Scones and Bones, by Laura Childs

I drank my first cup of hot chocolate of the season and have attended at least one night of the Red River Revel--the large fall arts, music, and food festival on the Shreveport river front--so I guess autumn has officially arrived.  As usual, our cool weather has been rather elusive and has retreated a bit, leaving Indian Summer behind.  I'm all for displaying the oranges, yellows and browns of the season as a good faith sign that fall is here, however, and neighbors are following suit as jack-o-lanterns and other Halloween decorations appear on porches and lawns.


Berkley Prime Crime, 2011
295 pages

It seemed like an appropriate time to hunker down with a cozy mystery featuring hot tea and pirates, crossbones and jeering skulls.  Laura Childs' 2011 Scones & Bones, the 12th in her Tea Shop Mystery, focuses on events surrounding a mug allegedly made from the famous pirate Blackbeard's skull and accented with a 10 karat diamond.

While attending the grand opening of the Pirates and Plunder Show at the Charleston Heritage Society where the skull mug and other pirate treasures are displayed, Theodosia and her master tea blender, Drayton, are on the scene when a Heritage Society intern is stabbed to death as a pirate-crazed thief steals the grotesque mug.  The police seem stymied in the search for the murderer so the Director of the Heritage Society, Timothy Neville, begs his friends, Theodosia and Drayton, to poke around to see if they can learn anything about the murder that might help the police. 

There seems to be no lack of people in Charleston who collect pirate artifacts, so Theodosia baits a trap for the killer and almost loses two of her friends in the process.  Truthfully, the action associated with identifying and capturing the murderer isn't that captivating.  Even at the end of the book, mystery continues to shroud the skull mug  as it disappears into the Charleston Heritage Society vaults to be kept hidden for another few decades. 

Reading about the scones and dessert offerings at the Indigo Tea Shop (the tea shop that the main character Theodosia operates with the help of a master tea blender and a chef), as well as the eastern shore treats served at the Charleston parties Theodosia attends, make this a mystery during which I spent as much time resisting the urge to raid the refrigerator as wondering who killed the poor intern.  I want Haley, the Indigo Tea Shop chef, to come live at my house!

One can see the other creative side of Author Laura Childs who is a former CLIO award winning marketing CEO as she includes recipes and ideas for hosting various kinds of tea parties at the end of this book.   See below:

Letter Writing Tea

 

Aren't you tired of texting and e-mail?  Wouldn't it be fun to compose an old-fashioned letter?  Round up some quill pens, ink and fancy stationery, and invite your friends in to letter-writing tea.  Put on some relaxing music and let everyone jot a letter or a few thoughts while enjoying an afternoon of tea.  Oolong is a thoughtful blend that goes nicely with quiche, citrus salad, and lemon scones.  If you want to give your guests favors, think pretty pens and tiny notebooks in net bags.

Haley's Proprietary Lemon Scones

 

 

3 cups all-purpose unbleached flour

1 Tbsp. baking power

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

Zest of 1 lemon

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter, cut into cubes

1/2 cup walnuts or pecans (optional)

1 cup buttermilk

1 egg

1 Tbsp. water

 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.  In a separate bowl, combine the lemon zest and sugar, using a spoon to firmly grind it all together.  Add the sugar to the flour mixture and mix well.  Cut the butter into the mixture until you get an even, cumbly consistency.  Mix in the nuts, if using.  Pour in the buttermilk and stir thoroughly until the mixture forms a dense dough. Take a good-sized lump of dough and gently form it into a triangular scone shape.  Place the scone on a baking sheet lined with parchment, then continue forming scones until the mixture is used up.  Whisk the egg with the water to form an egg wash, then brush the egg wash on top of each scone.  Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown.

 

 This book counts toward my "Pastry Chef" status in the  Foodies Read 2 Reading Challenge!



Death in Four Courses, by Lucy Burdette



I'm not sure if my recent fascination with Key West is because of an enduring interest in Ernest Hemingway and his six-toed cats, or because my friend told me this summer of a visit she and her husband made there with many of our friends from college days, a small Methodist College, I might add. It seems they accidentally picked the same week as Fantasy Fest and inadvertently wandered into a bar where pretty much the only clothes people were wearing were painted on.  Let me say from the outset that nothing like that happens in Lucy Burdette's latest mystery in her Key West Food Critic series.

Death in Four Courses, by Lucy Burdette
Obsidian Mysteries (an imprint of Penguin Group, Inc.).
2012.  Read in Kindle download

 

Lucy Burdette, aka Roberta Isleib
(photo by Ruthanna Terreri)
Click here to read more about the author

Haley Snow is back in Death in Four Courses, and that means I'm able to visit Key West again, albeit vicariously. Haley barely escapes being charged with murder in An Appetite for Murder, the first Key West Food Critic mystery, and in Death in Four Courses, Haley and her mother barely escape the murderer. (Click HERE if you want to read my review of book one in this series by Lucy Burdette, aka mystery writer and psychologist, Roberta Isleib.)



In the latest Key West mystery, Haley has a permanent place to live and it appears a permanent job as food critic for Key Zest magazine.  She shares her elderly neighbor Miss Gloria's houseboat, which allows Haley to stay in Key West and pursue her passion as a food writer. Toward that end Haley's mother is in town for a visit so mother and daughter can attend Key West Loves Literature conference.  Haley is covering the event and trying to buttonhole famous persons in the food writing industry who are in attendance. 

The conference gets off to an interesting start when the premier speaker, Jonah Barrows, throws out the gauntlet in his opening remarks as he pledges total honesty in all his comments during the upcoming conference sessions.  In a room where more than one person has something to hide, this spells serious trouble.  Before the conference is over, two of the famous food writers are dead and Haley's best friend, Eric, is a prime suspect.  Eric won't defend himself against the police suspicions, so Haley feels she must investigate to keep her friend out of jail. 

It is potentially problematic in a series featuring an amateur sleuth to manufacture a believable reason for the main character to get involved in the dangerous pursuit of a murderer, but Burnette's rationale for Haley's involvement worked for me in this mystery.  Haley's potential love interest, Police Detective Bransford, makes another appearance and other secondary characters from book one return, adding a sense of community and continuity to the series for me. 

Because there is much discussion about food in this book--which even includes recipes, such as: MK's Screw of the Roux Stew (like traditional Louisiana gumbo with tomatoes added); Hot Fudge Pie (delicious-sounding chocolate decadence); and Rhubarb Cake with Streusel Topping (another rhubarb recipe to try)--I'm counting this as part of my Foodies Read 2 reading challenge.  In my somewhat casual count, I think this is my seventh book in this reading challenge, placing me currently at Pastry Chef level.....hmmm, in charge of pastries, sounds like a good position to be in.

I like this cozy and easy-reading Key West Food Critic series.  I'm not sure if the concept contains enough depth to maintain my interest over the course of a lengthy series, but I'm enjoying them at the moment.

Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table, by Sara Roahen

Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table, by Sara Roahen.

W.W. Norton & Co. 2008. 293 pages.

 

This is the fifth book I've read for the Foodies Read 2 Reading Challenge this year, and I loved the book.  I bought Gumbo Tales several years ago, and it is another one that sat on my library shelf waiting for the right time for reading. Unfortunately, hurricane season in Louisiana is the apropos time to read this series of essays on the food culture of New Orleans area, because Roahen's book discusses venues destroyed by Katrina and the elderly restaurateurs who didn't survive the evacuation. 

Today, as I write, people in New Orleans are digging out after Hurricane Isaac, while others in South Louisiana are evacuating because of broken or breached levees.  The destruction wrought by hurricanes, even supposedly low level 1 hurricanes, wreak havoc on a state still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, which swamped New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish exactly seven years ago to the week (Katrina was a slow developing catastrophe).

While some stories in Roahen's book are tragic, she uses humor effectively to prevent the essays from being too depressing,  pessimistic or maudlin.  She divides her book into chapters on emotion-laden subjects, at least in my household--topics, such as:  gumbo, po-boys, crawfish, coffee and chicory, and red beans and rice.  Other important subjects she scrutinizes are sno-balls (snow-cones);  red gravy (Italian tomato sauce); turducken (if you watch football, you should know this one); and oysters.  Other chapters include Sazeracs, vegetables, poisson meuniere amandine, pho, coconuts, king cake & y-ka-mein, le boeuf gras, and turkey bone gumbo.

Roahen's descriptions will interest anyone wanting to know more about the melting pot of New Orleans inhabitants as told through their food.  Roahen does explain in her foreword that some of the places mentioned were washed away, and she doesn't know if or when they might return, e.g. the Vietnamese market area outside the city, but they were so much a part of the fabric of the New Orleans she experienced that she couldn't leave them out.  Roahen herself no longer lives in New Orleans, but the reader knows that the city has become part of her so she will return often.

Anyone familiar with the Crescent City will undoubtedly see favorite neighborhood venues mentioned.  I know we rarely visit New Orleans without stopping by Mandina's, an Italian-creole neighborhood restaurant on Canal that has been totally revamped since Katrina.  And drinks on the porch at The Columns on St. Charles will become part of our ritual after our recent visit. 

This book to be one to be read slowly and savored, and I plan to pack it to use as a culinary guidebook for our next visit to NOLA.

Foodies Read 2: Tender at the Bone, by Ruth Reichl

Despite meetings for my historic neighborhood association and the work projects crowding my schedule, I continue to find time for reading :-) .  I was fortunate that the two meetings this week, relating to my volunteer work with the neighborhood, took place at near-by restaurants--doubly gratifying because the Highland neighborhood has some of the best eating establishments in the city!

On Tuesday I was treated to a delicious, spicy but light quiche at TWINE, a new restaurant and bar on Line Avenue, the major street that separates the two historic districts in our neighborhood.  It was a veggie quiche but the vegetables were mere suggestions, spots of color in the quiche, which must have included bits of hot pepper that provided the perfect "punch" of taste to wake up the mild quiche.

Then on Wednesday evening after work, tapas were on the menu at the reopened and re-imagined restaurant, STIR, tucked into the neighborhood a few blocks from my house.  I savored the creamy shrimp remoulade served on fried green tomatoes, while my friend tried the lobster wrap.  The shrimp remoulade is a destination dish, one of those foods you would return to a restaurant just to taste again.


Since food was on my agenda for this week, it should come as no surprise that my reading material echoed this interest and was also part of my Foodies Read 2 Reading Challenge.  I vicariously (and literally, it would seem) ate my way through the week with Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table (Broadway Books. 1998. 282 pages. Memoir).


This is one of the many books that I've picked up on the cheap at the local college's annual Book Bazaar fundraiser.  This book cost $1.00 and is one I've had on my shelves for awhile, apparently waiting for the right moment to read it.  Reichl has been a food writer, restaurant critic and is now producing television food shows.

If you have ever wondered how one lands this kind of job, this memoir shows the circuitous route Reichl took, and it's probably not a path to emulate.  Her career path started in childhood when Reichl's family assignment was to protect the dinner guests from her mother's strange dishes and casual attitude toward food freshness and storage.  Reichl proceeds to take the reader on a wild and funny ride through her childhood and early adulthood in a household with a bipolar mother and a father who escapes through his passion for his job as a book designer. 

Reichl encounters frequent personal challenges--having an unpredictable manic depressive mother, being sent away to Montreal to boarding school against her will and being picked on by the class rich girl.  After three years, Reichl returns to live with her parents as a high school student, only to essentially be left alone during the week to raise herself, but Reichl has the knack for turning disaster into opportunity, with a dose of laughter thrown in to avoid appearing pathetic.  We follow Reichl to college, her first marriage and her first cooking jobs.

This memoir is highly readable, is interspersed with a few recipes, as well as many wonderful descriptions of foods, meals and the people who propelled Reichl ultimately toward a writing career.  Good stories, tight writing and interesting characters elevate this memoir above the norm.  I am late coming to this book and its author.  I'm sure many of you read Tender at the Bone and the sequels years ago, so I'm glad I held onto this book waiting for the right time to "devour" it.

Lingering at the Beach

Life seems strange to me at times, or at least mildly interesting, in the juxtaposition of realities--there's the world of books that I inhabit intensively when I read and the daily currents of my very ordinary life.  Tonight I resided part of the evening in a mouldy castle with a young heroine and ghosts of memories, a gothic world I don't often seek out.  I'm not totally comfortable there, me with my healthy sense of normalcy. 

I often feel strangely disoriented when I step out of an alternate reality in the cottage where I've been reading into the kitchen of our main house, where tonight I absentmindedly nibble a newly ripe grape tomato from the Early Head Start garden, experiencing the crunch of the outside skin followed by the sweet juiciness of the tomato's pulp.  My mind moves on to thoughts of making okra, tomatoes and corn tomorrow, using the fruits of the garden.  I wonder about what new zucchini dish to try next, then fret momentarily about getting the house clean enough for some young friends from New Orleans to shoot scenes for a Louisiana Film Prize film here over the Fourth of July. 

Last weekend I rarely emerged from my fictional world when I holed up and read four books, one right after the other.  In this alternate Universe, before I arrived at the castle, I was at the beach:

An Appetite for Murder: a Key West Food Critic Mystery, by Lucy Burdette. New York: New American Library (a division of Penguin Group). 2012

Hayley Snow wants to remain in Key West where she currently resides in a small bedroom on the house boat of her former college roommate, but she needs a job.  Hayley moved to Key West to live with a new man in her life, but after a few months, he has dumped her.  Hayley is dismayed to discover the new woman in her ex's life, Kristin Faulkner, is also the person who would be her boss at the Key West style magazine where Hayley has applied to be the food critic.  When Kristin is murdered, Hayley becomes a prime suspect, and she must clear her name if she has a chance of landing her dream job. 

Hayley, as amateur detective, turns out to be a trouble magnet, but her exploits are entertaining for me, the perfect genre mystery--strong setting; interesting, idiosyncratic heroine; and fast moving plot.  I really enjoyed this mystery and look forward to the next book in this new series, Death in Four Courses, coming in September.  This book was a Kindle download for our Florida vacation, but I never got around to reading it at the beach.  It was perhaps even more enjoyable to visit this wet corner of Florida after our return to hot, parched Louisiana.

Author Robert Isleib aka Lucy Burdette

This mystery was doubly fun because it also counts toward the Foodie Reads 2 Reading Challenge.  The book is full of food facts, with a few recipes included at the end of the Kindle version.

Author Lucy Burdette is the pen name for clinical psychologist Roberta Isleib who writes two other mystery series under her own name--the Advice Column Mystery series and Golf Lover's Mystery series.  Isleib has been nominated for various awards for mystery authors and is a past-president of Sisters in Crime.

A Year by the Sea: Thoughts of an Unfinished Woman, by Joan Anderson. New York: Doubleday. 1999.

My next trip to the beach was with author Joan Anderson as I read her non-fiction account of a year spent alone in her family's rustic Cape Cod cottage, where she searches for answers about her life and her marriage. This journey of self-discovery is interesting to me because of the setting, the people she meets and the jobs she holds.  The book, another Kindle download, is adequately written but doesn't contain the beauty of writing and depth of self-reflection of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea, for example.

Anderson, according to her blog, began her writing career as a stringer for Gannett newspaper chain, moved on to creating essays for children's photo books, and finally to the genre of memoir writing and a career helping other women "find themselves" through retreats she leads for women at Cape Cod or other locales in across the country.  Anderson apparently gained fame and popularity through appearances on Oprah and other television shows.  Anderson has written five memoirs in all.  While I don't rule out reading another of her books, I wouldn't seek them out.

Author Joan Anderson

After my extended visit to the beach, I head back to Indian territory with Walt Longmire, plus a new mystery series set on Indian reservation.  More about that tomorrow....

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Thinking about Herbs

I'm sitting here eating a piece of rosemary bread with honey, thinking about herbs.  I didn't make this bread, just baked it, but lately I have been contemplating cooking with herbs, all because of the third book I've read as part of my Foodies Read 2 Challenge.  Susan Wittig Albert's An Unthymely Death is one of those books that I've had sitting on my shelf for awhile.  I had read a little bit of it but laid it aside and forgot about it. As I gathered books from my library for the Foodie Reading Challenge, I realized this would be the perfect opportunity to complete it.

Albert, as mystery lovers will recognize, is the author of 21 mysteries featuring China Bayles, a former criminal defense attorney and current proprietor of a herb shop, Thyme and Seasons, and a tearoom, Thyme for Tea, that she owns with her best friend Ruby Wilcox who also features prominently in the herb series mysteries.  Albert has other mystery series, too, the Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter and the more recent garden club mystery series.  She writes a series with her husband under the pseudonym, Robin Paige; and she has written 60 Youth Adult Books, in addition to several nonfiction books.

A former English professor, Albert is, to state the obvious, a multi-talented and prolific author. 

An Unthymely Death fits in with the China Bayles series.  It is a collection of short mystery stories featuring China and Ruby, interspersed with numerous sidebar facts about herbs, herbal recipes and craft ideas featuring herbs.  For example, there is a mini history of mustard, a listing of herbs for a tea garden, as well as herbs of the Bible, instructions on how to make a tussie mussie, and scores of recipes.  Albert is also the honorary President for 2012-2014 of the Herb Society of America.  To read more about herbs and the herb society, Click Here.   She also has an excellent website with lots of links and information about herbs on it.  Wittig's About Thyme website gives recipes and a lot of fascinating facts about herbs.  To view this website and find more herbal recipes, Click Here.

Two recipes I want to try:

Faerie Blossom Cookies

1/8 cup sugar

1/4 cup fresh lemon-basil leaves, packed down

1/4 cup fresh lemon balm leaves, packed down

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened

1 egg

3 tablespoons lemon juice

3 cups flour

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease two baking sheets.  In a blender or food processor, process the fresh herbs with the 1/8 cup sugar and set aside.  Using your electric mixer, beat butter or margarine until creamy, gradually adding the 3/4 cup sugar.  Add egg and lemon juice and blend.  Add herb-sugar mixture, then flour, 1 cup at a time, beating to blend thoroughly.  Shape into one inch balls and place two inches apart on greased baking sheet.  Dip the bottom of a glass in sugar and flatten each ball.  Bake until golden brown, about 8-10 minutes,  Remove to wire racks to cool.  Makes about three dozen.

 

Rosemary Caper Tapenade

2 small (6 or 8 oz) jars of oil-cured black olives

1/3 cup olive oil

1/3 cup tiny capers (nonpareil) drained

2 (2 oz) tins flat anchovy fillets, undrained

1 tablespoon lemon juice

3 cloves garlic, minced fine

2 teaspoons finely minced fresh rosemary leaves or 1 teaspoon dried

Pepper to taste

Pit the olives and place in a blender or food processor.  Add olive oil and blend.  Add capers, anchovies, lemon juice, garlic, and rosemary.  Blend until smooth (or, if you prefer, still slightly grainy).  Taste and add pepper if you like.  If the spread is too thick, add additional olive oil.  Refrigerate several days for best flavor.  Serve at room temperature.  (To store, pack in a large-mouthed jar and cover with olive oil.  Cover jar tightly.)

There's only one thing standing in my way to culinary prowess with herbs--my current herb garden!

Umm, this is my current herb garden, the planter outside the back door
and it's empty--no seeds sprouted.



Foodies Read 2

I've felt like they have been giving out crazy pills at work for the past two weeks, but no one offered me any, so there I sit--the only sane person within view.  I'm thinking, "I would at least like to have had a choice." 

What helps me retain my sanity is reading and writing, as you probably know by now, and frankly lots of time spent by myself (with Ricky near-by, of course).  Exercise helps, too.  After riding my stationary bike this morning, I decided to mow the front lawn. Mowing with our lawn mower constitutes exercise, even though our yard is small.

Our Old School Lawn Mower--I love it!

I also relaxed earlier this week by doing some quick and easy reading.  While looking through the stack of books I purchased at the annual Centenary College Book Sale, I found a book that fit into my Foodies Read Book Challenge and read it in one sitting.  The Friendship Cake, by Lynne Hinton is about five women from the fictional town of Hope Springs, North Carolina who come together to develop a church cookbook.  The author Lynne Hinton is the pastor of a United Church of Christ Church, and she uses this relatively short book, the first in her Hope Springs (eternal?!) book series, as a platform to touch on universal themes,   There is diversity as one woman is African-American and must deal with latent bigotry that surfaces with teen pregnancy and mixed marriage; one of the group loves a woman though no labels are used here to depict gender diversity; and there is age diversity. 

Hinton also incorporates themes of life and death, giving and receiving, loneliness and loss--all faced and dealt with as the women bond, while reluctantly pursuing the cookbook project.  The recipes given in the book are extremely basic, but maybe they are so familiar because I'm from Virginia where recipes, such as sweet potato souffle casserole, boiled custard, banana pudding are standards.

Hinton's writing is adequate, she has some big names doing promotional blurbs for her cover, and her books have been successful.  This is the first book in a series about Hope Springs.  Readers of Judy Christie's Green series might also like this series, though I think Christie is the better writer.  For more information about Shreveport author, Judy Christie, click here.

Another Reading Challenge

Since I've started this blog, I've explored other people's blogs and discovered "The Reading Challenge."  Different folks decide to challenge others to read a certain number of books or to read books in a certain genre or with a particular setting.  You then post comments about the books you read as part of that challenge and link back to the original page in some way that I've not quite figured out. 

I've already shared on this blog my personal reading challenge this year--to read books from my library of unread books with the caveat that I can also read books that others might loan me, or books I download to my Kindle since I need mobile reading material available at all times for those stuck- in-waiting-room situations (or that's my justification).  So far I've resisted the temptation to purchase new books.  It's interesting to me that I can participate in the reading challenges I've seen so far by just going to my library shelves and selecting a book that I've been meaning to read. 

Last summer I challenged myself to read books from my library shelves about Africa, though I didn't call it a Reading Challenge.  I ended up reading six books. but I still have others waiting to be read.  In Louisiana last summer we were suffering a drought with weeks of high temperatures over 100 degrees, and reading about Africa put things in perspective for me.

This year I'm already participating in the "Once Upon a Time" reading challenge as I've posted about earlier. I've covered fantasy and fairy tales so far, and I'm slowly reading a series of "short stories" that are retelling of myths.  I'm not sure if I have an unread book that fits the folklore category or not, but there are many other options in this flexible challenge, The Once Upon a Time Challenge.

I recently was introduced to new blog, http://joyfullyretired.com/ that sponsors a "Foodie" reading challenge.

A food book for this challenge is defined as a book that is centered around food and/or drinks.  It can be a cookbook, a food biography or memoir, a non-fiction about a specific food, wine, chef or restaurant, or a work of fiction in which food plays a major role.  There are different levels according to the number of books you plan to read.  I've selected the level, Pastry Chef, which means I intend to read between 4 and 8 books.  I picked this level because it seems doable, yet challenging, and besides I love desserts!  I'm drawn to books about food and probably own a dozen I haven't yet read, so this challenge is perfect for me.  One of my favorite boards on Pinterest is my "Come and Get It" food board though I do more looking than cooking!

The food books from my library shelves that I plan to read include:

1.  Murder Most Frothy, by Cleo Coyle, a mystery centered around the culture of coffee consumption

2.  Heat, by Bill Buford, a non-fiction work about employment in restaurant kitchens

3.  Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table, by Ruth Reichl, a memoir

4.  An Unthymely Death, by Susan Wittig Albert, a collection of stories, herbal lore, recipes, crafts

5.  In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, by Michael Pollan, his manifesto about food choices

6.  Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table, by Sara Roahen, before- and-after Katrina look at New Orleans eateries

7.  A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table, by Molly Wizenberg, a collection of personal essays

8.  Larissa's Breadbook: Baking Bread & Telling Tales with Women of the American South, by Lorraine Johnson-Coleman, a fictional depiction of some southern woman's lives told through their bread recipes

I've completed my first book in this challenge and it's a murder mystery--the fourth book in Cleo Coyle's Coffeehouse Mystery series, Murder Most Frothy.  I've read most of this series but somehow missed this particular book, published in 2006 by Berkley Prime Crime Books, so I downloaded the book to my Kindle. 

In this mystery, coffee barista and manager of New York's Village Blend, Clare Cosi, is spending the summer at an estate in the posh Hamptons to help a friend open a new upscale restaurant and coffee bar.  When there is a murder at the friend's estate and Clare finds the body, she realizes the murderer shot the wrong man.  She steps in to identify the killer to save her friend, but also to protect her daughter and former mother-in-law who are also residing at the same Hamptons estate for the summer.  Not all of Clare's actions are believable to me as she follows up on clues and pursues leads, but it's an enjoyable romp. She pairs up with someone who is able to help her in her pursuit, and in the end they expose the murderer.    

Murder Most Frothy seems apropos for the first book in my Foodies Read 2 Reading Challenge.  The mystery is full of food facts--I learned there are over 40 different names to represent MSG on food labels, making it difficult to identify.  Detailed information is also provided about coffee--a good coffee blend has three elements: acidity, aroma and body; and coffee is good to use in meat dishes as a flavoring agent, tenderizer or marinade.  Here in Louisiana my husband and I are partial to Community Coffee New Orleans blend, but a single cup in the morning is usually my limit.  If I drank as much coffee as Clare Cosi does, I might chase murderers, too, because I certainly wouldn't be able to sit still.

Now I've got to abandon the reading life for a few hours and go dig in the dirt.  We are trying to make the cottage patio bloom for summer!