FOODFIC: Please Welcome Margaret Mizushima, Author of the Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries

My Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries feature K-9 Deputy Mattie Cobb, her four-legged partner Robo, and Cole Walker, Robo’s veterinarian and Mattie’s love interest. Together they investigate and solve crimes in their Colorado mountain community. But in the midst of all the murder and mayhem in that small town, Mattie does take time to eat, and the one person she loves to sit down and share a meal with is Mama T, her childhood foster mom.

As a Latina who has raised many children, Mama T infuses lots of love in the food she cooks. After a hard day, Mattie might stop by to check on her mama, and she’ll take home a bowl of green chili with pork laced with love, as well as a package of warm homemade tortillas fresh from the skillet. (See my husband’s version of green chili below.)

On a Sunday morning, Mattie will share some quiet time with Mama T before her current set of foster kids wake up. They feast on one of Mattie’s favorite meals, huevos rancheros with green chili sauce. 

In Burning Ridge, the fourth book in the series, an older foster daughter returns to Timber Creek to visit Mama T. Mattie joins them in her foster mother’s kitchen so the three of them can make tamales together, a ritual that speaks of love from their childhood. This scene takes place shortly before a killer from her past stalks Mattie and kidnaps her, taking her to a cave in the mountains where he tries to force her into giving him information she doesn’t even know.

Mattie is involved in plenty of action scenes in which she and Robo work together. They might be searching the high country for a missing person or tracking down a fugitive. They search for evidence at crime scenes and sweep vehicles for drugs. They might follow trails for miles to take down killers. It’s a good thing that Mattie fuels her body with good food, so she has the energy to keep up with her dog.

There are currently seven mysteries in the Timber Creek K-9 series, starting with Killing Trail, which introduces Mattie and Robo, Mama T, Cole Walker, and all the people who work at the Timber Creek County Sheriff’s Department. I invite you to enter the lives of some good folks who work hard to protect their community, to get to know what’s important to them, and to also answer the question—but what are they eating?

My husband’s recipe: Mama T’s Green Chili with Pork

4 lbs. pork roast, shoulder or butt

1 large can peeled chili peppers

1 small can adobo

1 diced bell pepper

1 large chopped onion

2 large cans diced tomatoes

1 small can tomato paste

2 cloves minced garlic

1 t. ground cumin

1 t. salt

¼ t. black pepper

½ t. red pepper flakes

1 T. chili powder

(Seasonings may be adjusted for desired spiciness)

Slow cook for four hours. Shred pork. Serve with tortillas and enjoy.

Thanks for stopping by and sharing your food for thought, Margaret!

You can find Margaret here:

MargaretMizushima.com

Twitter @margmizu

Facebook Fan Page

Books on Amazon

Margaret Mizushima writes the award winning and internationally published Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries. She serves as immediate past president of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America and was elected Writer of the Year by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writes. She lives in Colorado on a small ranch with her veterinarian husband where they raised two daughters and and a multitude of animals. 

FOODFIC: Please Welcome Linda Mims, Author of The Neon Houses

The Neon Houses, set in 2071, depicts two worlds. One world shows a food desert where food is genetically modified, dehydrated, plant-based and powdered, if there’s food at all. The other world is a cornucopia of real animal meat, vegetables, poultry, eggs, fish, and fruit.

The main character, Noel Kennedy, has her feet planted in both worlds and is unapologetically sympathetic to the needs of citizens who have barely enough to eat. In fact, when we first meet her flying her autoplane to the family home of a recently murdered girl, she’s leaning out the passenger window yelling bloody murder at a thief who has just snatched a bag of groceries from an old man.

Back home at the annual barbeque she and her husband host, we see disks laden with platters of smoked meats, grilled vegetables, desserts, and other delectables, sailing through the air. Guests use remote controls to land a disk, or they summon humanoids to take their orders.

This scene is two-fold, lavishly contrasting the two societies, and setting the stage for the next murder.

Heroine Noel goes up against Warren Simpson, a cunning and ruthless villain, who rules the land on the outskirts of her city. He is a murderer, thief, and the purveyor of illegal goods. Yet, when his nephew is set up as a murderer, Warren discards that theory. The kid isn’t like him, and murder is the farthest thing from the kid’s nature. 

Simpson gathers his family around the dining room table to debate murder, set-ups, and surveillance. Readers see dishes of roast beef, whipped potatoes and gravy, green beans, fresh tomatoes, and warm bread spread out on a snowy tablecloth. Warren’s wives, their children, and his wayward nephew surround him. When the food isn’t served quick enough, his nephew makes smacking sounds and salivates over the mashed potatoes and gravy. Simpson cuffs him lightly. The scene is normal, almost endearing, and allows us to see the human side of the villain. 

In undeniable New Chicago tradition, soy-dog stands, and taco stands dot the area near downtown. When a call comes over the radio warning Noel that crooks have spotted her and her husband scouting the primary suspect, they’re eating at a taco stand under the on-ramp of the Kennedy Expressway. Before they hightail it out of the area, my heroine takes a moment to wipe taco sauce from her husband’s mouth.

It’s 50 years into the future and the world has changed, but food, family, and gatherings remain the same—maybe more for my sense of normalcy than the characters’.

Thanks for stopping by to share your food for thought, Linda!

You can find Linda here:

LindaMims.com

Twitter @boom_lyn

Goodreads Page

FOODFIC: Please Welcome Elizabeth McKenna, Author of The Great Jewel Robbery

In real life, food and drink often set the mood and enhance the memories of any moment in time. When I think of my teen years, I remember eating french fries and drinking diet coke with my girlfriends at the lake when we were supposed to be in class. For my twenties, it’s greasy breakfast food at a dirty diner after bars. In my thirties, it’s me sweating over the menu for family gatherings that will please both adults and toddlers. (By my forties and fifties, I was too exhausted to care, but that’s another story!)

And just like in real life, authors incorporate food and drink to enhance a scene. Besides describing the physical setting, what the characters eat or drink can help the reader better connect with the characters and, thus, the story. In my cozy mystery, The Great Jewel Robbery, what my characters eat is a deliberate decision on my part and often shows a part of their personality.

Emma, the main character, and Grace, her sidekick, have been best friends since college despite being from different worlds. Emma grew up with her mom in a modest home, while Grace grew up with the super-wealthy of Chicago. Edging toward their late-twenties, they are both reporters for the Chicago Tribune, though Emma covers Sports and Grace writes for the Life & Style section of the paper. They are spending the weekend at a lakeside mansion so that Grace can cover a black-tie charity event hosted by a good friend of her parents. Everyone is having a great time until the last item to be auctioned off—a multimillion-dollar necklace—is stolen.

Grace’s boyfriend was initially supposed to be her date for the weekend, but Emma became her plus one due to the couple breaking up. Emma frets over going because, though she loves Grace like a sister, she isn’t comfortable at fancy parties. The reader first sees this when the women stop at a mini-mart to buy snacks for their hotel room. Emma plans to buy a glazed donut, but another customer buys it first. When she complains to Grace, her friend is confused:

“Emma,” she said in her best schoolmarm voice. “You realize that Chef Porter will be laying out a whole table of luscious desserts for us to gorge ourselves on tonight?”

I did, but I didn’t know how to tell Grace that sometimes the frou-frou desserts of her people turned me off. Sometimes a girl just wanted a glazed donut. It was safe and comforting, and right now, I needed all the comfort I could get.

I also use food in my cozy mystery to show the conflict between two siblings. Edward Braun, a frequent name in the Business section of the Trib, is the host for the charity event and owner of the newly restored 1901 Bedford limestone mansion. Unfortunately, his younger brother Walter has not found the financial success that Edward has. Walter owns over thirty hot dog stands in Chicago but has never been embraced by high society. He openly resents the snub, and the brothers rarely pass up an opportunity to insult one another. 

During a scene before the gala is to begin, Walter criticizes Chef Porter’s cooking and predicts that the charity event will be a disaster. Edward can’t resist putting Walter in his place:

Edward tapped a finger on his lips and pretended to be in deep thought. “Chef Porter, do you have any yellow mustard? Maybe that will satisfy my little brother’s epicurean taste.”

Minor characters also interact with food to enforce their personalities. Edward’s son Jackson has brought Charlotte as his date. She’s beautiful with a perfect figure and also dismissive of everyone around her. Despite several buffet tables of gourmet food, Jackson brings her a small plate of raw vegetables. Charlotte is like the food she prefers—cold and hard.

If you like cozy mysteries, I hope you will give The Great Jewel Robbery a try. The series continues with Murder Up To Bat, where Emma and Grace need to prove their best friend didn’t kill a local softball coach. Book 2 will hopefully be available in 2022. 

Please visit my website or Amazon Author page to see the other books that I’ve written. If you like romances or mysteries, you might find your next great read!

Thank you for having me on your blog, Shelley!

Thanks for stopping by and sharing your food for thought, Elizabeth!

You can find Elizabeth here:

ElizabethMcKenna.com

Twitter @ElizaMcKenna

Facebook Fan Page

Instagram

Books on Amazon

Elizabeth McKenna’s love of books reaches back to her childhood, where her tastes ranged from Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys to Stephen King’s horror stories. She had never read a romance novel until one Christmas when her sister gave her the latest bestseller by Nora Roberts. She was hooked from page one (actually, she admits it was the first love scene).

Her novels reflect her mercurial temperament and include historical romances, contemporary romances, cozy mysteries, and dark mysteries. With some being “clean” and some being “naughty,” she has a book for your every mood.

Elizabeth lives in Wisconsin with her understanding husband and Sidney, the rescue dog from Tennessee. When she isn’t writing, reading, editing, or walking the dog that never tires, she’s sleeping.

FOODFIC: Please Welcome Shannon Grogan, Author of From Where I Watch You

In my YA thriller From Where I Watch You (Soho Teen), two food items are mentioned frequently: Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing, and split pea soup.

My protagonist Kara uses her passion for baking to escape two people: her crazy but grief-stricken mom--who thinks her split pea soup will save the world--and the stalker leaving her creepy notes.

Kara is an aspiring baker who decorates (and would eat, though I don’t think I really mentioned it in the story) fancy cookies. Her world is sugar, butter, flour, Royal Icing, and trying to figure out who is stalking her.

My own love of baking, learned in childhood from my three grandmas and my mom, has been comfort and stress relief, as well as influencing so much of my life and my writing. In college, baking was always a stress reliever in the middle of homework, or maybe it was the cookie dough eating! My own favorite thing to bake is pie, although for the last 15+ years I’ve had to convert to gluten-free baking which is not as easy.

My favorite memories of being a kid are tied to food, mostly baking, and being together with family. So naturally, I haven’t written a thing in my life that doesn’t have baking in it. I have a couple of drawer novels that are heavily set in bakeries and cafes.

I think this might be a writerly thing or a book lover thing or both, but my dream store would be a bookstore/espresso shop/bakery. I always thought it would be a pretty awesome store to own, or even a food truck version. The closest I ever got to commercial baking is in the deli where I worked when I was in college, where nightly we set out frozen croissants to bake in the morning. Yeah that is not really baking. But I do wish someone would figure out how to make a gluten free croissant!

I am a kindergarten teacher by day. It is so important to me to offer experiences they might not get at home, like baking, that I have a little oven in my classroom. A coworker’s daughter is currently in a pastry chef school and I find myself sort of jealous of that. But then all it takes is a December full of cookie baking and how much it hurts your back to make me change my mind!

Baking is love and joy. Cookies, bread, cupcakes, pies, etc. Baking and baked goods are forever tied to wonderful holiday memories of family and being together. I think that is true for so many, and across cultures. If I’d written my book as an adult novel, I likely would’ve had more scenes where people were eating and I would’ve gone into detailed descriptions. For a young adult novel, it probably would’ve bogged down the pacing.

If you want to bake up some fancy cookies, there is a great sugar cookie recipe in the back of From Where I Watch You. I have mastered how to make them gluten free now and no one can tell the difference!

Thanks for reading! :)

Thanks for stopping by and sharing your food for thought, Shannon!

You can find Shannon here:

ShannonGrogan.com

Twitter @ShannyWriter

Facebook Fan Page

Books on Amazon

FOODFIC: Please Welcome Kevin McLeod, Author of The Viking's Apprentice

I love food, I love cooking. I love sharing the experience with my daughters. We cook together, we bake together, and we eat together. Every day we sit down for at least one meal, it’s a chance to catch up, and importantly, to reconnect. 

In my books whenever there is food there is always family. In the Viking’s Apprentice series when people eat it is a time for connection and for storytelling. Often the food is forgotten as the story becomes the centre of attraction, however it’s the food that brought them together. 

My daughters and I like to make homemade pizza. We use puff pastry and roll it out, leave about 1cm border around the edge and then prick the pastry with a fork 100 of times. Ever since she was 6 Ellie has insisted on making her own, doing everything herself. She is 12 now. Rachael is 15 and likes to get involved. 

Ellie will make a three-cheese pizza with a tomato base. She doesn’t spare the cheese and piles it on that pastry base after squeezing the tomato puree on there. Rachael likes to be a bit more adventurous. You will still find the 3 cheeses, however there will be tuna or chicken entwined in there somewhere, oh and a barbeque sauce instead of a tomato. 

I like to make a chicken and ham pizza. We put them in the oven and watch the pastry border rise then the smell of that cheese and pastry cooking hits you. It’s hard to wait the 15 minutes as those smells drive you wild. 

When it’s time we carve up our own pizzas add them to a big dish in the centre of the table and we sit and eat and chat. It’s perfect family time. Family is important to me, and I hope that comes across in The Viking’s Apprentice. Mealtimes should always be family times. 

Thanks for stopping by and sharing your food for thought, Kevin!

You can find Kevin here:

Twitter @bannon1975

Instagram @KevinMcLeodAuthor

Books on Amazon

FOODFIC: Please Welcome Kay Keppler, Author of Betting on Hope

A person’s outlook on life, habits, hobbies, patterns, assumptions, and lifestyle, among other characteristics, are based in part on food. People say they’re vegetarian, pescatarian, vegan, or omnivorous. Some people eat some things only with other things, not after 7pm, or only during certain hours of day. They cook at home or order in. They count grams of fiber, protein, or carbohydrate. And so on. You can tell a lot about people by the way they nourish themselves.

So really, why should fictional characters be any different?

In Betting on Hope, my characters started an organic farm in a last-ditch effort to make their ranch economically feasible. They eat the less-than-perfect vegetables and sell the perfect ones in a subscription delivery service and to area restaurants, barely squeaking by.

In some ways, the vegetables are almost characters themselves. The organic carrots go upscale when they arrive at a casino’s high-end sushi restaurant, where they’re carved into fancy shapes for fastidious and wealthy clients. But the beets turn into convenient weapons when the mob and the FBI mix it up on the casino’s loading dock—although the poker player among them thinks only frozen beets make good weapons.

In the story, everyone’s relationship to food helps define who they are or what they might become—or even what their fallback position, culinarily speaking, is. The task of the youngster in the story is to write up recipes for the delivery boxes, but she’s not knowledgeable enough to do a good job improvising the ingredients. As a birthday present, the poker player gives her a cooking lesson from the sushi chef, and she’s so thrilled with the idea that she makes lunch for her family and visiting guests. When asked what she wants to be when she grows up, she thinks she might like to be a baker. 

But not all the food is fancy. In a crisis, the poker player provides McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches to an anxious group.

Even eating out helps to define the characters. Where do they choose to go? Some prefer the casino’s all-you-can eat buffet. Some stick with a favorite restaurant’s daily specials. Some are adventurous eaters. Some not. 

Food—and the daily sharing of meals—can shape and even help define a person, a family, and even a nation. By showing how, what, and with whom my characters eat, I’ve tried to sharpen their personalities and clarify their values to help readers see more clearly who they are and what’s important to them. 

It’s been fun. And now I think I’m ready for a snack.

Thanks for stopping by to share your food for thought, Kay!

You can find Kay here:

KayKeppler.com

Twitter @KayKeppler

Facebook Fan Page

Books on Amazon

Kay Keppler grew up in a small town in northern Wisconsin but moved to California to escape the cold and snow. Now she lives in a drafty old house with dodgy plumbing and spends her time writing.

FOODFIC: Please Welcome C.M. Kerley, Author of the Barclan Series

In my view, unless you’re writing a cookbook, food should never be about what someone is eating, it’s about control.

And, since we’re storytelling here, it’s about what someone was doing just before they burned a town to the ground, set a stone fountain on fire, or fell into a deep sleep and aged a thousand years.

In my fantasy series, I found the balance of creating a world of magic and adventure that was believable by bringing in elements of the everyday that the reader can relate to and often these events took place in a familiar place like a kitchen or tavern, or around a familiar task like cooking.

The Hummingbird’s Tear opens with a bang, the reader is introduced to one of the main characters and immediately has to accept he can read people’s thoughts; and I do this by putting him in a tavern which is so easy to imagine, so it only a minute amount of effort for the reader to extend their belief to a mind reader. This book is all about the characters and the events that propel them across a three story arc, and as I ask the reader to indulge their appetite for excellent fantasy, so I let the characters gorge. There’s sumptuous foods cooked in kitchens, people have full stomachs, no one is hungry.

Everyone is starving at the start of the Giant’s Echo, and famine is killing people as fast as the mercenary armies that are attacking the kingdom from within. In this book, it’s not about food, there is no food, it’s about what’s left and how desperate everyone is.

My favourite scene from this book has one of the main characters, Travis, coming down off a drug bender in the presence of the Queen. This scene isn’t about food as much as it is about the way she uses it to torture him, to let him know she isn’t blind to what he is doing:

The queen picked up her spoon and started lightly tapping the side of the bowl. The clink, clink, clink quickly vexed Travis. He imagined reaching out, grabbing the ornate royal silver bowl and throwing it against the wall behind her. Anything to make her stop, make her jump, make her react. Each strike of the spoon seemed louder than the last, the echoes trapping him in the room. Every time she clinked the spoon on the bowl Travis blinked. He wished he could snatch that spoon, bend it in half and hammer it into the table with his fists.

By the time the reader has picked up the Hunchback’s Sigh, we’ve got past food and we’re onto drink. In a story that’s taken readers to the start of creation and back, across a whole world and offered up characters to love and utterly revile, I offered them booze. 

This book is about how we deal with what we’ve done, what we’re going to do, and what we are going to force other people to do; weighty issues no matter how you dress them. So, I dropped food, it becomes nothing more than what people have to do to keep being able to put a foot in front of the other, and I used the good old fashioned device of a strong drink to give some of my characters a break. Believe me, they needed it.

Thanks for stopping by to share your food for thought, Caroline!

You can find C.M. Kerley here:

Twitter @CM_Kerley

Facebook Fan Page

Books on Amazon

FOODFIC: Please Welcome Back Tracy Lawson, Author of Answering Liberty's Call

While doing research for Answering Liberty’s Call: Anna Stone’s Daring Ride to Valley Forge (2021) I learned a lot about the daily lives of colonial Americans—including what they wore and what they ate. Food production was a large part of their daily lives, and I was surprised to learn people believed it was not healthful to eat raw fruits and vegetables.

Neighbors often gathering to help bring in crops. When I chose to advance Anna and Benjamin’s interest in one another at a cidering party, of course apples were central to the fun, the work, and their budding romance.

In the book the young women play a game in which they peel an apple in one long peel and then throw the peel over their shoulder, and hope it lands in the shape of their true love’s initial. One wonders if this game was invented by a young girl, or by a watchful older woman who was trying to get the girls to peel apples at top speed!

When Anna’s crush Benjamin offers her an apple he’s picked off the tree for her, she laughs—for she’s headed home with bushels she must stew and dry. He urges her to try it, just as it is, and she realizes it’s perfect. Later, when she coyly tells him she’s come to prefer apples uncooked, it’s a sign she’s open to his advances.

I found a recipe for Apple Tansey, a popular side dish of the colonial period. It’s something like an apple quiche, but sweet rather than savory. I was curious, and though I’m not much of a cook, I decided to give it a try. How did it go? I produced a short video of my attempt at colonial cooking:

https://youtu.be/19raPXZgVjg

Thanks for stopping by to share your food for thought, Tracy!

You can find Tracy here:

TracyLawsonBooks.com

Twitter @TracySLawson

Facebook Fan Page

Books on Amazon

FOODFIC: Please Welcome C. Lee McKenzie, Author of Sign of the Green Dragon

From Quesadillas to Bok Choi

Anyone who has kids, or was once one, knows that food is a big part of their lives. If left to free range, they might choose peanut butter and Jelly Bellys on toast for breakfast, but they'll eat that concoction with gusto.

My three twelve-year-old sleuths are no different in the gusto department, but their food choices are dictated by where they happen to be during the story. They travel from their small town to an early Gold Rush era mine on a hunt for treasure. And nothing makes a kid hungrier than a quest, so food is important.

At the beginning, they're home with family. Sam's eating Carmela's quesadillas, Roger's into fried chicken (a lot of fried chicken - when you meet Roger, you'll understand), and Joey's eating his mother's Cantonese cuisine.

But it's peanut butter cracker sandwiches that get them through an earthquake and the discovery of a crumbling skeleton with a mysterious note that promises treasure. It's this note that starts them on their Indiana Jones adventure into the northern hills of California.

There's some food deprivation along the way, but they fix that by finding a café well-stocked with fresh doughnuts and hot chocolate. That keeps them going until they're befriended by a descendant of early Chinese miners. They're lucky he's a good cook, but only Joey has experience using chopstix, so while there's a lot of rice and bits of ginger with bok choi, it takes Sam and Roger a long time to clean their bowls. 

Food is not central to Sign of the Green Dragon, but it does trace the journey, and it reflects the different ethnicities in the story. Besides, growing kids must eat, even in fiction.

Thanks for stopping by to share you food for thought, C!

You can find C. Lee Mackenzie here:

CLeeMcKenzieBooks.com

Twitter @CLeeMcKenzie

Facebook Fan Page

Books on Amazon

Three plucky sleuths. A crumbling skeleton. A dangerous quest. Sign of the Green Dragon gets high fives for fantasy, fun, and some fearsome adventure. If you like intrepid would-be knights on impossible quests, you'll love this story. It has more twists than a dragon's tail. Ages 8-12.

Smashwords: 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/619550

Barnes and Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sign-of-the-green-dragon-c-lee-mckenzie/1123482000

FOODFIC: Please Welcome Steve McEllistrem, Author of The Devereaux Dilemma

My characters – in The Devereaux Dilemma and its sequels – reside in the future, where food is both better and worse than it is here in the present. There’s nothing like a good flavor enhancer to deliver pleasure to the palate, but one must be careful. Sometimes that delicious food comes with a bit of a kick.

At one point, Doug is offered a sandwich that looks unappealing:

He bit tentatively into the bread, hoping not to gag. But it was delicious, almost melting in his mouth. “Wow, this is fantastic.” Taking a huge bite, he chewed slowly, savoring the rich mushroom and bean flavor, commingled with onion, garlic and some spices he could not identify. He realized he was famished. As he ate the sandwich, a warmth slowly spread through him.

“Thanks for makin’ me try it,” he said to Zeriphi. “I’ve never tasted anything like it. You’re a marvelous cook.” The Escala exchanged glances and smiles. Doug felt the need to explain his hesitation. “It just looked awful. Can I have another one?”

Zeriphi moved her chair closer to Doug’s and prepared another sandwich for him. While he ate, she continued to stare at him and he found it increasingly difficult to turn his attention away from her: her blond hair, high cheekbones, rounded face and dark brown eyes, large and luminous. They pulled at him, drew him in until he saw nothing else. As they gazed at each other, he felt like he was under a spell, finally broken by Quekri’s voice:

“Zeriphi will keep you company tonight.”

Zeriphi nodded. “Eat,” she said as she lifted the remainder of the sandwich to his mouth.

Should Doug complain at being drugged with an aphrodisiac that gives him an unquenchable desire to sleep with Zeriphi? After all, she’s a beautiful woman. And pleasure does in fact ensue. Still, there might be a good lesson to take away from it all: one may want to hesitate before accepting food from a stranger.

At least Doug is perhaps doing better than Colonel Truman, who’s getting processed meat and cheese on bread that has no flavor enhancements added, all while enduring the sanctimonious musings of Attorney General Gray Weiss.

In addition to providing sustenance and the occasional opportunity to drug one’s guests, meals are a fine way to pass information, to absorb opinions and beliefs, to get to know people better. And a meal shared is almost always better than one eaten alone. Because it’s very often not about the food.

Thanks for stopping by to share your food for thought, Steve!

You can find Steve here:

McEllistrem.com

Twitter @SteveMcEllis

Books on Amazon