Maya Corrigan's Blog

You'll find some of my  older blog posts below, but since 2020 I've posted at Mystery Lovers' Kitchen, where twelve mystery authors share their favorite recipes, chat about food topics, and pass on news about their books. We also run book giveaways regularly. 

Check out my recipes there and my posts about food history. I've put up so many recipes that you'll have to click on Next Posts when you come to the end of the page.

Charles Dickens in 1842 Charles Dickens visited America in 1842 and met Edgar Allan Poe in Philadelphia. Poe had favorably reviewed the 1841 serialized Dickens novel, Barnaby Rudge. That novel included an unusual character, a talkative raven. The bird was named Grip after the Dickens family’s pet raven. 

Three years later, Poe’s best-known poem, The Raven, was published. Literary scholars believe that Grip inspired the poem, and there are similarities. A character in Barnaby Rudge hears Grip and says “What was that? Him tapping at the door? Tis someone knocking softly at the shutter. Who can it be?” Compare those words with Poe's: "...suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door." When Grip is imprisoned with Barnaby, his vocabulary is reduced to one word that he repeatedly croaks: “Nobody.” Poe's raven also repeats a single word: “Nevermore.”  Edgar Allan Poe, 1845, by Sanuel Osgood hese pictures of Dickens and Poe differ from the ones we often see of them. Dickens is generally depicted as portly and avuncular and Poe as mustached and haunted. But in these portraits, both appear healthy, handsome, and in their prime. 

The raven Grip, looking as he did when he was in the  Dickens household, is now in Philadelphia, where his owner and Poe met 180 years ago. The bird, stuffed and mounted shortly after his death by Dickens, resides in the Free Library of Philadelphia. A plaque there commemorates the connection between Grip, Dickens, and Poe. Grip came to America after being bought at auction by a collector of Poe memorabilia.
Brown, Will - Photographer. Photograph of Grip. [Realia], Free Library of Philadelphia.

GETTY IMAGES, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
​On April 14, 1912, passengers ate their final meals on the Titanic. Fewer than half of them survived to eat another day. We know what they ate that day because a few passengers tucked souvenir menus away. For example, an American banker’s wife had the first-class lunch menu in her purse when she escaped the sinking ship. 

The largest group of passengers were in third class, and less than a quarter of them survived, primarily women and children. On most ships of that era, third-class passengers had to bring food with them for the voyage, but on the Titanic, they were served meals at long tables in a room resembling a school cafeteria. They ate dinner in the middle of the day, as was common among the working classes. A single menu card contained the details for each meal of the day.

Second and third class passengers ate more sumptuous meals as the menus below show.  First Class Luncheon Menu Second Class Dinner Menu Images licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. ​In the first-class dining room, dinners were elaborate multi-course meals based on French cuisine with concessions to hearty English fare. Waiters brought the food to the table on silver platters, offered guests a portion of every dish, and suggested a wine to pair with the food. We have no way of knowing how much of this meat-heavy feast the passengers consumed. No recipes survive from the Titanic's kitchen, but recipes from that era tend to use butter and cream liberally. ​ In S'more Murders, the fifth of my Five-Ingredient Mysteries, a Titanic-obsessed yacht owner hires my sleuth Val and her grandfather to re-create the final meal served on that doomed ship.

On the anniversary of its sinking, the yachtsman welcomes his guests aboard and assigns them roles in a murder mystery game, "Death on the Titanic." Val soon reaches the chilling conclusion that the host is fishing for the culprit in a more recent crime.

No one gets to finish Val's Titanic-inspired dinner, and it's the final meal for one person on the yacht. Val and her grandfather have to reel in a real killer before s’more murders go down. 

Read more about S'more Murders and find out where to buy the book. 

New York Public Library Digital Collections ​During the Victorian era, when store-bought valentines replaced handmade ones, the buyer had two choices: hearts-and-flowers cards expressing love and admiration or valentines with caricatures and insulting verses ridiculing the recipient. 

The typical format of the vinegar valentine was a caricature of the recipient and a short verse at the bottom. Men sent vinegar valentines to damsels who’d dared turn them down or to women they were throwing over. Likewise, women sent cease-and-desist valentines to men who were pursuing them.
 
The vinegar valentines weren't only for men and women in failed courtships. People could buy valentines to chastise the behavior of relatives, neighbors, and acquaintances. 
​The cards chided women for looking and dressing too well, or for not paying enough attention to their appearance. They were criticized for frowning too much or smiling too broadly. ​Women who campaigned for the right to vote were prime targets.   

​Men were also the butt of vinegar valentines, criticized for drunkenness, vanity, stinginess, and stupidity. 

Nasty valentines poked fun at people’s physical traits or misfortunes:  their age, excessive weight, or widowed status. The worst cards suggested suicide.  The image on one of them depicts an oncoming train with the verse: Oh miserable lonely wretch! / Despised by all who know you; /  Haste, haste, your days to end – this sketch / The quickest way will show you!
​
View more examples of vinegar valentines and read how they became popular and eventually died out in my article in CrimeReads. 

​Aside from looking like a Sherlock Holmes actor, the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh was a man of mystery and many talents.   

1. He wrote a detective novel often included in lists of the best crime books of the 20th century. The Red House Mystery, published in 1922, is still in print and available as a free ebook through Project Gutenberg. The novel is a classic whodunit featuring an English country house setting, an amateur sleuth with a sidekick, a locked-room puzzle, and enough clues for the reader to solve the case. 


2. He wrote dozens of plays and screenplays. His drama, The Fourth Wall, was staged in the U.S. as The Perfect Alibi. It was an early, possibly the first, play to use the inverted form of detective fiction, with the murder shown to the audience in the first act followed by the investigation. The play's popularity resulted in its adaptation as a movie, Birds of Prey (1930), for which Milne shares the screenplay credit.

​3. He was the first author to sell merchandising rights to a character. In 1930 Milne sold Winnie-the-Pooh rights to an agent who earned $50 million within a year for a doll, radio program, board game, and other paraphernalia. The mystery, at least to copywriters, is whether to hyphenate Winnie-the-Pooh. Milne did. The Disney Company, which acquired Pooh rights in the 1960s, dropped the hyphens.

4. He played cricket with the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Besides A.A. Milne and Arthur Conan Doyle, the amateur athletic team included J.M. Barrie and P.G. Wodehouse. The team formed as an offshoot of the Authors’ Club, founded in 1891. The authors played matches against teams of publishers, actors, and artists.

5. He had a secret job in British Military Intelligence. After being wounded in World War I, Milne worked as a propagandist. Though records of his MI7b unit were ordered destroyed, some mysteriously survived. Saved from a dump in 2013, the papers include his satirical poems, one about a Captain William Shakespeare, who is assigned to a propaganda unit.

Happy birthday to Alan Alexander Milton. Born on January 18, 1882, he was at the center of English literary life in the early 20th century—a gifted novelist, poet, dramatist, and children's author.

Recipes for the five-ingredient desserts shown in the photos are now on this website (under the Extras menu). Five of the six are easy to make. The only challenging one is the tarte Tatin in the last picture. But it's worth the trouble if you have some time on your hands. 

I've joined the Mystery Lovers' Kitchen blog, where writers share their favorite recipes, chat about food topics, and pass on news about their books. Check out some of the easy recipes I've posted there. 

Crypt Suzette is now available for pre-order and discounted at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Target, and BAM.  Does a costume disguise or reveal who you really are? That question comes up in Crypt Suzette, my sixth Five-Ingredient Mystery. When Val caters a Halloween party at Bayport’s bookshop, a costume contest is part of the festivities. The contestants have to come as their favorite fictional characters. When the prizewinner, Suzette, is murdered, her competitors are suspects. Val can't help wondering if they might have something in common with the violent characters they portray: Lady Macbeth, the Phantom of the Opera, Count Dracula, and Morgan le Fay, the evil sorceress from Camelot. 
 
Val, who dresses as Nancy Drew, tells her friend Bethany, “People choose costumes that mirror their personalities.” Do you agree or do you think wearing a costume gives you a chance to take on a personality totally different from your own? 

Answer that question in a comment below for your chance to win an advanced reader copy of Crypt Suzette (print copy for US entries and e-book via Netgalley outside the US). 

To comment, click on the word "Comments" in the column to the left of this post.

I enjoy visiting book clubs because ...Book club members tell me if they figured out whodunit. Like most mystery writers, I spend a lot of time thinking up motives, clues, and red herrings, but did I succeed? Book club members let me know if my red herrings worked.Book club members focus my attention on my writing process. Questions about how I come up with plots, structure the mystery, and lay clues make me stand back from the daily word count and reflect on what I do. Answering those questions reminds me of the big picture.  Book club members ask questions about the publishing process that I couldn't answer five years ago. Now I can. It reminds me what an unexpected adventure publishing a book has been.Book club members give me ideas for future books by telling me about the characters and threads they want me to explore. And finally…Book club members have made recipes from my books! So have bookshop owners. It’s an incredible treat for me, not just to eat what they’ve made, but also to hear that the recipes were quick and easy . . . and also hear their suggestions for improvement! My neighbor's Reston Book Club Brandeis Women's Mystery Book Club Brandeis Women's Mystery Book Club I like visiting book clubs even if they don't feed me and even if I do it remotely by Skype or FaceTime. Check out my Book Club page for topics of discussion about the Five-Ingredient Mysteries.

​Do you belong to a book club and do you serve food at it? If not, would you join a book club like that?

I enjoy visiting book clubs because ...Book club members tell me if they figured out whodunit. Like most mystery writers, I spend a lot of time thinking up motives, clues, and red herrings, but did I succeed? Book club members let me know if my red herrings worked.Book club members focus my attention on my writing process. Questions about how I come up with plots, structure the mystery, and lay clues make me stand back from the daily word count and reflect on what I do. Answering those questions reminds me of the big picture.  Book club members ask questions about the publishing process that I couldn't answer five years ago. Now I can. It reminds me what an unexpected adventure publishing a book has been.Book club members give me ideas for future books by telling me about the characters and threads they want me to explore. And finally…Book club members have made recipes from my books! So have bookshop owners. It’s an incredible treat for me, not just to eat what they’ve made, but also to hear that the recipes were quick and easy . . . and also hear their suggestions for improvement! My neighbor's Reston Book Club Brandeis Women's Mystery Book Club Brandeis Women's Mystery Book Club I like visiting book clubs even if they don't feed me and even if I do it remotely by Skype or FaceTime. Check out my Book Club page for topics of discussion about the Five-Ingredient Mysteries.

​Do you belong to a book club and do you serve food at it? If not, would you join a book club like that?

Turkey is the classic Thanksgiving dish, but you cannot live by turkey alone. What's your favorite holiday side dish? Comment for a chance to win a free book. Below you'll find two reader-favorite recipes from the first Five-Ingredient Mystery, By Cook or by Crook. The dishes are suitable for Thanksgiving and other holiday dinners. I'm also sharing a simple herb stuffing recipe. To view the recipes, click Read More below.
 
Leave a comment about your favorite holiday side dish to enter a drawing for the Five-Ingredient Mystery of your choice or an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) of the upcoming sixth book in the series. To comment, click on the word Comments in the column to the left of this post. 
 
Note: I can ship only to U.S. addresses. Last day to enter: Sunday, December 16, 2018. I'll contact the winner by email and announce the results in this blog. Just Small Potatoes
Serves 6
Preheat oven to 375 degrees

6 medium potatoes
¼ cup flour
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
¼ teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons melted butter

Pour the melted butter into a glass baking pan (13 x 9 x 2 inches). Combine the flour, cheese, and salt in a plastic bag. Peel the potatoes and cut each into eight pieces. Dip the pieces in cold water, put them in the plastic bag a few at a time, and shake. When the pieces are coated, put them in the pan, flat side down, nestled in a single layer. Bake for an hour, turning them after half an hour to brown another side.

You serve the potatoes in the baking pan. Garnish with parsley. 


​Easier-Than-Pie Apple Crisp 

​This recipe is a nut-free version of the apple crisp recipe in By Cook or by Crook.

Serves 6-8
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

5 cups thinly sliced, peeled apples (about 5 medium or 3 large apples)
¾ cup flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup white sugar (less if the apples are not tart or you prefer less sweet desserts)
½ cup softened (not melted) butter

Butter a shallow square baking pan (9 inches) or a small rectangular one (7x11 or 8x10 inches).
Combine the flour, cinnamon, and sugar. Add butter in pieces, mixing with a fork or the fingers until the mixture is crumbly. Spread the mixture over the apples.

Bake uncovered for 45 minutes. Remove from the oven when the topping is golden brown and apple layer is bubbling.

Cool the apple crisp for at least 30 minutes before eating. Serve warm or cold. The crisp goes well with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.


Herb Stuffing
Serves 10-12

As the designated holiday dinner makers in our family for the last 25 years, we've experimented with different types of stuffing, starting from scratch or using various stuffing mixes. We've settled on a 5-ingredient one as the favorite, a modified version of the recipe on the Pepperidge Farm® Herb Seasoned Classic Stuffing package.  

1 stick of butter
2 cups of chopped onions (approximately 2 large onions) 
2 cups chopped celery (4-6 celery stalks)
2 cups boiling water (or low-salt chicken broth)
1 14-ounce package of Pepperidge Farm® Herb Seasoned Classic Stuffing

Melt half the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Sauté the onions for five minutes or until tender. Add the celery and cook for another 3 minutes. Melt the remaining butter in the skillet with the vegetables. Stir in the stuffing mix. Add hot water or broth slowly, mixing it with the stuffing until moist, using less liquid if you prefer stuffing on the dry side.

Stove-top stuffing: Cover the skillet, remove it from the heat, and let it stand five minutes. Fluff the stuffing with a fork and serve.
Casserole stuffing: Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Spoon the stuffing into a 2-quart casserole. Bake 30 minutes or until hot. 
For in-bird stuffing: Loosely spoon the mixture into the turkey or chicken cavity before putting the bird in the oven. Don't overfill the cavity. A stuffed bird takes longer to cook than an unstuffed one. Put any remaining stuffing in a casserole dish and bake it for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.