LESLIE: I'm delighted to welcome back to the blog my cousin, Laura Childs,
New York Times bestselling author of Lavender Blue Murder, the latest in her Tea Shop mysteries. She's also the author of the Cackleberry Club Mysteries set in rural Minnesota and the Scrapbooking Mysteries, with Terrie Farley Moran, set in New Orleans. We're celebrating the release of her latest Tea Shop Mystery with a fun recipe and some talk about tea.
Talk to us in the comments for a chance to win a copy of Lavender Blue Murder.
LAURA: What fun to be here! And a special thank-you to my cousin
Leslie Budewitz for inviting me. (You see, mystery writing really does run in
the family.)
In writing the Tea Shop Mysteries – and under the guise of
doing copious research – I’ve been lucky enough to visit tea shops around the
world. I’ve sipped Japanese green tea and eaten baked sweet potatoes in a
little tea shop in Kyoto, Japan. I enjoyed high tea at a five-hundred year-old
tea shop in Shanghai, China. And I’ve loved the tea and tea sandwiches that are
served at all sorts of cute little Victorian and French-inspired tea shops
right here at home.
Tea can be a relaxing meditation of sorts. There’s selecting
your type and flavor, infusing fresj tea leaves in water that’s been brought to
the perfect temperature (just short of boiling), and then waiting patiently for
your tea to steep. When tea is finally ready for sipping, it not only imparts a
delicious flavor but also delivers a lovely, relaxing hint of aromatherapy.
But you know the best part about taking tea? It’s the food.
Namely the tea sandwiches of which there seem to be an infinite variety. We’re
talking tomato and cream cheese, brie and apples, grilled shrimp, salmon and
cucumber, shrimp salad, chicken salad, country paté, mortadella, ham and
cornbread, prosciutto and fig, roast beef and cheddar, smoked turkey and apple,
tuna salad, smoked trout, and blue cheese with pears. If you can dream it, you
can make it!
I always include recipes in my books and one of my favorite
recipes in Lavender Blue Murder is the one for Hawaiian Tea
Sandwiches. I made three dozen of these little darlings recently to take along
to a book signing, and every one was snapped up in the first twenty minutes.
Yup, they’re that good. So here’s the recipe:
Hawaiian Tea Sandwiches
4 maraschino cherries, chopped
1 pkg. cream cheese (3 oz.), softened
6 slices bread (date-nut works great)
3 slices ham
Spread mixture on all 6 bread slices. Top 3 of the bread
slices with ham.
Then add the top slice, trim crusts, and cut into quarters.
Yields 12 tea sandwiches.
But lest you think I’m all about the food, I serve up a
darned exciting murder mystery as well. In fact, here’s a little taste of Lavender Blue Murder:
As tea shop owner Theodosia and her tea sommelier Drayton
enjoy a British-style day of shooting at Creekmore Plantation, gunshots explode
like Black Cat firecrackers. But the distinctive pop of a handgun sounds too
close for comfort. Theodosia wanders into a neighboring lavender field and discovers
their host Reginald Doyle bleeding to death. Hours later, a fire rips through
the Doyle’s plantation house. A shooting and
a fire feel way too coincidental, so Theodosia launches an investigation.
Fingers are pointed, suspects abound, and old secrets are revealed even as
Reginald’s daughter-in law is missing and presumed drowned. A wild,
cross-country chase with more shots fired reveals the killer. This is one of my
most action-packed mysteries yet!
And, yes, with all this excitement going on I manage to
include descriptions and menus for three different tea parties as well as
recipes for cream scones with pear butter, prosciutto puff babies, buttermilk
biscuits, London fog lattes, and lots more! So . . . are you hungry yet?
Love,
Laura Childs
LESLIE: I am ALWAYS hungry for one of my cousin's books! Let's talk tea, sandwiches, Charleston, or anything else Laura's post inspires. Leave a comment, with your email address, for a chance to win a signed copy of Lavender Blue Murder. (US addresses only; winner will be chosen Wed, March 18.)
