.  Return to heat and stir until thickened, approximately 10-20 minutes.

Serve hot and topped with a dollop of whipped cream.

Beach Eats: PIE À LA MODE

<<Third in a continuing series exploring the tastes, histories and crafts of favorite food items mentioned in THE BLOND LEADING THE BLOND…>>

          “Be it apple or humble, pie should always be served à la mode,” the woman tempted me.

          I hesitated, thinking about my half-diet and wondering if I’d rather limit myself to one full piece of pie without ice cream or one half of a piece with creamy vanilla melting over it. 

          ~Excerpted from The Blond Leading the Blond 

           Which “foodies” amongst us hasn’t heard the story about the invention of the Sandwich? Well, not so much the “invention” of as the naming of it.  I’ll save you a Google search:  While the idea of tucking meat between slices or on top of slices of bread (in lieu of plates) had been around for a while, it wasn’t until the late 18^th century that the term sandwich was coined.   The 4^th Earl of Sandwich was fond of asking his valet to bring him meat tucked between two pieces of bread, enabling him to continue to play cards while eating the meat.  As you probably realize, eating meat without cutlery left your hands messy, so this was a perfect solution.  Others at the table would say “Bring me what Sandwich has,” and the rest, as they say, is food-naming history.

          But very few people know the story behind the naming of Pie à la Mode.

          Many people mistakenly think that à la mode is French for “with ice cream.”  Nothing is further from the truth.  It means “to the modern” or more loosely, “how fashionable.”

          So how did pie with a dollop of vanilla ice cream on top become to be named à la mode? 

Beach Eats: THE BIG FIG NEWTON

<<This is second in a continuing series exploring the histories and crafts of favorite food items mentioned in THE BLOND LEADING THE BLOND…>>

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Sam asked as we exited the dimness of Flossie’s Pharmacy.  I squinted against the sunlight of a glorious summer’s morn.  The three Fig Newtons I’d stuffed in my mouth prevented me from answering, but I figured it was a rhetorical question, anyway.  I was right.

~Excerpted from The Blond Leading the Blond 

          Raise your hand if you thought the Fig Newton was named after that Apple-to-the-Head guy.  You know, Sir Isaac Newton, the brilliant man who first proposed the laws of gravity. Yeah, me too.  But in my research for this food-related topic I learned something quite different. 

Beach Musings: A Rose by any other name can always be changed…

          If you have a character named Rose and need to change it, it’s a simple as using the find and replace function in Word.  How do I know this?  Because I just changed the names of four characters in my latest WIP (that’s Work In Progress for those of you not fluent in writer-speak.)  Is a character’s name important?  You betcha! 

          I love the writerly life.  Well, most of the time.  But it’s a challenge for me to name characters.  Like most writers I know, I have in my writing toolbox a dog-eared copy of The Very Best Baby Name Book in the Whole Wide World.  I use it find good first names for my characters.  Back in the old days I also had a copy of the White Pages on hand so I could thumb through and find the perfect last name to go with the first name.  When’s the last time you saw a copy of the White Pages?  Yeah, it’s been a while for me, too.  The online version is not the same because you can’t just skim it but have to give it a name to look for.  Sigh.  Technology is making my job more difficult.

Beach Beverage: Hot Buttered Rum

Snow on the Water

As the snow fell gently this weekend here in the southeastern portion of Virginia (the first—and hopefully last—snowfall of the year!) it was a great opportunity to curl up by the fire with a hot toddy in hand.  The Ormerod favorite beverage to do that with is a Hot Buttered Rum.  As often happens, my real life overflows into my characters lives and the scene I wrote today had them drinking hot buttered rums.  Aha! I thought to myself.  A perfect blog topic, too! 

So here is the official Ormerod Family Hot Buttered Rum recipe, passed down through the generations.  Enjoy!

To Blog or Not To Blog…That Is the Question

I just did the math…over the course of the life of this blog (still a “baby” at 18 months old), I have written 162 blog posts.  I’ve tried my best to post three times a week.  So at an average of 900 words a post, that equals 145,800 words.  That’s two-and-one-half books.  How many books have I written in that same period of time?  ZERO!  So it occurs to me if I am going to be successful in this business I had best put fingers to keyboard and write more books and less blogs. 

So please bear with me as my posts are a bit erratic over the next few weeks as I try to set the fulcrum at just the right spot to balance writing and blogging.  But rest assured there is plenty of BITCh (that’s Butt In The CHair) time going on here!  I’ve typed THE END to a novella, which is about 20,000 words or about 1/3 (maybe a wee bit less) the size of a novel.  I’m on the deep editing stage.  It should be off to my critique partners by the end of the month, then on to an editor then released into the world.  I don’t mean to be a tease, but here is the opening line to Behind the Blue Door:  230 Periwinkle Lane:

“You’ll never guess what happened to Mudge!”

Hate to keep you guessing but I’m hurrying to get it done.  I promise.  I'll be back soon with another blog post.