Janel Gradowski's Blog, page 7
February 22, 2015
Chicken Soup & Homicide’s Release Day!
For an author, getting ready to release a book into the world is a bit like running a race. Today I’m hitting the finish line for Chicken Soup & Homicide. Woohoo! The ebook is on sale for a limited time for only $.99. (Click on the cover above to buy from your favorite book retailer.) If you grab a copy, after you read it, please consider leaving a review on Amazon, Goodreads, etc. Kind reviews are appreciated by every author.
Now I’m setting off on the internet for a two week book tour. Click the button below to see the stops. There will be reviews, interviews, guest posts and giveaways. I am also hosting a Let’s Party Giveaway here on my blog. You could win everything you need to host a colorful little cupcake party to chase away the winter blues.
Let’s Party Giveaway
Winter has been brutal here in Michigan with record-breaking low temperatures and wind chills. Very much like the weather that is hitting the fictional town of Kellerton, Michigan in Chicken Soup & Homicide. To celebrate the book’s release and give one lucky winner a fun way to chase away the winter doldrums I’m giving away a cupcake party. Use the Rafflecopter below to enter.
One lucky winner will receive everything in the picture above:
a fox-themed set of napkins/cupcake liners/cupcake toppers
4 acrylic purple polka dot glasses
4 aqua-colored plastic bowls
double-chocolate cupcake mix and chocolate icing
The giveaway is open to U.S. residents only. Winner will be announced on this post and contacted via email after the contest is over. If the winner doesn’t respond within 48 hours another winner will be chosen.
February 18, 2015
Pie & Ice Cream Giveaway Winner
Congrats to Chickie B. who won the Pie & Ice Cream Giveaway!
The release of Chicken Soup & Homicide is less than a week away. Stay tuned – there are more giveaways to come!
February 16, 2015
Every Day Fiction Podcast
My story, Tired, that was published at Every Day Fiction last week has been turned into a podcast! Follow the link to listen to the story. You can even rate it if you’d like.
February 12, 2015
Tired at Every Day Fiction
I’m returning to my writing roots today. Even though my current writing hat is cozy mystery novelist, I still love flash fiction. It’s the writing form that I was drawn to when I decided to hunker down and really pursue my crazy dream of being a writer.
While I adore writing quirky, fun cozy mysteries, I enjoy the challenge of writing in a different style. My flash fiction story “Tired” was published at Every Day Fiction today. Stop by to get a taste of a more serious side to my writing.
February 10, 2015
Pie & Ice Cream Giveaway
Pie topped with ice cream is a great treat when you want to celebrate something special. On February 23 I will be releasing my next book, Chicken Soup & Homicide, book #2 in the Culinary Competition Mystery Series. So I’m celebrating by giving away some pie and ice cream…with a twist. Use the Rafflecopter below to win an autographed paperback copy of Pies & Peril, plus an ice cream cone-themed tea towel and cookie cutter set.
Sorry, because of shipping costs this is a U.S. only giveaway. Ends midnight EST, February 17, 2015. Winner will be notified within 48 hours of end of contest. If the winner does not respond within 48 hours a new winner will be chosen.
February 3, 2015
Mistakes Are Awesome!
Okay…some mistakes are awesome. That ex-boyfriend that seemed awesome in college was still a mistake that should’ve been avoided. But sometimes things that seem like mistakes are really more like your subconscious telling you what you need before you know you need it.
See that package above? You may have seen it before in the picture from my post about going to several ethnic grocery stores. I bought the bag of cream of wheat because I thought I had seen a recipe for flatbread that used it. I was wrong. The recipe used chickpea flour instead. So I bought the wrong ingredient. An inexpensive, the bag cost around $2, mistake. No big deal, but not awesome. Yet.
Last week I ended up catching the cold that was making the rounds in my family. Nothing terrible, but still annoying and uncomfortable. Just what I needed since I was very close to completing the first draft of my next book. I wanted to finish the first draft by the end of January. Not so easy to keep writing every day when what I really wanted to do was just lay on the couch all day and watch TV. I needed comfort food. Something warm for my stuffy nose. Something soothing for my sore throat. And something filling for my finicky appetite. Guess what was the perfect remedy. Cream of wheat. Yup. The mistake.
Cooked on the stove with a mixture of water and milk for the liquid. Always a sprinkling of nutmeg. Sometimes a splash of vanilla extract. Sweetened with brown sugar and rounded out with a pat of butter. Constantly whisking the porridge as it cooked provided a nice little Zen-like break. The grocery mistake was exactly what I needed to combat the cold so I could keep writing. And the final bit of serendipity…I finished the bag of cream of wheat and the novel on the same day.
January 27, 2015
Cookbook Review: The Moosewood Cookbook 40th Anniversary Edition
The Moosewood Cookbook 40th Anniversary Edition
By Mollie Katzen
Published by Ten Speed Press
There are some cookbooks that stand the test of time. After being welcomed into countless kitchens they become one of the go-to books for many cooks. The Moosewood Cookbook is one of those books. It features vegetarian recipes that were developed in the author’s restaurant in the 1970s. Hearty, healthy dishes that will often appeal to non-vegetarians too. In this edition some of the recipes have been updated a bit, but the book still holds the charm of the original.
The entire book is handwritten and illustrated with line drawings – some simple, some more complicated, all delightful. It makes the reader feel like she is flipping through Ms. Katzen’s recipe files, which is exactly what the original version of this book was. After receiving many requests for recipes from the restaurant, she sat down, wrote out many of them, then had them copied and bound at a local bookstore. A very humble beginning for a beloved-by-many book.
With the popularity of global cuisine now, the ethnic recipes aren’t as exotic as they probably seemed forty years ago. But that certainly doesn’t mean they aren’t tasty! I made the apple crisp. It was hearty with plenty of oats and not syrupy sweet like some recipes for the same dish that I’ve tried. Some of the recipes were revamped from the original photocopied version, lightened up or revised to improve flavor and texture in the mid-1980s. Twenty five recipes were also added at that time. The 40th Anniversary Edition is a clothbound hardcover with gold-toned fabric and blue embossed images of fruit, vegetables and leaves. Between the rather coarse fabric cover and the absence of a dust jacket, to me it feels like a book that is meant to be used, not placed on a shelf because it is too precious to risk staining the pages with beet juice or olive oil.
I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.
January 16, 2015
I’ll Try That!
Since before Christmas I have been asking my husband to go with me to an Asian market in a nearby city. I had never been there, but heard that it had a wonderful selection. Since I have an ever-expanding collection of cookbooks that call for ingredients that definitely aren’t available at my local grocery store, trips to ethic grocery stores (or mail order) is the only way I can make many of the recipes whose descriptions make my mouth water.
Two days ago my husband was working from home and surprised me by saying he’d go to the market. When we got there I got another surprise. The market is in a strip mall that sits behind a row of businesses. One of the places you have to pull into the parking lot to actually see the businesses because they aren’t visible from the road. Oooh boy! Not only was there the Asian market I intended to go to, there were also a second Asian grocer AND and Indian market. Foodie heaven in a strip mall.
As I walked around the small stores, looking at packages, I was searching my mind for what exotic ingredients I needed for recipes that had caught my eye in the past. I got everything from green cardamom pods, dried woodear fungus that states “genuine fungus” on the package, a big jar of kimchi turned a vibrant red from the ground chili pepper paste in it to a package of dried tofu sticks. My I-don’t-know-what-it-is-but-I’ll-try-it item was a jar labeled bean sauce.
My favorite dish from my local Chinese restaurant is black bean chicken. Sauteed chicken and veggies with pungent, uber-umami bits of flavor courtesy of whole, fermented black beans. I figured the sauce I bought was just those beans ground up into a sauce. Close, but not quite. I did a little research and found it is made with different kinds of beans and is essentially the Chinese version of Japanese miso. Score! I love miso. I can’t wait to try it this weekend.
My husband dutifully followed me around. He long ago got accustomed to my obsession with odd or exotic food. He doesn’t understand it sometimes, like my excitement to discover packages of dried shrimp because now I can try cooking Burmese food, but he puts up with it. This week he even picked out a few things for himself from the snack food aisles. So does anybody else go to grocery stores and buy unfamiliar foods? “Ooh, that’s looks interesting. I have no idea what it is, but I’ll try it.”
This post is part of Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads
January 12, 2015
Blog Tour Sign Ups Are Open!
I am looking for host blogs for the Chicken Soup & Homicide Blog Tour. It will run from February 23 (release day) until March 8. Please note: there may be more than one blog posting on each date. If you would like to sign up for a date, just fill out the form below. If those dates don’t work for you I would still love to have you do a post about the book (it just won’t be part of the official blog tour). Thank you!
Amy Ridley and her friend, Sophie, have perfected their chicken soup recipe, and the winter-weary residents of Kellerton, Michigan can’t wait to watch them compete against other local chefs in the Chicken Soup Showdown. But the charity event starts out with a bang, literally, when one of the rival chefs falls out of a freezer and onto Amy. If it wasn’t stressful enough for Amy to catch a dead body, the detective in charge of the investigation targets her best friend, Carla, as the chief suspect in the murder.
In order to clear her friend’s name, Amy does her own investigating. The problem is nobody liked the arrogant murdered celebrity chef, and soon her suspect list is longer than the list of ingredients in her secret chicken soup recipe. Can Amy figure out who killed the celebrity chef? Or will Carla be spending the spring in jail?
