I love to cook. I started out as a baker. Out of five children, I was the one who baked the cookies, made the brownies, and baked the cakes from scratch.
My dad was a great baker. He made a buttercream coffeecake that was out of this world. Every weekend in winter, he would be in the kitchen baking bread. When I was old enough, he taught me. I still remember the first time I baked it by myself. We took a loaf down the street to Grandma, and she proclaimed it to be as good as Dad’s. I was overjoyed.
Sometimes he would surprise me, and after we had made the bread, we’d make cinnamon rolls, or on rare occasions, homemade raised donuts.
I don’t remember when I crossed over from baker to cook, but I do remember my very first cookbook was Trader Vic’s Book of Mexican Cooking. My family acted as some pretty great guinea pigs while I worked through that book. I still use many of the recipes today.
At one time, I had over 100 cookbooks in my collection, and I didn’t just collect them, I cooked from them. I’ve thrown a few large parties and cooked all of the food myself. I think I’m a good candidate to write a foodie mystery.
But I have nothing. I think on it and dream on it, and there’s nothing there. There is poisoned food in my thoughts, and I’ve chopped people up with butcher knives. Blech! I’m not going there.
So, I did the next best thing. In my books, Susan and her neighbor across the hall, Darby, do a lot of cooking together. They make a lot of the same things I make with the same results – stunning failures or fantastic successes. They put their best recipes in a recipe box and call it the Keeper Box.
I put the Keeper Box on my Breezy Books web page. Clicking on it takes you to a page of some of the recipes that were cooked in the books. When the fourth book is done, I’ll have two more recipes to add – Summer Chicken and Rhubarb Pie with a Never-Fail Pie Crust.
I guess in my own way, I’m writing foodie mysteries after all.
Breezy Books 