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Fellow cooks, the time is now—the time to flop your fish out of the frying pan and into the oven, that is. Sure, deep-fried candy bars have a place in every healthy diet. But on days besides Fryday, you might want to make a meal using that other appliance that takes up space in your kitchen.

You can start with this oven-baked version of a recipe that’s usually fried. We promise the end result is every bit as delicious. And remember, you can always deep-fry a Twinkie for dessert.

3 pounds fresh fish fillets or strips (we used pollock)
2 tbsp. butter
½ box Cajun seafood fry mix or fish seasoning mix of your choice (or less spicy version, use ¼ of a box)

Preheat oven to 425° F.

Set baking pan in oven until the pan is warm (not hot). Remove pan from oven. Put butter on pan, let melt and spread over pan.

Pour Cajun seasoning mix in a large plastic bag. Add fish and then shake gently to coat evenly. Remove fish from bag, place on buttered pan. Bake for 15 minutes or until fish is flaky.

For the baked hush puppies (makes 12 mini pups)
Cooking spray
⅔ cup cornmeal
⅓ cup flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. garlic salt
¼ tsp. black pepper
⅓ cup coconut milk
1 egg
1 tbsp. oil

While the fish is baking, coat a mini muffin tin with cooking spray.

Measure dry ingredients in a bowl and mix with a fork. Add wet ingredients and stir with fork until blended. Spoon the batter into the muffin tin.

Remove the fish from the oven and turn the oven up to 450°F.

Bake the hush puppies for 10 minutes or until a tester pick comes out with a few moist crumbs.

Serve fish and hush puppies with ready-made coleslaw.

If the fish you’re using is not moist, dipping the fillets into milk or water before coating with seasoning will help the seasoning mix stick.

For the hush puppy recipe, you can substitute full-fat cow milk for the coconut milk.

Coleslaw helps cut the effect of the spiciness of the Cajun seasoning on your tongue, but potato salad is a good substitute.

Once upon a time there was a mother/daughter author duo named Helen and Lorri, who wrote as HL Carpenter. the Carpenters worked from their studios in Carpenter Country, a magical place that, like their stories was unreal but not untrue. Then one day Lorri left her studio to explore the land of What-If, and like others who have lost a loved one the magical place lost much of its magic. But thanks to family, plus an amazing group of wordsmiths named Authors Moving Forward (AMF), the magic is slowly returning.

It is possible to gather flowers for your vases without deliberately planting a cutting garden. Possible, but much more fun to set up a section of the garden for bringing the blossoms inside. Harvesting these blooms will not denude your carefully planned perennial landscape.

In Spring, tulips, daffodils, and peonies are perennial friends who return year after year. One of the best cut flowers is gladiola. Staggered planting of the bulbs (which are fairly inexpensive.) will prolong the harvest. In temperate climates, gladiola bulbs will renew, but pulling them up and storing will guarantee next year’s bloom. 

 Other bulbs are simple and, again, fairly inexpensive. Asiatic and oriental lilies and other in the same family are excellent mid summer. Day lilies may be used if you understand the stem must contain more than one bud as they open and close in one day. 

 Sunflowers, dahlias and members of the rudbecia family are primo for late summer. 

In the greenhouse we grow an exquisite plant, lisianthus, for our commercial bouquets. Super valued for their longevity once harvested, they are not an easy plant to germinate. Grab a few if you find them at your florist or farmers’ market. They come in several colors: pink, rose, pastel yellow and deep blue. I love the two-colored ones that are white trimmed with blue. Last but certainly not least, zinnias are an all-time favorite. Careful to choose the tall variety for your vases.  

Enjoy your flowers out and inside!

In Whispers of Danger and Love, the heroine, a landscaper, meets a challenge to create an instant cutting garden for a lady whose knowledge of gardening is next to nil. Cheryl chooses gladiolas and stakes them upright. The ruse works and her client is happily able to harvest her own bouquets.  I admit I enjoyed working on this novel as it allowed the gardener in me to “play in the dirt” while I wrote the story.

… which leads me to call attention to my latest Cozy Adventure/ Mystery, Whispers of Danger and Love. 

The heroine is a landscape architect who speaks gardening. She struggles with a client who demands a cutting garden mid summer, (and a hunky detective who seems bound to destroy her plants.) I enjoyed relaxing in her garden even as I created it from my own imaginings. It was also fun to watch the sparks fly between a couple who knew each other as children but must readjust their thinking as adults.

Emma Lane is a gifted author who writes cozy mysteries as Janis Lane, Regency as Emma, and spice as Sunny Lane. 

She lives in Western New York where winter is snowy, spring arrives with rave reviews, summer days are long and velvet, and fall leaves are riotous in color. At long last she enjoys the perfect bow window for her desk where she is treated to a year-round panoramic view of nature. Her computer opens up a fourth fascinating window to the world. Her patient husband is always available to help with a plot twist and encourage Emma to never quit. Her day job is working with flowers at Herbtique and Plant Nursery, the nursery she and her son own. 

Look for information about writing and plants on Emma’s new website. Leave a comment or a gardening question and put a smile on Emma’s face.

Stay connected to Emma on Facebook and Twitter. Be sure to check out the things that make Emma smile on Pinterest.

This is an easy version of a very popular dish among Armenians and Azeris named Kutab which is stuffed flat bread. In a classic version, you have to make a dough from scratch. But I make my Kutabs with soft large flour tortillas you can find in any supermarket. This is so easy to make, any novice (and any man) can do it. Plus, it’s fast and a very filling dish. 

There are several different stuffings for Kutabs. The most popular is Green Stuffing, a combination of different herbs. There is also Meat Stuffing that is delicious. The recipe I’m sharing makes 10 large or 12 medium Kutabs. 

Wash and dry all herbs, then chop coarsely. Sweep them into a large bowl. Add lemon juice, oil, salt, and pepper. Mix well.

Beat the egg in a small bowl.  Fill half of a tortilla with stuffing, leaving a little bit space at the edges. I measure it by handfuls and use 2 handfuls for each Kutab. Use a brush to apply egg to the edges. Fold tortilla in half and then press with your fingers to make the edges stick together.

Pre-heat a large skillet. Add a little oil. The classic version calls for a dry pan, but my family prefers the Kutabs fried in avocado oil. Olive oil works well, too.

Cook on medium heat until both sides are golden brown. Makes perfect lunch or dinner. We eat it with feta cheese and plain yogurt. 

Kutab Meat Stuffing

Use a food processor mash onion and garlic. Add already ground meat. Mix well together. Add salt, pepper, and water.

Instead of greens, spread meat on half of the tortilla, seal with beaten egg, and then cook per the Green Stuffing instructions.

For meat Kutabs, you can use any sauce.  Works perfect with marinara.

Enjoy!

Here is a peek at Stella’s time travel romance for your reading pleasure. .

One key unlocks the love of a lifetime…but could also break her heart. 

Nika Morris’s sixth sense has helped build a successful business, lovingly restoring and reselling historic homes on Florida’s Amelia Island. But there’s one forlorn, neglected relic that’s pulled at her from the moment she saw it. The century-old Coleman house.  

Quite unexpectedly, the house is handed to her on a silver platter—along with a mysterious letter, postmarked 1909, yet addressed personally to Nika. Its cryptic message: Find the key. You know where it is. Hurry, for goodness sake! 

The message triggers an irresistible drive to find that key. When she does, one twist in an old grandfather clock throws her back in time, straight into the arms of deliciously, devilishly handsome Elijah Coleman. 

Swept up in a journey of a lifetime, Nika finds herself falling in love with Eli—and with the family and friends that inhabit a time not even her vivid imagination could have conjured. But in one desperate moment of homesickness, she makes a decision that will not only alter the course of more than one life, but break her heart. 

’Til Time Do Us Partis available in Kindle and Paperback at AMAZON. 

Talented author Stella May is the penname for Marina Sardarova who has a fascinating history you should read on her website. 

About The Demons of Chiyoda:

Occult private eye, Nora Simeon, and Eyre, her uncannily pretty boyfriend, are on another case on behalf of the Commission, the secret organization that controls financial sorcery in the Americas. This time they’re hunting down an investment-bank sorcerer who cracked when passed over for promotion and used a summoned demon to commit murder. Finding the murderer is easy, but he’s already dead, assassinated in a locked room.

The case’s ramifications quickly reach far beyond New York. From a murder scene in Queens, Nora and Eyre discover a tangled web of international corruption and sorcery linking crimes in Japan and the US. Traveling to Tokyo at the behest of the mysterious Onmyōdō Group, they run afoul of the even more deadly Ministry of Shadows. In the rural reaches of Fukushima province, Nora and Eyre discover a fateful secret that could shake the foundations of financial sorcery all around the world and come up against an old enemy whose malice poses a greater danger than any they’ve faced before.

Book Information:

ASIN: ‎ B09STVRWSL
Publisher: ‎ Mirror World Publishing; 1st edition (March 17, 2022)
Publication Date: ‎ March 17, 2022
Print Length: ‎ 199 pages

Follow the Book Tour for Spotlights, Exclusive Excerpts, and Reviews:

https://saphsbookpromotions.blogspot.com/2022/03/book-tour-schedule-demons-of-chiyoda.html

Read an Exclusive Excerpt:

When I got back to the living room, Eyre was sitting cross-legged on the floor, his hand on the demon’s gripper limb. The demon had recovered to the point of unlimbering their two stabby arms to speak again.

“I’m sorry,” Eyre said. “It’s not fair. I know you couldn’t disobey even if you wanted to. And I’m afraid that won’t matter to the Commission. But if you like, now you’re unbound so I can do a banishing ritual for you to send you home. You’d be safe from any other punishment.”

“Safe?” The demon played a discordant note. “No! I won’t go back.”

“But—”

The demon rose once more to their feet, or their pointy things, whatever. “I’m sorry, too,” they played. “You’ve been very kind.”

They drew back one of their sharpened quadruped limbs, and as they struck, Eyre rolled out of the way. As the demon recovered from their lunge, he leaped to his own feet. The demon reared up like a horse and came down with their deadly forelegs aimed at Eyre’s torso, but my assistant caught both metal limbs in his hands before they could strike home. Advancing a step, Eyre forced the demon’s limbs apart and back; there was a grinding shriek of tortured metal and both joints ruptured.

“Yield,” Eyre said, “please. You’ll have another chance someday. We can work something out.”

The demon still had their centaur-arms free, the ones they had been using to speak, and they could have struck with those, but instead they played, “Never.”

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Presenting the traditional St. Patrick’s Day meal most North Americans will enjoy with a cold Harp Lager, Guinness Stout, Killian’s Irish Red Lager, or Smithwicks Ale. But here’s a newsflash, Boyo, except for the beer you’ll never find corned beef served anyway on the Old Sod. That’s right. Our Irish brethren look at us in amazement, but that’s never stopped us Yanks from creating traditions. So pour another wee dram and let’s get cooking.

Corned Beef

1 5lb. corned beef brisket*
2 med. onions, peeled and quartered
4 peppercorns
1 bay leaf
3 bottles of beer, not Lite
water to cover

Preheat oven to 300 F°.

Place beef in a Dutch oven. Add remaining ingredients, including spice packet that comes with the beef.

Bring to a boil on stovetop. Place in oven and roast for 3 hours or until meat is fork tender.

*Don’t stint on the beef. It cooks down to approximately half. I learned this lesson the hard way.

Here’s a tip from my butcher Raoul. Always buy corned beef flat cut. It has less fat than the point. Therefore you get more meat for your money.

Vegetables
6 med. red potatoes, peeled and quartered
6 carrots, scraped and cut into 2″ pieces
1 celery stalk, cut into 2″ pieces
1 med. green cabbage, cut into 8 wedges
1 cup corned beef cooking liquid
water

You can prep all the veggies and store in a large container covered by cold water until you’re ready to cook them. Refrigerate so vegetables remain crisp.

Place veggies in a large pot. Stir in corned beef cooking liquid. Add water to cover vegetables by 2 inches. Cover pot. Set cooking temp at medium. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat so the pot doesn’t cook over, but maintain a soft boil. Cook about 30 minutes or until veggies are fork tender.

Horseradish Sauce

1 cup sour cream
2 tbsp. prepared horseradish
1 tsp. fresh chives, snipped short

Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl. Stir well.

Transfer to a serving dish, cover, and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Dea Ithe!

Sloane

Sloane Taylor is an Award-Winning author with a second passion in her life. She is an avid cook and posts new recipes on her blog every Wednesday. The recipes are user friendly, meaning easy.

Taylor’s cookbooks, Date Night Dinners, Summer Sizzle, and Recipes to Create Holidays Extraordinaire are released by Toque & Dagger Publishing and available at all book vendors.

Excerpts from her books and free reads can be found on her website, blog, and her Amazon Author Page. Connect with Taylor on Facebook and Twitter.