17 Steps to Writing Culinary Mysteries

Potluck, book three in the “dinner is served” series, won the readers’ contest for which book I will write for National Novel Writing Month. Wahoo! My publisher, Billie Johnson at Oak Tree Press, will be delighted that this one won’t take as long to get to her as book two has!

This post borrows portions from the blog over at Write onSisters that I write on Tuesdays. Over there, I wrote about cozy mysteries and what the 16 elements are for writing a cozy. In this post, I want to drill down even deeper to talks about a special kind of cozy: the culinary mystery.

A culinary mystery is a sub-genre of cozy mysteries that prominently features food. Often that is done through the profession of the amateur sleuth. Less often, food is presented as important to a character, and well-described, but no recipe is given. Most often that happens with detectives who relish (!) food or with food critics describing restaurant fare.

Other culinary mysteries, in fact most of them, have the amateur sleuth involved in food preparation in some way. They might be personal chefs, caterers, cooking school teachers, restaurant chefs, or bakery owners. In one series, the woman is just a great home cook.

Many of the elements of the traditional mystery appear in other sub-genres of mystery. Cozies are a variant on the theme. In the list below, the first seven elements are the same in cozies and traditional mysteries, but to make your mystery a cozy, you need to add in nine more elements. Number 17 is what makes your cozy a culinary mystery.

1) Cozy mysteries are always a puzzle to solve.

2) All clues are revealed to the reader but obscured with red herrings and false leads.

3) Cozy mysteries feature a murder (most often) or a crime of great substance.

4) The victim typically is not admirable, thus the crime, if not justifiable, is often understandable.

5) The murder or other significant crime often occurs very near the beginning, in the opening pages. But not always. Cozies can introduce the murder well into the story.

6) Murders take place “off stage” so there is little or no explicit violence or gore described.

7) Cozy mysteries use plot devices to further the confusion of clues, suspects, and timelines.

8) The reluctant and very clever sleuth uses common sense to solve the mystery, is not a professional, and is drawn into solving the crime by circumstances.

9) The villain is clever and smart but not equal to the sleuth.

10) Cozy mysteries are most often set in a small town or rural setting so you get to know residents across books.

11) Almost all cozy mysteries are a series.

12) The cozy mystery series usually has a theme or an occupation or a hobby to tie it together.

13) Cozies involve more active crime solving than traditional mysteries. Readers want more than somebody being interviewed. Cozies have more action and dangerous situations. However, they are still considered light reading in the mystery realm.

14) Whereas cozies are generally G-Rated, they have evolved to where there may be mild cursing and the mention of sex “off stage”.

15) Cozies often have humorous components and/or quirky characters.

16) Cozy mysteries often have punny titles tied to the theme/occupation/hobby of the series. My culinary mysteries for example have titles of Mission Impastable, Prime Rib and Punishment, Potluck, Cooks in the Can, Tequila Mockingbird, and Ancient Grease.

17) Culinary mysteries may or may not include recipes, but all of them feature food prominently.

If you want to start writing culinary mysteries, here are some authors to read. Note the elements so you can write these fun books, too!

Diane Mott Davidson

Leighann Dobbs

Misty Evans

Nancy Fairbanks

Jerrilyn Farmer

Jennifer L. Hart

Carolyn Hughey

Josi Kilpack

Harper Lin

Sharon Arthur Moore !

Tamar Myers

Joanne Pence

Leigh Selfman

Connie Shelton

Lou Jane Temple

MISSION IMPASTABLE Book Club Kit Available

Last week I posted an article explaining to authors what I was doing to help build readership and reader loyalty to my brand, Murders with Taste. (Clever, eh, for a culinary mystery series?)

I urged authors to consider creating book club kits for their readers who might select their book for a club option. I believe a marketing plan needs to include a full tool belt of various outreach efforts. The article for that piece is:

http://otpblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/book-club-kits-another-marketing-tool.html

I posted here the entire kit (sans interviews yet) in case someone wants to download pieces of it. I tried to think what I would like in a book club kit. I want to know something about the book, the author, and what others think of the book. So that’s there.

 Additionally, if I were in charge of the book club meeting, I would appreciate some discussion suggestions and ideas about how to handle potential issues that arise. So, I put in my two cents worth.

Apart from that I decided to give “value-added” by including additional pieces I had not seen in book club kits I checked out.

I want to connect with my readers. I think that is the prime motivator of any author. We want our words to touch others, and we want to hear about the impact. To that end, I included ways to contact me via social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Also, I gave opportunities to connect with related content by my YouTube vids and through Skype.

Another piece that is often found at the back of historical fiction novels is what the author investigated while writing the book. I included what I learned about being a personal chef as well as ways to kill with poison. Fascinating! Tea, anyone? Bwahaha!

It occurred to me readers who find Mission Impastable interesting might like to know of other authors of the genre, so I put a page of names in.

But the real value added is a recipe from the book. How could I write anything without including a recipe, right?

Take a scroll through the Mission Impastable Book Club Kit included in the list of pages associated with this blog. Let me know what you think.

Now Available: MISSION IMPASTABLE

It's here! Mission Impastable went live on Amazon yesterday. Yep, MI's birthday is January 23, 2014 making this an Aquarius baby.

Aquarius is known to be curious, open-minded, and independent. Though creative, Aquarians are sometimes emotionally distant while appearing sociable. They are more interested in intellectual interests than practical ones. (based on Susan Buchanan's Sign of the Times) How in the heck does that relate to this book??? Maybe this sun sign thing only works with people. Ya think?

If you are a fan of culinary mysteries, you know you get a two-fer: mystery plus cookbook. How can it get any better than that? I hope you enjoy the recipes I included.

I am grateful to Sunny Frazier, acquisitions editor, and my wonderful and patient editor, Billie Johnson, publisher at Oak Tree Press who helped make it the book it is today.

Here's the final cover. I am very grateful to these wonderful mystery writers, Ilene Schneider, F.M. Meredith, Amy Bennett, J.L. Greger, and Lorna Lund Collins, for their early and quite lovely reviews. Now let's see what the rest of you think!

The Phony Housekeeper in 13 Steps

Back in the day, one of my favorite “cheat” cookbooks (as opposed to the real deal like Julia Child) was The Phony Gourmet by Pam Young and Peggy Jones (still available at http://amzn.to/142Nx0Y ) Their sassy, familiar tone filled with family dynamics made the book fun to read, and the food was pretty darn good, too.

The philosophy was that you could fool people into thinking that you were a better cook than you were and/or that you spent days preparing the repast when in fact you whipped it up in minutes.

What’s not to like, right?

One morning in water aerobics, some of the ladies were talking about household cleaning cheats. It sounded like a topic many of us could relate to: The Phony Housekeeper.

In my culinary mysteries series (Mission Impastable out this summer from Oak Tree Press), Gina is the compulsive one who cleans just because; Maria cleans out of habit; but Alli isn’t so drawn to the domestic duties of cleaning. Oh, she doesn’t kick piles of clothes out of the way--well, not often--but she sees little need to dust something because it will just get dusty again. Same with her bed--in only a few hours it will be messed up again, so why bother.

I kept a cartoon on my bulletin board for a long time:

         Clean and Hide--another example of when two different words

mean the same thing.

I think Alli would like these 13 “Phony Housekeeper” tips culled from my own and others’ experiences:

“I never put the vacuum cleaner in the closet. It stays by the front door. That way, if unexpected guests drop in, I say, ‘I was just getting ready to clean’.”

“If I have company coming that includes tall people, I clean the top of the refrigerator, otherwise, leave it. Nobody will know.”

“I’ve been known to put all kinds of stuff in the oven and dishwasher to stash them until after company leaves. But don’t forget them and run the appliance. I’ve lost some good magazines that way.”

“I keep a can of furniture polish and a rag on a table in the living room. If somebody comes to the door, I tell them they interrupted my cleaning.”

“If the house looks tidy, it doesn’t have to be clean. People assume it is.”

“I throw stuff in the shower and pull the curtain. Voila! Instant clean.”

“I spot clean the floor rather than mopping the whole thing. I look for spots and wipe them with a wet paper towel.”

“Have you ever stuffed clothes that need folding  under chair cushions. It works if you only have a few pieces and somebody shows up at your door. Once I looked for a blouse for three weeks before I remembered where it was.”

“I blow dust off surfaces on my way to answer the door.”

“I answer the door with a cleaning rag and bucket in my hand so it looks like I was interrupted.”

“I keep a little spray bottle of Mr. Clean behind a shelf door. I spray each room with it and it smells like I just finished cleaning.”

“I have a pretty basket in the living room. When the doorbell rings, I throw big stuff, like toys, into it and cover them with magazines.”

“I never apologize for how the house looks. I ignore the dirt and clutter, and then my guests must, too.”

What are your Phony Housekeeper Tips? Or, are you afraid to share them so we all know?

I Scream for Ice Cream

Somewhere, somehow in one of my culinary mysteries I’m going to have to do ice cream/gelato/frozen yogurt as stand-alone recipes across books or as a recipe strand in one book.

Each book in my Oak Tree Press culinary mystery series, “Dinner is Served”, will have a recipe strand. Other recipes will be included, but most will fit the strand. Mission Impastable is pretty clear--lots of pasta recipes. Prime Rib and Punishment? Meats, of course. Peas Porridge Pot? That one will focus on veggies and medical marijuana recipes. Cooks in the Can has Alli and Gina cooking with lots of canned goods at the country jail. You get the idea.

So where could I tuck in frozen confections? Of course, I could include some in several different books. Or I could write a mystery meant to include ice cream and related desserts. I could call the mystery Cold Case or maybe I Scream. What do you think? Why don’t you name it in the comments section below? If yours is selected, I’ll acknowledge you when that book is written.

But why wait? Here are a couple of family favorites I make. When the weather turns warm like this, it’s time to break out the ice cream maker.

Caramel Chocolate Chip Nut (makes a little more than a quart)

½ cup milk

1 can dulce de leche condensed milk

sprinkle of salt

2 cups heavy whipping cream

¼ cup chopped nuts

¼ cup mini-chocolate chips

Whisk milk and dulce de leche until smooth. Add salt and cream. Whisk until incorporated.

Pour into ice cream maker and process for 20-30 minutes until ice cream is soft frozen. Add nuts and chocolate chips slowly until blended. Turn off ice cream maker and put into container and freeze for several hours.

Soft-Serve Chocolate Ice Cream Shake (makes a bit more than a quart--serve immediately)

4 cups thick chocolate milk

1 can condensed sweetened milk

Whisk together. Process in ice cream maker until it reaches soft-serve stage. Pour into glasses and serve with a straw and spoon.

I have so many more. London loves my strawberry gelato. Both Chicago and Brooklyn devour my Ben and Jerry’s Heath Bar Crunch ice cream. DH loves the fruited gelatos and frozen yogurts. Yeah, I have to include some of these in my culinary mystery books.

The Four-Letter Word on a Food Blog: Diet

I am so pleased to welcome fellow author, J.L. Greger, from Oak Tree Press to my blog today. I know you will enjoy her post on that unspeakable word: diet! So glad to have you here, Janet!

Don't panic. I'll use the offensive word no more than necessary.

Why am I writing on dieting?  

You might guess I'm Scrooge and trying to ruin your fun at a blog featuring delicious recipes.

Wrong! It’s because my new murder mystery is called Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight. Linda Almquist (the heroine) is investigating two "diet doctors" for recklessly endangering the lives of their obese research subjects. They are convinced they’ve found an easy way for obese subjects to lose weight - just alter their gut flora. Then Linda finds one of them dead.

Does the research sound strange? You’ll be a believer after you read “The microbes made me eat it” (Science, volume 328, pages 179-80 in 2010).

Oh, did I forget to mention, Linda is trying to lose weight as she searches for the murderer.

Dieting advice that Linda uses

1. Decrease portion sizes. Super-sizing is your enemy. In restaurants, order children’s portions or a half sandwich with a cup of clear soup.

Toppings are meant to add a dash of flavor. That means a teaspoon (not a tablespoon) of butter on bread and a tablespoon (not a ¼ to a ½ cup) of dressing or guacamole on your salad or sandwich.

2. Don’t buy snack foods, except carrots and other raw vegetables. You can’t eat what you don’t have.

2. Decrease fat, sugar, and alcohol intake in beverages. Most standard servings of sweet iced teas, lattes, fruit juices, and regular sodas contain 130-190 calories. Many fruits smoothies and cocktails provide >200 calories, while the unsweetened tea, black coffee, and diet sodas contain no calories. These calories add up when you drink several servings daily.

3. Broil, bake, or grill meats and fish, don’t fry. For example, the typical over-breaded and greasy chicken breast contains at least 300 calories. The same chicken breast, if the skin is removed and the meat broiled, provides 121 calories.

4. Follow this advice everyday for months. It may be easier to stick to your diet if you chew gum between meals or drink at least one glass of water before each meal. For flavor, top meat, potatoes, and other vegetables with a tablespoon of a non-fat, fresh salsa.

Did you learn anything new?

Probably not. You know the basics of dieting, but you can’t stick to it for long. You're not alone. Did you ever notice how many physicians, nurses, and dietitians are overweight or obese?

That’s why so many researchers study obesity. Meet several of them when you read Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight. You may decide dieting isn’t so hard after all. 

Please comment

If you leave a comment to this blog along with a way for me to contact you, you will be entered in a drawing on October 1. The winner gets his/her name used in one of my upcoming novels.

Bio: As a biologist and professor emerita of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I enjoy putting tidbits of science into myr mystery/suspense novels. So far that’s Coming Flu and Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight. A third is on the way. To learn more, visit www.jlgreger.com or http://jlgregerblog.blogspot.com.

Sell line for Coming Flu: www.amazon.com/Coming-Flu-J-L-Greger/dp/1610090985/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363872699&sr=1-1&keywords=Coming+Flu.

Sell line for Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight: http://www.amazon.com/Murder-New-WayLoseWeight/dp/1610090624/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365534310&sr=1-1&keywords=Murder+A+New+Way+to+Lose+Weight

Million-Way Muffins

We love muffins at our house--savory and sweet, and there’s always a kind or two in the freezer for when someone drops by. So when I read Mark Bittman’s post on modifying a basic recipe to make many kinds of muffins, I knew I had to do a post on this myself.

Bittman’s article is found at http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/mark-bittman-muffins-infinite-ways-180900902.html

I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. (I’m kind of a Bittman groupie. I read everything of his I come across.)

His recipe is here with some of his modifications. Then I include some of my own recipes adaptations. (In Mission Impastable (Oak Tree Press), I included a blueberry muffin recipe from a friend’s mother that has great sentimental value for me. I did an earlier post on that recipe.) Muffins and I go way back.

Muffins are an amazingly versatile and forgiving batter. Play with combos that sound interesting to you. Adding ½ to ¾ cup of nuts increases the protein. Adding fresh or dried fruits increases food value, too. I love spices, so I’ll play with cardamon and banana instead of cinnamon. Or go crazy and dump the spices you use for pumpkin pie (sans or with pumpkin) to make spice muffins. Lemon zest and rosemary? Mmm mmm good!

Cut down the sugar to make muffins more savory and add cheese and basil. Use olive oil instead of vegetable oil or butter. Tarragon is an amazing flavor for muffins. Put in onions instead of fruit. Do you like a green chilies and corn combo? Why not put in black beans for fun? Go for it.

Use his basic recipe for proportions not necessarily for ingredients. Think of the ingredients as categories to include.

Mark Bittman’s Muffins, Infinite Ways

Makes: 12 medium or 8 large muffins
Time: About 40 minutes

3 tablespoons melted butter or neutral oil, like grapeseed or corn, plus more for the muffin tin
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
1 cup milk, plus more if needed 

1. Heat the oven to 375°F. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin and line it with paper or foil muffin cups if you like. 

2. Mix together the dry ingredients in a bowl. Beat together the egg, milk, and melted butter or oil in another bowl. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients into it. Using a large spoon or rubber spatula, combine the ingredients swiftly, stirring and folding rather than beating and stopping as soon as all the dry ingredients are moistened. The batter should be lumpy, not smooth, and thick but quite moist; add a little more milk or other liquid if necessary. 

3. Spoon the batter into the muffin tins, filling them about two-thirds full and handling the batter as little as  possible. (If you prefer bigger muffins, fill 8 cups almost to the top; pour 1/4 cup water into the empty cups.) Bake for about 20 minutes (about 30 minutes for larger muffins) or until nicely browned and a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let rest for 5 minutes before taking them out of the tin. Serve warm.

Sometimes Bittman suggests whole wheat flour or half-whole wheat/half white. You can substitute wheat bran or wheat flour (I food process quick oats). Substitute corn meal or graham cracker crumbs for part of the flour. Look through your shelves for things to toss in. I love chia seeds, for instance. Go for the unexpected in your muffins.

To his basic batter, you can substitute honey, molasses, maple syrup, or brown sugar instead of granulated sugar. I like to add Greek yogurt in place of milk to up the protein. Of course, we all know that ripe mashed banana can replace part of the oil to make muffins less fatty. Add in some cooked quinoa or rice in lieu of some of the flour. You can always adjust the batter stiffness with more milk or yogurt.

DO NOT BE AFRAID TO PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD! Muffin-making can be highly entertaining. But you might not be able to give the recipe to someone who really likes what you baked---at least that’s true if you cook like me. And if the muffins don’t work out, well, you can always become a writer! Culinary mysteries are fun!

Dinner is Served

We open up our cabin in the cool pine country of Arizona in three stages. It’s a process to prepare for closing one house and opening the other for six months each year.

As temps soar here in the Valley of the Sun, the time has come. It’s always a big deal to pack up the first load, go north, unload, and then return to Phoenix. That makes dinner a problem.

Dinner is rarely a problem at our house. Partly because, bless his heart, DH WILL eat anything! Truly. Never a problem. No the problem on the moving days is we get back late and if I didn’t plan ahead, what do we eat?

It happened this week. Home after 6:30. We normally eat at 7 after playing a rousing game of cubes.  Okay, so I did a quick refrigerator inventory. What follows is the recipe. Seriously, don’t hold me to measurements here. We’re talking leftovers. I would love to be on that cooking show, Chopped. Give me a basket of mystery ingredients. Pshaw! That’s what I do most days! And these people win $10,000???

DH loves casseroles, fortunately, so when he looked at the serving dish, he asked, “What’s this?” Instead of my usual snarky, “Dinner,”I replied, “Your favorite. Casserole.”

He poked around in the bowl, and announced. “Yes, my favorite Peoria Casserole.” Thus, the following:

Peoria Casserole

Leftover angel hair pasta, maybe 1 ½ cups

1 pkg chicken Swanson “Flavor Boost”™

2 big handfuls of fresh spinach

1 handful of fresh mushrooms

about 1 c leftover roast chicken and the drippings from cooking

Pam a casserole dish. Toss pasta with Flavor Booster. Mix in remaining ingredients. Cover. Microwave for 3 ½ minutes. Dinner is served.

Coincidentally, my new culinary mystery series is called “Dinner is Served”. The first book, Mission Impastable, will be out this summer from Oak Tree Press.

Dinner is Served Series to be Published!

Yay!

I signed a contract for Mission Impastable, the first culinary mystery in my "Dinner is Served" series.  Oak Tree Press will bring the first book out in late August. It's been a long time and a lot of work, but I am living my dream! Two books out this year!

I'll be back soon with recipes, tips, cooking gadgets, and of course an update on the "Top Home Chef" contest I'm entering from the Arizona Republic.

For now, take your time to look through some of my recipes here. Happy cooking!