My Guest today is the fabulous Chris Redding talking about two of my favorite things cooking and writing.
I like to cook. I love to eat. I
married a man who loves to cook and likes to eat. We have two teen sons, so you
can guess that there is a lot of food consumed in my house
And cooked. I’m kind of amused by
this “clean eating” movement. It’s a great idea, but for me it’s just called
eating. When the kids were younger I used the occasional packaged rice or a can
of soup in something. Most of the time they didn’t like it. My older son loves
steamed rice. The kind you get from the Chinese restaurant. He’d eat a bowl of
that all by itself.
A few years ago, I decided to cut
out all of those products completely. I make things of my own like enchilada
sauce or even taco seasoning.
The upshot of this is we have
started our own binder of recipes. Our family cookbook you might want to call
it. When each son moves out, he will get a copy of it. And, yes, both boys can
cook basic stuff. Neither has taken to it, but I wasn’t a fan of cooking at that
age either. In college I lived on boxed mac and cheese, Hamburger Helper and
pizza from where I worked.
I didn’t really start cooking until
I got married.
I find cooking to be a lot like
writing.
You have ingredients which are your
character and your plot. You have to cook them, or in the case of a book, make
those ingredients do what you want for the story. I usually finish a draft,
then let it sit. This is the meat resting after it’s cooked and before you cut
it. The revision process is the putting more salt or pepper if the dish needs
it.
Now, that I have you all hungry, I’m
going to share a recipe. This is an appetizer, great for a party. Any person whose house I have brought this too,
asks for me to bring it the next time.
Cheese Puff
Appetizers
Ingredients:
2C shredded
cheddar cheese
2C shredded
low fat cheese
1 cup butter
melted
2 C all
purpose flour
2 dashes any
hot sauce, any heat level
1 jar pitted
green olives
Preheat oven
to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a cookie sheet
In a small
bowl, mix together cheeses, butter, flour, and Worcestershire sauce. Knead the
dough. Pinch the dough into small balls, flatten them in the palm of your hand,
then wrap an olive in the dough. Arrange the wrapped olives on the cookie
sheet.
Bake for 15
minutes or slightly brown.
You can use
all regular fat cheese, but the texture is better with some lower fat cheese
because of the moisture content. I found the olives from the olive bar stay too
wet to use for this. A substitute if you don’t like olives would be a jalapeno
pepper, but I’d cut down on the hot sauce then.
Bio:
Chris Redding
lives in New Jersey with her husband, two sons, one dog and three rabbits. She
graduated from Penn State with a degree
in journalism. She teaches online writing workshops and a creative writing
course for a local continuing education organization. When she isn’t writing or
teaching, she works part time for her local hospital.
Buy Links to
Blonde Demolition:
Blurb:
Mallory Sage lives in a small, idyllic town where
nothing ever happens. Just the kind of life she has always wanted. No one, not
even her fellow volunteer firefighters, knows about her past life as an agent
for Homeland Security.
Former partner and lover, Trey McCrane, comes back
into Mallory's life. He believes they made a great team once, and that they can
do so again. Besides, they don't have much choice. Paul Stanley, a twisted killer
and their old nemesis, is back.
Framed for a bombing and drawn together by
necessity, Mallory and Trey go on the run and must learn to trust each other
again―if they hope to survive. But Mallory has been hiding another secret, one
that could destroy their relationship. And time is running out.
Chris Redding
Links:
