When the Weather Outside is Frightful #recipe #giveaway

Liz, Barb, and Lucy in Key West

A big warm welcome to guest authors Barbara Ross and Liz Mugavero! Be sure to read all the way down for their double giveaway!

BARB AND LIZ: For those of us who live in the northern half of the U.S., we’re coming into the season of cold and snow, ice storms, and howling winds. Some days, it’s better for both man and beast to stay tucked up indoors. Here are two recipes from our latest books, designed to bring comfort to you and to your four-footed friends during the three-dog nights to come.

For the humans—

Jacqueline’s Meat Loaf by Barbara Ross

In the Maine Clambake Mysteries, my protagonist’s mother, Jacqueline Snowden, isn’t much of a cook, but she can manage this simple meat loaf. In Iced Under she cooks it in hopes of enticing her daughter to stay over on a stormy night. In reality, this is the meatloaf my mother made and that I made for my kids a lot when they were growing up, so it feels like home to me.

Ingredients

2 pounds ground beef

1 medium onion, diced

1 1/2 cups dried Italian bread crumbs

1 egg

½ cup ketchup

2 Tablespoons Dijon mustard

Instructions

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and work with your hands until thoroughly mixed. (It’s a cold, messy job, but somebody’s got to do it!) Form the mixture into a loaf. Cook in an oven preheated to 375 degrees for 45 minutes.

Serves 6-8.

For the canines—

Vegetable Beef Crackers

Ingredients

2 cups wheat flour

1 & 1/2 cups white flour

1 Tablespoon chopped parsley

1/2 cup shredded carrots

2 ounces of vegetable beef (or beef only) baby food

1 egg

1 Tablespoon vegetable oil

3/4 cup water

Instructions

-Combine all ingredients in bowl, adding flours last. Mix until well blended.

-On a lightly floured surface, knead dough for about 3 minutes.

-Roll out dough to 1/4" thickness and cut out shapes using mini cookie cutters of your choice.

-Bake on a lightly greased cookie sheet for 25 minutes at 350 degrees.

-Cookies maybe left in oven after baking (while oven cools down) to harden for a more crunchy bite.

Yields about 35 cracker size cookies.

A tasty feast for man and beast!

Barb and Liz will be giving away signed copies of both new books, Iced Under and Custom Baked Murder. Leave a comment with your name and email to be entered in the drawing!

Liz Mugavero is the author of the Agatha Award-nominated Pawsitively Organic Mysteries Kneading to Die, A Biscuit, A Casket, The Icing on the Corpse and Murder Most Finicky. Custom-Baked Murder, the fifth in the series, will be released in December 2016. As you can imagine, her canine and feline rescues demand the best organic food and treats around. She is a member of Sisters in Crime National, Sisters in Crime New England, Mystery Writers of America, and the Cat Writers’ Association. She currently lives in Connecticut.

Barbara Ross is the author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries, including the Agatha-nominated Best Contemporary Novel Clammed Up, as well as Boiled Over, Musseled Out, Fogged Inn, and Iced Under. Her story “Nogged Off” appears in the holiday novella collection Eggnog Murder along with stories by Leslie Meier and Lee Hollis. Barbara blogs with the Wicked Cozy Authors and Maine Crime Writers. In the summer, she writes on her big front porch overlooking the water in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. You can visit her website at http://www.maineclambakemysteries.com