Appetizer Roundup by Maya Corrigan

If I'm expecting company for dinner, I spend my time planning the main dish, sides, and dessert, but I rarely think about an appetizer until the last minute. Then I have to poke around the pantry and fridge or rush to the store. Usually, I go with cheese, crackers, fruit, and nuts. I only recently realized how useful Mystery Lovers Kitchen is if you're looking for easy-to-make appetizers. Here's a roundup of recipes with only 4-6 ingredients suitable for various seasons.

Leslie Budewitz shared a recipe for grilled caprese kabobs, which she calls "summer on a stick." Not only is it easy to make, it's also a healthy and pretty dish.

My sweet potato rounds make a good autumn dish. With the bright orange of the potatoes and deep red of dried cranberries, they are a healthy and savory choice for a Halloween party. 

Stuck for a holiday appetizer? Try Vicky Delany's Last-Minute Christmas Eve Appetizer, made with cranberries and brie.

Continuing with the holiday theme, Cleo Coyle offers Italian Easter Pie Palmiers and the history of this special spring dish. 

Photo by Cleo Coyle

For an appetizer that works all year round, try Lucy Burdette's cheese puffs with hot pepper jelly

What kind of appetizers are your favorites?   

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mystery series. It features a young cafe manager and her young-at-heart grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes. Maya has taught college courses in writing, literature, and detective fiction. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit her website for books news, mystery history and trivia, and easy recipes. Sign up for her newsletter there. She gives away a free book to one subscriber each time she sends out a newsletter. Follow her on Facebook.

A PARFAIT CRIME: Five-Ingredient Mystery #9

Set in a quaint Chesapeake Bay town, the latest novel in Maya Corrigan’s Five-Ingredient Mysteries brings back café manager Val Deniston and her recipe columnist grandfather – a sleuthing duo that shares a house, a love of food and cooking, and a knack for catching killers.

At the site of a fatal blaze, Val’s boyfriend, a firefighter trainee, is shocked to learn the victim is known to him, a woman named Jane who belonged to the local Agatha Christie book club—and was rehearsing alongside Val’s grandfather for an upcoming Christie play being staged for charity. Just as shocking are the skeletal remains of a man found in Jane’s freezer. Who is he and who put him on ice?

After Val is chosen to replace Jane in the play, the cast gathers at Granddad’s house to get to work—and enjoy his five-ingredient parfaits—but all anyone can focus on is the bizarre real-life mystery. When it’s revealed that Jane’s death was due to something other than smoke inhalation, Val and Granddad retrace the victim’s final days. As they dig into her past life, their inquiry leads them to a fancy new spa in town—where they discover that Jane wasn’t the only one who had a skeleton in the cooler.

Read an excerpt and see where to buy A Parfait Crime.  

Praise for A Parfait Crime

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