Food Fuels All

We have mounds of food each year at my family reunion in Missouri. As shown on the left, 2018 maintained the tradition.

I don't live in Mount Vernon, so stay with a cousin. She and other cousins prepare food at her house, and each year I vow to take their enthusiasm for preparing fine dishes home with me. Unfortunately, each year I fail to maintain the joy of cooking, and revert to the same twenty or so menus.

Descriptions of food are popular in mysteries. My friend Karen Musser Nortman has great recipes in her campground mysteries, and in her new Mystery Sisters series, her descriptions of meals made me head to the fridge. Female authors tend to use settings that involve food more than male authors (think B&Bs and coffee shops), but if you want some of the most mouth-watering mysteries, try Robert Parker's Spenser series.

Author Lois Winston features guest authors discussing food on her blog, Killer Krafts and Krafty Killers. I did a recent post centered on The Unexpected Resolution, which comes complete with an M&M cookie recipe. The recipe is my own creation -- took several tries to get the proportions right. You can tell I'm not a cook. My protagonists never are, because I don't know how to think that way.

What made the post extra fun was that the cookies in the photo
sit on a depression glass plate that belongs to my mother-in-law.

I'm beginning the second book in the Logland mystery series, set in a small college town in southern Illinois. The first book (Tip a Hat to Murder) has key scenes in the town diner. (No need to have fancy recipes there!) As I finished it, I decided to maintain the diner throughout the series. What better gathering place for suspects?

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