#COOKING WITH CLORIS--PORK CHILI VERDE WITH MYSTERY AUTHOR LESLEY A. DIEHL

Believing humor to be good therapy, former psychologist Lesley A. Diehl has published several not-your-usual cozy mystery series and short stories featuring sassy, zany protags. Protagonist Emily Rhodes is only one of the characters to emerge from Lesley’s somewhat sane yet peculiar mind. Learn more about Lesley and her books at her website and blog.  

To Cook or Not To Cook

I love to eat, and I love to cook. The combination of these has gotten me into trouble throughout my life. But mostly it’s my passion for eating that has been an issue. Several years ago, I gained enough weight that I decided I needed to reduce, especially because I have back issues and don’t need to carry around more pounds than necessary. I returned to my tried and true diet approach. I used WW. For me it’s a sane way to reduce because it’s easy and provides a balanced approach to food. In my younger years, it took only several months for me to diet and reach goal weight, but because I cannot exercise the way I used to (even walking is difficult now), and my metabolism is wonky, it took 9 months for me to lose 15 pounds. My husband can attest to the fact that I do not cheat when I diet, so the slow rate of loss was frustrating, but worth it.

I have kept off the weight for over a year, and I’m terribly proud of myself. Recently, I visited a spine specialist who said he’d be happier if I was 10 pounds lighter! I told him it was not going to happen, so he finally backed off when he learned how long it took me to get to the weight I now am. Of course, he’s in his forties and very buff. His philosophy is that we should eat only to have the fuel to do what we really like doing. For those of us who are older, what we like doing is eating, having a glass of wine and talking about our medical issues. Why are all our medical people mere children who think they will never end up where we are? Didn’t I, a few years ago, scoff at those who talked about their illnesses all the time? Funny how a few years changes one’s perspective. 

I now practice moderation because it is necessary, but not fun.

As for the cooking passion, I still do it and make healthy, but tasty meals. Now here’s the odd part: none of my protagonists are cooks. Most of them don’t cook, and some of them can’t cook. For those who try cooking, they usually fail at it. It may be that I want to be better at something than the characters I’ve created who are younger than I, blonder than I, taller or thinner than I, and with the exception of the psychologist modeled after me, none of them have ever had weight problems. Do you suppose there’s a connection between their lack of weight issues and not cooking?

In the Big Lake Murder mystery series, the protagonist, Emily Rhodes is shorter than I, but much tinier. She was a preschool teacher who came to Florida and retired early, found she needed money because her life partner upon whom she was financially dependent died and left her not a cent. She took up a new career as a bartender and does a smashing great job of mixing drinks, which is kind of like cooking, especially if you load the drinks down with several olives or a lot of fruit. But here’s the interesting side of Emily’s life—she lives next door to a woman who loves to cook and bake and who makes Emily and her friends goodies daily. The most recent book in the series is Scream Muddy Murder, and it contains some of the neighbor’s recipes. None of them are healthy, but all of them are yummy. If you’re yearning for the best Key Lime pie, the recipe is included in the book.

Years ago, crockpots were all the fad. I have the one I bought in 1970 something. It still works, and I have discovered it is great for chili and for pulled pork. The wonderful thing about it is that it makes cooking easy. You throw the ingredients in with minimal preparation and let the pot, unwatched, do the rest. I understand there are updated versions of the slow cooker that do everything for you except eat the food. Although I’m tempted to buy one of these new cookers, I don’t feel like dedicating the space to it because both of my homes, New York and Florida, are small. 

Assuming Emily can find her slow cooker, I think this recipe for Pork Chili Verde might be something even Emily Rhodes could accomplish, or she could suggest it to her cooking fanatic next-door-neighbor.

Pork Chili Verde

Ingredients:

2-3 pounds boneless pork country ribs

Half an onion

8-10 tomatillos*

16 oz jar of salsa verde (I prefer mild, but go hotter if you like)

1 small can tomato sauce

16 oz can diced tomatoes

1 can cannellini beans, drained and added the last hour of cooking

salt and pepper 

Optional seasonings: I use Cajun seasoning, but you can add what you like: oregano, paprika, chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, cilantro

Cut the pork into 1-inch chunks, season and brown in a large skillet. Place in crockpot. 

Sauté onion. 

Peel the little papery jackets off the tomatillos, cut into half inch pieces and add along with canned tomatoes and tomato sauce to the large skillet. 

Add the jar of salsa verde, cook down the concoction (about 10-15 minutes), then add to the crockpot. I then cook all on high for 6 hours. Your slow cooker may need less time or more. The pork comes out very tender, and the other ingredients blend together well. You know your croc pot, so test for tenderness.

Serve like chili in a bowl with shredded cheese on top if you like and warm corn tortillas on the side. If you have some left over but not enough for another full meal, add the heated leftovers to cooked macaroni or brown rice.

*Tomatillos look like green tomatoes with papery, beige jackets on them. Be certain you peel off the jackets. If you can’t find them, increase the amount of salsa verde. The dish will not taste as bright and fresh without the tomatillos, but it will be good.

While your chili verde is cooking away, I have another special treat for you. The first book in the series is only .99 cents until the end of November. Read it while you smell your evening meal cook.

Dumpster Dying

Emily Rhodes came to rural Florida for the cowboys, the cattle, and to do a little country two-step, not to fall headfirst onto a dead body in a dumpster. Ah, the golden years of retirement in the sunshine state. They’re more like pot metal to Emily, who discovers the body of the county’s wealthiest rancher in the Big Lake Country Club dumpster. With her close friend accused of the murder, Emily sets aside her grief at her life partner’s death to find the real killer. She underestimates the obstacles rural Florida can set up for a winter visitor and runs afoul of a local judge with his own version of justice, hires a lawyer who works out of a retirement home, and flees wild fires hand-in-hand with the man she believes to be the killer.

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GUEST AUTHOR LESLEY DIEHL ON SETTING A MYSTERY SERIES IN RURAL FLORIDA

Lesley A. Diehl is the author of several mystery series and short stories, all featuring country gals whose snoopy attitudes and smarts make them great candidates for taking down the bad guys. Whether in the river valleys of Upstate New York, the swamps of rural Florida or the cornfields of the Midwest, these sassy sleuths never let anything get in their way. Learn more about Lesley and her books at her website and blog. 

A Great Place for a Murder

The country is where I set all my mysteries. I am, after all, a country gal raised on a dairy farm in the Midwest. I know the country. I’ve lived in it most of my life. Setting is important to my writing because it influences the make-up of my protagonists as well as the people they encounter. Setting is, for me, inextricably intertwined with character as well as plot.

Two of my series are set in rural Florida, a place few tourists explore. Most people coming to the sunshine state prefer to stay on the coasts for blue water and great sandy beaches. Traveling inland usually means a trip to the land of that mouse fellow to enjoy entertainment with the kids or grandkids.

Go west of Palm Beach and you will find the land changes. Not that there no longer are palm trees waving in the breeze, but there you’ll find wild sabal palms as well as cypress trees, strangler figs and live oaks. So, a shady place, you say? Somewhat, but most often the eye sees broad stretches of Florida prairie and herds of cattle. It’s like a tropical version of Texas. And yes, it’s not unusual to spot cowboys on horses herding these cattle.

There is one of the largest fresh water lakes in the US here.  It is surrounded by a high earthen damn and a canal, build to control the water of the Big Lake, Lake Okeechobee, to prevent hurricanes from destroying lives the way a big one did in the Belle Glade and Pahokee area in the 1930s. Small mammals such as otters, raccoons and rabbits abound here along with bird life—herons, egrets and others. This is the home of the endangered Florida panther, many varieties of turtles and snakes, lots of snakes. At the top of the food chain is the alligator, or the human, depending upon how you look at it.

I’ve described the land in detail because so few know this wild place and because it is against this backdrop that I set my mysteries. Both protagonists in my rural Florida series experience the same reactions as I did when I chose to live here part of the year. They are interlopers who hope to become part of the communities they have moved into. Moving my protagonists into rural Florida accomplishes two objectives in my writing. It creates a physical setting that is alien and can seem threatening. A reader cannot help but feel this from the sense of threat the swamps and wildlife create. Live next to a swamp, see one of those thirteen-foot alligators swim by, and the impending danger from the environment feels real.

On the other hand, a wading great white heron in the backyard is grace and beauty personified. This contradictory sense of the world in which my protagonists move creates a sense of tension into which I write plot and character development.

A “Yankee” moving here is both awed by the area and stands in the position of outsider, an exciting place for a protagonist to be in terms of character development and for setting her up as the sleuth who tracks down the killer. Outsiders can be mistrusted, but they also can be underestimated. Emily Rhodes, the protagonist in my third book in the Big Lake Murders is prone to stumble upon dead bodies. She’s done this twice before, but this time it’s at a re-enactment of the Battle of Okeechobee. It is rainy, it is muddy, it allows me to bring in the setting, the murder and Emily as the unlikely sleuth.

Rural Florida is the last wild place in the state, and its character is under threat from overdevelopment, overpopulation, destruction of wildlife habitat, careless handling of water resources and conflict between environmentalists and big business. Setting takes on political, social and ethical overtones, which I use as the themes that drive my characters into conflict and sometimes into cooperation. Emily Rhodes wants to belong in her adopted home, but she also brings to the story values that may conflict with those held by the ranchers, farmers, and developers who dominate the area. I couldn’t ask for a better mix of physical setting and local conflicts as the place a killer does his work and a sleuth finds him out.

Join Emily in her latest adventure on the edge of the “Big Lake” and see how being a displaced Yankee gal helps and hinders Emily’s search for a killer. Oh, there are recipes in the book. People there eat well, you know (no gator dishes, however).

Scream Muddy Murder

 Murder in the mud. Romance in the swamps. And RECIPES!

EMILY RHODES DOES IT AGAIN! This time she nosedives into a mud puddle at a Seminole War battle reenactment and finds she’s sharing the muck with a dead body. As usual the hunky detective she loves to aggravate, Stanton Lewis, cautions her against getting involved in the case, and as usual she ignores him. Emily’s sleuthing pays off, revealing disturbing information about the victim’s past. Is it the reason behind his murder? With the help of her family and friends, Emily sets out to uncover secrets kept too long and puts herself and the people she loves in the killer’s path. Too late she realizes Detective Lewis was right. Her snoopiness proves to be a deadly idea.

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RECYCLE, REUSE, & REPURPOSE WITH GUEST AUTHOR LESLEY A. DIEHL

Some of Lesley's second-had finds

Mystery author Lesley A. Diehl retired from her life as a professor of psychology and reclaimed her country roots by moving to a small cottage in the Butternut River Valley in upstate New York. In the winter she migrates to old Florida—cowboys, scrub palmetto, and open fields of grazing cattle, a place where spurs still jingle in the post office, and gators make golf a contact sport. Back north, the shy ghost inhabiting the cottage serves as her literary muse. Learn more about Lesley and her books at he website. 

Channeling the Queen of Recycling, Reusing, Repurposing

I had no idea growing up that my tiny grandmother, eccentric to an extreme with her insistence on repurposing my aunt’s clothes for her own use even though they were sizes too big for her, taking auntie’s shoes and tying them on her feet with grosgrain ribbon and even reusing her bath water to wash down the second floor hallway, would have such an impact on my writing. She died when I was in college, and I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t think much about her and then, whammo! She wriggles her way into my protagonist’s choice of business.

Eve Appel is a gal who believes in fashion, and why not? She lived in Connecticut and had access to all the best stores in Hartford, and on the Connecticut coast. Travel to New York City took little time. But then Eve moves to Florida, and not to Miami or Naples or to West Palm. No. She chooses the wilds of rural Florida, the pastures and swamps of the Okeechobee area.

What can a fashionistia do there? Not only can she get away from her philandering hubby, but she can set up a high-end consignment shop with her best friend, Madeleine, selling gently used fashion from the society matrons of West Palm. Eve firmly believes, as did my grandmother, that used merchandise is not only cheaper than new, but better because finding it is like a scavenger hunt—fun for everyone and with a reward at the end. Just like a mystery.

 Who wouldn’t just die for a pair of Manolo Blahniks at less than half the price?

And, of course, that is just what happens. Someone dies. In her shop. In her dressing room. Trying to get a size 14 body into a size 8 gown. That’s only the beginning of Eve’s need to push her nose into every murder in the county.

In her newest caper, Eve encounters an unpleasant owner of a game ranch who, she is sure, is responsible for the murder of a client on another ranch owned by Madeleine’s current squeeze. In A Sporting Murder, Eve finds the killer with the help of her weapons of choice—her friends and relatives. And we’re off and running on yet another caper in the swamps of Florida. Oh, and by the way, thanks, Granny, for being the role model for secondhand shopping. You’d be so proud of Eve.

A Sporting Murder

An Eve Appel Mystery, Book 3

It’s smooth sailing for Eve Appel and her friend Madeleine, owners of Second to None Consignment Shop in rural Florida’s Sabal Bay, land of swamps, cowboys, and lots and lots of ’gators. Eve and her detective boyfriend Alex have joined Madeleine and her new beau David Wilson for a pleasure cruise on his boat. But cloudy, dangerous waters lie ahead. A near fatal encounter with Blake Reed, David’s supremely nasty neighbor, is soon followed by a shooting death on the dividing line between David and Blake’s land. Both men run sport-hunting reserves, but Blake imports “exotics” from Africa and promotes gator killing, while David stays within the law, pointing clients toward the abundant quail and turkey as well as the wild pigs that ravage the landscape. Nevertheless, when a mutual client is killed, it is David who is arrested and charged with murder.

Blake’s nastiness is only exceeded by that of his wife, Elvira, who forces Eve and Madeleine out of their shop, intending to replace it with a consignment shop of her own. It seems that bad luck looms over them all, even Eve’s brawny and hard-to-resist Miccosukee Indian friend Sammy, whose nephew has disappeared.

As the case against David grows stronger and his friends’ misfortunes multiply, Eve and her strange and diverse group of friends, including her ex, a mobster, her grandma, and Sammy’s extended family, band together to take on the bad guys. But the waters are getting muddier and more troubled, and Eve and Madeleine may end up inundated in every sense of the word.

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