Autumn Afternoons

I just love this time of year. The cold evenings and soft warm days, the leaves changing into candy apple reds and cider yellows, the pumpkins on porches... the scary movies. Autumn is something special. 

This post will be short -- mostly just some pictures showing you what I've been up to other than writing the third book in the Christmas River series this past month: taking lots of photos of the changing leaves, decorating plaster skulls, and making a very messy and very tasty Boston Cream Pie. And just FYI, Madness in Christmas River, the follow-up to Mayhem in Christmas River, will be out by Dec. 1. Which, if you think about it, is really only a few short weeks away :). But in the meantime, I hope you all enjoy every dancing leaf, every glowing jack-o-lantern, and every black and white horror movie classic you see this season!
MM

Cinnamon's Peach Blueberry Pie

I got this awesome red pie dish from my sister for my birthday that has “Muldoon’s Famous Pies” engraved on the outside. It's just about the coolest thing ever, and it's given me just the excuse I needed to make more pie. 

This past Tuesday, I came home from work and spent the evening making a peach blueberry pie, much like the one Cinnamon makes in Mayhem in Christmas River.  It was, well... a peach! I based the recipe on one in Bubby's Homemade Pies, a book that is quickly becoming my pie bible. I thought the blueberries in the recipe might have overpowered the peaches, but I used this technique of roasting the peaches before cutting them up that made their flavor just shine. They came out flavorful and delicious, and it was unlike any peach pie I've ever had. The pie ended up disappearing like nobody’s business. It was a huge success!

So, if you’ve got a free evening and you want to try out this recipe, I recommend putting on some good music, drinking a good bottle of beer, and enjoying the long, time-consuming process in its entirety. Believe me – it’s well-worth the effort.

Peach-Blueberry Pie

Makes a 12-inch double crust pie

For the Crust:   

3 cups flour

9 tablespoons cold butter

6 tablespoons vegetable shortening

½ teaspoon of salt (or more, if you like your crust a little saltier)

½ cup of cold water

Mix flour and salt together. Cut butter and vegetable shortening into small pieces, then add to flour mixture. Cut butter and shortening into flour with a pastry cutter until mixture is pebbly. Add water a little at a time until it forms a dough. Split dough into two and roll into balls. Place in freezer for half an hour.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and roll out one of the dough halves into a disc. Place and form into pie dish. Cut off excess edges and poke crust several times with a fork. Place back in freezer for 10 minutes, then place dish in heated oven for 10 minutes to pre-bake.

For filling:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

5 to 6 Peaches, roasted, skinned, and cut into sixths (see below for how to do this)

2 cups frozen blueberries

1 plus 1/2 tablespoons corn starch

¾ cup brown sugar

¼ cup of flour

Pinch of salt

Dash of cinnamon

Zest and juice from ½ a lemon

3 tablespoons butter

Sugar

Mix peaches, blueberries, corn starch, brown sugar, flour, salt, cinnamon, lemon zest and lemon juice until just mixed. Pour ingredients into pre-heated pie crust. Sprinkle with slices of butter, then roll out remaining dough into disk and place on top, crimping to fit around the edges. Dust top with sugar, then cut five vents into top crust. 

Place on baking pan in oven and bake for 10 minutes. Lower temperature to 375 degrees, and bake for another 40 or so minutes, until top is golden, and the house smells like heaven.

Take out and let cool.

Roasting peaches:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees (This can be done when you’re pre-baking the pie crust)

Half peaches and place on baking pan. Coat with melted butter, sugar and a healthy helping of cinnamon. Bake for 15 minutes and then place in freezer to cool down. When cool enough, peel skins (should come right off) and remove pits. Cut into sixths, and add to pie filling. 

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did!  

MM

Deadwood, Dogs, and Book Updates

Well, in case you haven’t noticed, I suck at social media. I’m always trying to stay on top of my blog and twitter accounts, but here we are two months since my last blog post. Eek! I’m not going to promise anything, but I’ll try to avoid such long hiatuses in the future!

In the meantime, I've been up to some fun things. I visited my sister and her fiancé in Denver (and their large, crazy and cute Great Pyrenees puppy, Liti), and then we took a trip to Deadwood, South Dakota where I had just the best time living out all my Western dreams. I won $60 at the blackjack table in Kevin Costner’s casino, sipped whiskey in the saloon where Wild Bill Hickok was shot, and climbed up to the famous Mt. Moriah Cemetery. It was a grand, grand time J. I've also been brewing up some beer of late, and I must say, my latest batch of cherry stout turned out tasting a bit strange. But so far it hasn't poisoned anyone, so it has that going for it at least.

But, like all good things, my short stint of “Megcation” (as I like to call it) came to an end. Lately I feel like I've been living in the newsroom, turning around stories left and right. However, I've also made a point to continue writing what I really love writing: my cozy’s. I've been staying up late at night making some good progress on my upcoming books. 

Madness in Christmas River, the third installment of The Christmas River series, will be released this November in time for Christmas. But before that, I’m going to release a new cozy mystery series in the fall. All I’ll say is that the new book is going to be a perfect read for the autumn, and that I’m very excited about it! It should be available by late September, so stay tuned for more updates.

Last of all, I just want to say thank you to those of you who have downloaded my books, written reviews for them, and signed up for the mailing list. Not to get all sappy on you, but writing these books has been such a fun journey for me, and I owe you all a lot of thanks for that. When I’m having a tough day in the newsroom and I see that somebody signed up for the mailing list, or posted a review on Amazon – it gives me such a boost! So thank you, thank you, readers!

So with that, I’ll say that I’ll try to keep the blog more current. I’m going to revive my Music from Christmas River posts, and hopefully get a few more pie recipes going. And in the meantime, stay tuned for more updates on my upcoming books.

Hope you’re all having a lovely summer so far!

MM

Cinnamon's Christmas River Blueberry Pie

I made a batch of mini blueberry lemon pies this past weekend to celebrate the release of Mayhem in Christmas River. Let me tell you -- Cinnamon has a tough job! I was in the kitchen for half the day working on the dough, mixing the filling, and cutting lattice tops. But in the end, the pies came out great. I had to put them high up in the cupboard overnight so I wouldn't demolish them in a fit of midnight snackery! 

The recipe is loosely based on a Bon Appetit recipe I tried out a few years ago and loved. It combined the fresh and tart flavors of blueberries and lemon juice with cinnamon and brown sugar. It's an outrageously tasty combination, and I think these little pie-lets captured the flavors well. And I think Cinnamon would have been proud of me! 

Here's the recipe if you want to make these at home. They'll make about four small tartlet-sized pies. 

For the dough:

1 1/2 cups of flour

1/4 teaspoon of salt

5 tablespoons of cold, unsalted butter

3 tablespoons of cold shortening

5 tablespoons of water

Mix flour and salt together. Cut butter and shortening into flour using a pastry cutter. When the pieces become small and gravel-sized, add water. Combine into eight small balls of dough, and wrap them in aluminum foil. Then put them in the freezer for fifteen minutes to half an hour before using. 

For crusts: Butter small tart pans. Take cold balls of dough and roll out four of them into circular rounds to cover the tart pans. Press dough into pans. Prick bottoms with a fork. Pre-bake for about 10 minutes at 375. 

Filling: 

Two cups of blueberries (recipes always say to use fresh, but sometimes you just can't get fresh blueberries. I think frozen ones do a pretty good job most of the time. Just make sure they're mostly thawed.)

Juice from half of a lemon

1/4 cup of brown sugar

1/2 cup of regular sugar

2 tablespoons of cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon of salt

Combine all ingredients together in a large bowl. Taste for sugar vs. tartness, and add more of one or the other to balance out. Then divide filling among four tart pans.

Make lattice tops out of the remaining balls of dough. Roll out, cut into strips, then weave them together on top of the filling. Brush the tops with water and then sprinkle sugar on top. 

Bake pies at 350 for about 30-40 minutes. Pull them out and let cool for 20 minutes or more. Then, enjoy your hard work! 

Mayhem in Christmas River Now Available!!!

Dear Readers,

Hooray! Mayhem in Christmas River: A Christmas in July Cozy Mystery, has finally hit the digital shelves of Amazon.com and is now available for purchase! It's been a long journey... I've pretty much been cooped up for the entire last week putting the final touches on it, listening to a never-ending playlist of John Hiatt, Dwight Yoakam, Hayes Carll, Gillian Welch, Justin Townes Earle and Drive-By Truckers. In my darkest moments, these fine artists were there to keep me going!

I generally don't have Thank You pages in my books, but there were a few people I wanted to thank in particular, so I guess this blog post will have to suffice. My sister, Cassandra, has been the mastermind behind these awesome covers and has helped so much with these books. She's outrageously talented and creative. In addition, I wanted to thank my family for all their help with these books... they've helped me with so many aspects of the editing and publishing process, and I'm forever grateful for their support.

Also, I'd like to thank all of you out there who have been patiently waiting for the release of the book. Your support means so much!

So I'll stop stalling... Click here for a description of the book!

Cover Reveal: Mayhem in Christmas River

Dear Readers, 

Thank you for all of your patience while I've been diligently working on Mayhem in Christmas River. It's taken longer than I anticipated, but I'm rounding the corner to publication day! The book will be available on Amazon next week. In the meantime, here's a glimpse at the book's cover!  

Waiting on Beer in Christmas River

Dear Friends,

Happy spring! Usually in my neck of the woods, the arrival of spring doesn’t mean a whole lot. Mid to late March in central Oregon isn’t much different than mid to late February. The days are still chilly for at least a couple more months–the gray skies are just lighter a little bit longer. Snow is usually still on the ground, and there’s still a cold bite in the air. But the weather has been particularly mild this year. And as much as I love snow, I haven’t missed seeing it on the road every day on my way to work. In fact I’ve even been able to roll my car windows down on a few occasions—something extremely rare for early spring in central Oregon!

You’re probably wondering by now why a photo of beer is sitting alongside this posting. Well, I’ve picked up the hobby of brewing in recent months (a hobby that I think my main character, Cinnamon, would love to do if she wasn't so busy running her pie shop. And, a hobby that Warren, Cinnamon's grandfather, is taking up in the next book). Beer is big in my part of the country. We've got about 20 breweries and counting in the town I live in, so it was only a matter of time before I got swept up in the brewing fever.

This photo is of an Irish red ale I made – my first real, serious batch of beer. My last un-serious batch of beer ended up as a moldy, undrinkable disaster! So I was very pleased that this one actually turned out pretty decent. It was ready just in time for spring. It took a while to make (about 7 weeks) but I think it turned out all the better for those extra weeks of fermentation and carbonation.

Which leads me to my other bit of news. I apologize to those of you have been eagerly waiting for Mayhem in Christmas River, the second book in the Christmas Cozy Mystery series, to come out. I initially set a goal of completing it by the end of this month, but it looks like I’m going to have to push back the release date into early April. My sincerest apologies!!! The book is taking a little bit more time than I anticipated. But I believe that just like the beer, that extra time will be worth it. Writing a book is a big undertaking, and it’s important to take the time to do it right. So I really want to thank you guys for your patience. I’m putting everything I have into this second one, so rest assured that I’ll get it out to you as soon as I can.  

In the meantime, if you’d like to join my mailing list to receive better updates about my upcoming books and their release dates, please feel free to do so. You can find it on the top right of my home page.

Once again, thank you all for your patience. I promise, the wait will be worth it!

From Christmas River with beer and love!

--Meg