Hayden's Cheddar Pimento Olive Balls -- #recipe by @LeslieBudewitz

LESLIE BUDEWITZ: It's great fun to introduce a new Spice Shop mystery---and to introduce new additions to the Spice Shop crew! Each book in the series includes a subplot highlighting Pepper's relationship to one of her staffers. In Between a Wok and a Dead Place (coming July 18 -- preorder now!), Pepper's involvement in a mystery in Seattle's Chinatown-International District brings her into closer contact with Reed, the college student who grew up in the Market and started working at the shop even before Pepper bought it.

And we meet two new staffers, Vanessa---young, earnest, and very nervous about fitting in, and Hayden---who will take over the warehouse and production facility, a responsibility that's grown significantly since the pandemic.  

Hayden created these cheddar olive balls to surprise his new co-workers. He’ll fit right in, and so will you, anytime you serve these delightful two-bite appetizers. In reality, they're an old favorite of mine---from the handwriting on the recipe, which isn't even on an index card, I'm guessing they date from my own college days and may originally have come from my sister-in-law. Everything old is new again, right? 

Happy Fourth of July to all our American readers!

What's your favorite appetizer to take to a party---or the one you hope your host serves? 

 Cheddar Pimento Olive Balls

1 cup sharp or smoked cheddar cheese, shredded

3 tablespoon butter, melted

1/2 cup flour

dash of kosher salt

½ teaspoon cayenne or paprika, sweet or smoked

12-15 pimento-stuffed green olives, drained

Heat oven to 400 degrees. In a medium bowl, combine cheese and butter with a fork. Add flour, salt, and cayenne or paprika and mix into a rough dough. Use your hands if necessary. Use your hand or a spoon to scoop up a tablespoon of dough and wrap around an olive. Roll into a ball and place on baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough. Chill one hour. 

Bake 12-15 minutes or until golden. Serve warm.

BETWEEN A WOK AND A DEAD PLACE: A Spice Shop Mystery (July 2023, Seventh St. Books)

From the cover: 

It's the Lunar New Year, and fortunes are about to change. 

 

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market, loves a good festival, especially one serving up tasty treats. So what could be more fun than a food walk in the city's Chinatown–International District, celebrating the Year of the Rabbit?

 

But when her friend Roxanne stumbles across a man's body in the Gold Rush, a long-closed residential hotel, questions leap out. Who was he? What was he doing in the dust-encrusted herbal pharmacy in the hotel's basement? Why was the pharmacy closed up—and why are the owners so reluctant to talk? 

 

With each new discovery, Pepper find herself asking new questions and facing more brick walls. 

 

Then questions arise about Roxanne and her relationship to Pepper's boyfriend Nate, away fishing in Alaska. Between her worries and her struggle to hire staff at the Spice Shop, Pepper has her hands and her heart full. Still, she can't resist the lure of the Gold Rush and its tangled history of secrets and lies stretching back nearly a century. 

 

But the killer is on her tail, driven by hidden demons and desires. As Pepper begins to expose the long-concealed truth, a bigger question emerges: Can she uncover the secrets of the Gold Rush Hotel without being pushed from the wok into the fire? 

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Spice Shop Mysteries set in Seattle's Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, set in NW Montana. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody, standalone suspense, most recently Blind Faith. She is the winner of Agatha Awards in three categories: Best Nonfiction (2011), Best First Novel (2013), and Best Short Story (2018). 

A past president of Sisters in Crime and national board member of Mystery Writers of America, Leslie lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat, an avid bird-watcher.

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