In chapter 23 in Year of the Dog , I mentioned Auntie Nell’s acerola cherry jam. I promise I didn’t make that up—except my grandma made it, not my Auntie Nell. Grandma had an acerola tree in her front yard and would gather cherries every summer. It’s suuuuuuuuuper sour, so we didn’t often eat it fresh, but Grandma added truckloads of sugar to make it into jam, which we loved. Come to think of it, we probably tasted more sugar than cherry, but we were kids, what else is new? I only just learned that acerola cherries have 32 times the amount of vitamin C as orange juice, and tons of antioxidants! I wonder if that’s why Grandma lived so long! Now I’m missing that jam. Isn’t it awful how we take so much for granted as kids? Have you ever had acerola cherry jam?

Can you guess what this is? I’m on the Sweet Romance Reads blog today with a little info on the strange sweet my character is making in A Dangerous Stage . Check out the blog post here.

  I blogged before about how my character Sol from Lady Wynwood’s Spies, volume 1: Archer loves Lady Wynwood’s cook’s seed cakes, and how I decided to try some seed cake recipes using a cook book published in 1800. The first seed cake recipe I tried, Pound Seed Cake , turned out really well, but after tasting them, my husband requested lemon poppy seed flavor. Making the seed cakes with sourdough discard turned out exactly the same as when I made a sourdough levain, so I thought that making these tea cakes would be a GREAT way to use up sourdough discard, since I always keep a jar for my discard in the fridge. The lemon poppy seed version turned out fantastic! I admit that the first time I made them, I accidentally forgot to check them at 25 minutes, so I took them out at 30 minutes and they were a little brown. But they still tasted wonderful and were great with tea. The sour tang of the discard paired perfectly with the lemon zest. I made them again and took them out at 25...

One of my favorite online tea stores, Adagio teas , has launched an online spices store called Selefina spices . They sent me some spice samples to try, but the ones I had the most experience with are chocolate powder and cinnamon, so I decided to make chocolate hazelnut rooibos tea with the Selefina spices. Normally, I use a cacao powder I got from Amazon, but the Selefina cocoa powder was a little lighter in color (sorry I forgot to take a picture). I made my tea the way I normally do with my Amazon cacao powder and some ground cinnamon we got from the local grocery store. Here’s my recipe: 1 Tablespoon Selefina Cacao Powder, high fat (20-22%) 1/4 teaspoon Selefina ground Cassia Cinnamon 1 teaspoon Adagio Honeybush Chocolate tea 1 teaspoon Adagio Honeybush Hazelnut tea milk sugar or sweetener to taste I put the honeybush teas in a fine mesh strainer but I put the cacao powder and cinnamon directly in the pot. I add 2 cups boiling water to the cacao/cinnamon and whisk i...

The best part about writing novels is that I get to include little personal things in my books. I absolutely love food, so I always include one or two foods in my books that are special to me. In my romantic suspense, Deadly Intent , the heroine’s family is having a get-together with friends and family. At get-togethers with my family, my mom will usually make Chinese chicken salad. It’s a really yummy dish that’s surprisingly easy to make. It’s also not too exotic (unlike some other Asian food I grew up with). As kids, we loved it, and my mom was happy since we were eating our veggies. :) Chinese chicken salad 1-2 cooked chicken breasts, shredded 1 head iceberg lettuce 1/4 c. cilantro, coarsely chopped (optional) 1 package won ton skins (optional) DRESSING: 1-2 teaspoons sesame oil 1/2 cup salad oil 2 Tablespoons sugar 3 Tablespoons rice vinegar 1/2 teaspoon salt freshly ground black pepper finely shredded celery (optional) Whisk together dressing, adding or sub...

Thank you all for praying for me! My IBS is getting better, although I’ve had to eliminate more things from my diet. :( It’s so bland now, I was complaining to my mom that I should just eat rice and eggs. The good news is that I’m able to each mochi, and I’m thinking of making some for New Year’s. I actually found an old Regency recipe I had posted before, “Mr. Darcy Would Be Appalled White Soup,” can be easily modified for my IBS diet, so I made that a couple weeks ago. It was very yummy and perfect for our cold weather lately. If any of you know some good gluten-free recipes, please do send them my way! (I’m not actually sensitive to gluten, but I can’t eat wheat because it contains too much fructans, so essentially I have to go gluten-free.) As I’ve been feeling better, I’ve been able to get more and more writing done each day! I’m slowly progressing on Lady Wynwood’s Spies, volume 4: Betrayer . Even though my health has taken a turn for the worse thi...

I actually don't intend to post everyday on my blog (although who knows? Maybe I'll find I enjoy doing that), but I wanted to post this photo since I'm so stinkin' proud of myself! I made "real" sourdough bread with that lovely oven spring and everything! And the crust is super crispy and it even opened up where I scored it! I started doing sourdough baking thanks to my friend and fellow author, Deborah Vogts who has a blog with lots of mouthwatering recipes. I used her Sourdough Baguettes recipe and it came out fabulous! From there I've been hooked on sourdough and I've been reading up on it more to make really good bread. I finally managed it! It was so delicious! I think this is the best bread I've made yet!

There is a line in Pride and Prejudice where Mr. Bingley is talking about the ball he plans to host at Netherfield: “If you mean Darcy," cried her brother, "he may go to bed, if he chooses, before it begins—but as for the ball, it is quite a settled thing; and as soon as Nicholls has made white soup enough, I shall send round my cards.” I then found these two fascinating articles on white soup from the Jane Austen Centre and the Austenonly blog . I decided to try making it! I followed the recipe from the book by John Farley, published in 1811, The London Art of Cookery and Domestic Housekeepers' Complete Assistant : uniting the principles of elegance, taste, and economy : and adapted to the use of servants, and families of every description . You can download the scan of the original book from the link. Here’s the original recipe: White Soup. PUT a knuckle of veal into six quarts of water, with a large fowl, a pound of lean bacon, half a pound of rice, two ...

If you ever go to Hawaii, you must visit Royal Kitchen and try their char siu manapua. It is a little golden bun so delicious that it will send you into a higher plane of consciousness. Basically, it’s marinated pork baked inside a fluffy bread bun. It’s like those Chinese steamed bao buns you see in restaurants and sometimes at bakeries, but manapua is usually baked rather than steamed. You can get steamed manapua too, but I tend to like the baked ones. You can get the manapua stuffed with char siu pork or other things. I’ve also eaten it with kalua pork , which is Hawaiian-style smoked braised pulled pork. Captain Caffeine had frozen some pulled pork he made in his smoker a few months ago, so I pulled it out of the freezer to make manapuas on my own, using this recipe for the bun. I’m too lazy to knead, so I used my bread machine to make the dough. I just put all the ingredients in my bread machine, with the liquid ingredients first and then the flour and yeast on top, and pu...

view full image Made garlic noodles according to this recipe: http://youtu.be/j09pazAcRLE Supposed to be similar to Crustaceans Restaurant in San Francisco. OMG it's awesome! Very close to the restaurant version. 

A few weeks ago, my parents were in town and we went to Shuei-Do, a shop in San Jose Japantown that sells mochi and manju. Mochi is a rice cake made with sweet rice that’s been pounded into this sticky, slightly chewy texture. It can be a plain dumpling (my grandma adds it to soup for New Year’s) or it can be filled with a variety of things like sweet red bean paste (azuki or adzuki), sweet white bean paste, and even peanut butter or fresh strawberries. My family always has a mochi-making session before New Year’s so Grandma has mochi for the traditional mochi soup. Update: I found this video I’d made years ago of my grandma and my mom making mochi for New Year’s! Even though my grandma usually only ever made mochi in late December, there are some families who make sweet mochi (for snacks or desserts) throughout the year just like Shuei-Do and other mochi shops. So in a scene in A Dangerous Stage where Tessa is visiting Mrs. Akaogi, I have her making mochi. Mrs. Akaogi i...

Katsudon (tonkatsu donburi) Heather H. on Facebook asked me about this when she was reading A Dangerous Stage , and she suggested I blog about it, so this post is all because of her. :) Katsudon is a pork cutlet with a Japanese style "gravy" over rice. It's not what you'd think of as traditional Southern gravy, it's more like a lighter teriyaki sauce, which has eggs in it. Captain Caffeine loves this dish, which is one of the reasons it's in A Dangerous Stage . When I was writing the scene, I was trying to think of food for them to eat and this was the first thing to come to mind. This recipe is closest to what I envisioned when I wrote that scene in Nez's restaurant. Instead of dashi, I usually use beef or chicken stock, and for the cutlets, I usually use regular breadcrumbs, but if you have panko, then totally use that. If you ever get a chance to order this in a Japanese restaurant, it'll probably be a little more fancy, but it'll taste e...

(YES, I’m still on that veggie kick.) It was too cold for a green smoothie, so I was looking through the Blendtec recipe book and thought I’d try the “soups” setting. They have a handful of soup recipes, but I took the Raw Vegetables soup and altered it. We got beets and beet greens in our organic co-op, so I used the pressure cooker to cook them (you could probably use the microwave or a regular pot but I had my pressure cooker out already because I’d recently made chicken stock with it). I also threw in some fennel and leeks with the beets and beet greens. You could throw in whatever veggies you happen to have in the fridge. Even a mix of veggies would probably taste good in this. Then I threw some chopped garlic in the blender (I should have added it with the veggies when I cooked them but I forgot) along with 2 cups of chicken stock. I added the veggies plus one tomato and hit the “soups” button. A minute later, I had “cream” of vegetable soup! And it was low fat! And I got s...

My organic co-op has restarted for the year and I got my first basket! Until I got the basket, I hadn't really realized how much I was missing my veggies. We hadn't gotten many veggies at the store this past week because we knew we were getting a basket. To celebrate, I promptly made a green smoothie. :) Spinach, two tiny beets (the golden variety, and they're smaller than radishes), two apples, juice from half a lemon, and one cup of milk. I forgot to add ice so it separated rather quickly, but it was still tasty. Is it spring in your area yet?

So I finally made this pudding. I was really hoping it would be really good, but it ended up tasting just okay for me. For one, it was too sweet. For another, the whiskey flavor, while interesting, just didn't do it for me. Do any of you have corn pudding recipes you like to make? I'm willing to try another one. :)

Source: simplyrecipes.com via Camy on Pinterest This is not going to sound exciting to most of you, but since I don’t have children, this was pretty novel for me--I made homemade lemonade for the first time! I used the recipe above (click the picture) and it turned out GREAT. Not too tart, not too sweet (I used less sugar than recommended in the recipe, but only a little less--something like 7/8 cup rather than 1 cup). I’ve had homemade lemonade and limeade when my friends have made it, but I’ve never tried to make it myself. However, we’d gotten a bunch of lemons from the organic co-op we belong to, plus I still had some lemons I got from my uncle back in December (they were those thick-skinned lemons from his tree and surprisingly they lasted fine in the fridge). So I sliced them and squeezed them to get rid of them. This was so easy I think I’ll make lemonade next time we host our college group Bible study at our house!

I don't think I blogged about this yet. I finally made hush puppies! I had always heard about Hush Puppies but never tasted them, so I decided to make them. I used this recipe since it looked super easy. They tasted great! I really liked the texture of the cornmeal. It was tender without being tough. Any of you have a good hush puppy recipe you want to share?

After my first foray into green smoothies , I made them for a while but then stopped. But then my cousin talked about how his cholesterol dropped when he started juicing, so I took up my green smoothies again. It’s hard for me since it’s cold here in California, and I don’t like drinking cold smoothies when I’m cold. (Captain Caffeine, on the other hand, tends to “run hot,” so he’s always happy to have ice in what he drinks.) Anyway, I’m also trying to be good and use up the veggies and fruits we get from our organic coop. A couple weeks ago, Captain Caffeine brought home some grapefruit from a coworker and I also wanted to use that. Grapefruit pith is bitter, so I squeezed the grapefruit juice into our Blendtec juicer. Then I added two apples (cored and sliced), a handful of kale leaves (stalks removed), a ginormous spoonful of honey, and a couple tablespoons of cashew butter. I got the idea for the nut butter because my mom always loved the Ono Ono strawberry shake from KC Driv...

I mentioned before that I’m one of the authors in the Miracles of Marble Cove series published by Guideposts. It’s been a lot of fun because the series is heartwarming women’s fiction with a light mystery thread that runs through all the books. For book #17, Steps of Faith , I have a character who is very well-traveled and a bit exotic (Jeff’s mother) who’s being visited by one of the main characters, Beverly, who is not quite so exotic. I wondered what a woman like Jeff’s mother would like for coffee--certainly not plain old coffee. Then I remembered Turkish coffee, which I’d heard about somewhere. I looked it up and decided to write that into the book, but I also had to try it first! I tried with a small regular pot but it didn’t turn out so great. So I got a cheap Turkish coffee/milk warming pot on Amazon and followed the online instructions for making Turkish coffee. I fine-ground the beans and put them in my cezve pot with cold water, sugar, and ground cardamom. I gave i...

Source: tumblr.com via Camy on Pinterest In-N-Out, one of my fav burger joints, makes an appearance in the first chapter of A Dangerous Stage . It's a chain on the West Coast and Hawaii, I'm not sure how far east they have restaurants. They don't freeze any of their food, it's all fresh, including the buns and the french fries. When you order, you can see them use this french fry hand-crank machine to make their fries, it's pretty cool. The specific restaurant in A Dangerous Stage doesn't exist at that location, but there's a couple of them near me and I go there way too often than is good for me, but it's oh-so-yummy!