Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Peggy Ehrhart | Strawberries on the Brain
Author Guest / May 10, 2021

Food is almost as important as knitting in my Knit & Nibble mysteries. The members of the Knit and Nibble knitting group take turns hosting the club’s weekly meetings, and each week’s host serves a sweet treat with coffee and tea at break time. I include at least one recipe in each book, often for the sweet treat baked and served by my amateur-sleuth protagonist, Pamela Paterson. In devising the recipes that my characters make and serve, I like to keep the time of year in mind. Knitty Gritty Murder takes place in May, so I have Pamela bake a rhubarb cheesecake for the knitting group. The recipe for that creation appears at the end of the book and photos of it appear on my website’s Knitty Gritty Murder page. But May is also the month for strawberries. Knit and Nibble’s only male member, Roland DeCamp, prides himself on doing his own cooking when it’s his turn to host the group. But he’s not the most experienced cook, so I give him simple recipes. In Knitty Gritty Murder, he serves Strawberry Jell-O Pie, which I learned to make in high school and which requires little more than a box of…

Peggy Ehrhart | All the Comforts of Chocolate + Giveaway!
Author Guest / April 20, 2020

Stay safe! Stay inside! Limit trips to the grocery store! We’re all hearing advice like this as we wonder how long the coronavirus is going to be with us. Food writers suggest inventorying our pantries for overlooked supplies and creating meals out of what we have on hand–though my trips to the grocery store have revealed that many people are limiting their trips by buying a few months’ worth of food at once, including the woman I saw with two filled-to-capacity carts, pushing one and pulling the other. But I like the idea of discovering and putting to use supplies I had forgotten I had. With this in mind, I explored the contents of my freezer yesterday and found . . . half a package of brownie mix! It was hidden way in the back, between the box of raisins and the bag of walnut halves (I freeze almost everything I don’t use often). The brownie mix dated from last year when I was experimenting with a way to make easy cookies for my Knit & Nibble mystery #6, Knit of the Living Dead, coming out this August. As you can guess from the title, it has a Halloween theme,…