Friday, October 23, 2015

Flipped for Murder & Tea with Rum (or Sorghrum) and Honey


Edith Maxwell's alter ego, Maddie Day joins us today for Drinks with Reads. And her cat, Birdy, makes a cameo at the end of the post...

Maddie Day here – also known as Edith Maxwell. Robbie Jordan is my chef-carpenter in the new Country Store Mysteries. She’s a Californian transplanted to hilly scenic southern Indiana, and she’s still discovering new and delightful things about her new home, the town of South Lick. She’s worked hard renovating an old country store full of antique cookware into Pans ‘N Pancakes, her breakfast-and-lunch restaurant. Too bad one of her customers dies the day the store reopens – with one of Robbie’s cheesy biscuits in her mouth.

When Robbie needs a break, she heads out to her Aunt Adele’s sheep farm, sometimes on her bicycle. Adele, a tough but loving seventy-year-old, always has freshly baked bread and butter to offer, as well as a hit of Sorghrum, but Robbie has never heard of the drink. Here’s part of a scene from Flipped for Murder where Adele offers Robbie a taste, and Adele’s even older boyfriend, Samuel, explains what it is:

“Sorghum spirits. It’s new,” Samuel said. “A local guy distills it from an Amish farmer’s sorghum. An Amish farmer with thirteen children. He doesn’t even drink alcohol, himself.” He laughed. “They wanted to call it sorghum rum, but the state wouldn’t let them.”

“Want to try a hit?” Adele asked, uncorking the bottle and pushing it in my direction.

“Why not?” I sniffed the spirits, its heady aroma hitting my sinuses, and poured a little into my cider. I tasted it and grimaced. “It’s kind of molassesy.”

“Too sweet?” Adele asked.

“No, it’s okay.” I took another sip. “I guess it grows on you.”

Robbie’s foundling kitty, Birdy, doesn’t much care about Sorghrum, but he loves prowling the store after hours. Just like Sorghrum, solving murders seems to grow on Robbie.

Out here in Massachusetts, it’s impossible to find Sorghrum, but I think this drink approximates one Robbie and Adele enjoy from time to time in the series, and is a treat in the fall as the weather cools. 

Tea with Rum and Honey

1 mug herbal tea of your choice (chamomile or lemon and ginger go particularly well)
2 ounces sorghrum or any fine rum
Honey to taste (or even molasses if you’re feeling adventurous)

Then curl up on the couch with your steaming mug to read Flipped for Murder – which releases in in four days!

Amazon-bestselling and Agatha-nominated author Edith Maxwell writes four mystery series, as well as award-winning short stories.

Maxwell’s Country Store Mysteries, written as Maddie Day (Kensington Publishing), debuts with Flipped for Murder in October, 2015. Farmed and Dangerous is the latest in Maxwell's Local Foods Mysteries series (Kensington Publishing, 2015). The first in Maxwell’s historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries series, Delivering the Truth, will debut in April, 2016 (Midnight Ink). The most recent Lauren Rousseau mystery, written under the pseudonym Tace Baker (Barking Rain Press, 2014), is Bluffing is Murder


Maxwell lives in an antique house north of Boston with her beau and three cats. She blogs every weekday with the other Wicked Cozy Authors (wickedcozyauthors.com), and you can find her at www.edithmaxwell.com, @edithmaxwell, on Pinterest, and at www.facebook.com/EdithMaxwellAuthor.

This is Birdy and he is the cat in Flipped For Murder. You can see how impressed he is with her fame...


3 comments:

  1. Thanks for having me on today, Deborah! Birdy is a "he" by the way - but no less darling for it. ;^)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds like an intersting drink and book, too, of course!

    ReplyDelete