The Great American Bake Off? Thanksgiving Dessert! A guest blog by Catriona McPherson

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: So, Publishers' Weekly says, about SCOT IN A TRAP,  "McPherson keeps the laughs and the action rolling along." But you know - that's just Catriona, whether writing her Last Ditch mysteries, hanging out at the bar at a conference, or, as she shares with us today, working her way up the ladder of that most-American of all meals: Thanksgiving dinner.

My hat's off to you, Catriona - if I reversed the trip my ancestors made, emigrated to Scotland, and was invited to contribute to a Burns Night dinner? I'd just pretend both my hands were broken.

 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving for tomorrow, Reds!

 

And what a timely guest post this is. Thank you so much for having me today. SCOT IN A TRAP (sorry for the earworm) opens on Thanksgiving Day morning, with my fish-out-of-water Scot, Lexy Campbell surveying the prepped food in the Last Ditch Motel kitchen and having mild hysterics.

She commits the solecism of suggesting she might slice up some ripe pears in case, after the mammoth main course, anyone wants a lighter dessert than . . . the seven pies she can see all around her.

It was a lot of fun to write and it made me realise how long I had lived here (eleven years), given that I had to dig so deep for the food vertigo I used to suffer. Thanksgiving dinner feels completely normal now. I don’t blink at the fact that there’s a brown-sugar crust on top of the yams; I barely notice the marshmallows; I know the rolls are going to taste like cake; and I believe that there truly will be some macaroni under all that cream and melted cheese if I keep digging.

My part in Thanksgiving has seen a dizzying ascent over those eleven years. When fellow writer, Eileen Rendahl, first invited me to join her Friends and Family Thanksgiving Feast, and I asked what I could contribute, I was – rightly and properly – held down at Martinelli’s level. The last thing they needed was someone who didn’t know what a yam was turning up with a casserole dish under her arm.

After a couple of years, I got promoted to appetisers. Pretty safe still, because who eats appetisers on Thanksgiving? I dutifully put blobs of blue cheese in the sharp end of a lot of chicory spears and sprinkled them with candied walnuts, knowing they’d end up in the compost.

Apprenticeship served, I was given clearance to bring green bean casserole.

I almost lost the commission when I asked what pearl onions were, but I promised I would google extensively before I turned the stove on. As the picture shows, I made two casseroles: one with fresh beans, a roux, onions fried in a pan and pesky little onions that I skinned myself; one with frozen beans and onions, a can of soup and French’s fried. Guess which one went first? Yep. And you know why? It was nicer.

By this time, at other points on the calendar, I had served up trifles, shortbread, cakes and crumbles at various gatherings and so it came to pass that one year, Eileen asked me if I would make, for Thanksgiving, for twenty Americans . . . you guessed it . . . the pies.

What a humbling experience it was to be given this honour. What a nerve-wracking experience it was actually to do the baking, take it to the feast, sit there through hours of turkey and football knowing the axe would fall eventually, and then hear someone say “dessert?”

I didn’t eat any myself. I couldn’t swallow. I just sat there watching twenty Americans dig into my pumpkin and pecan pies. Me, who had never made or eaten a pumpkin pie in my life and didn’t even pronounce “pecan” in a way that could clue a produce assistant in to what I was looking for. People, I didn’t know “pie crust” was what you called the pastry bit underneath the filling. Talk about flying blind.

I’ve made the pies for a few years now: one pumpkin; one pecan; and one wild card – i.e. whatever the person who speaks up first asks for. Sometimes it’s chocolate, sometimes it’s apple and blackberry, this year I’m tempted to make lemon meringue because I’ve never made one. But I’ve watched ten seasons of the Great British Bake Off and I’ve got the apron. How hard could it be?

 

 

Reds and friends, what wild-card pie would you have asked for if you were coming to Eileen’s with me? Or, if you want to make me feel better, what’s the scariest bit of catering you’ve ever been talked into?

 

Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US in 2010. She writes: preposterous1930s detective stories, set in the old country and featuring an aristocratic sleuth; modern comedies set in the Last Ditch Motel in fictional (yeah, sure) California; and, darker than both of those (which is not difficult), a strand of contemporary psychological thrillers.

Her books have won or been shortlisted for the Edgar, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Lefty, the Macavity, the Mary Higgins Clark award and the UK Ellery Queen Dagger. She has just introduced a fresh character in IN PLACE OF FEAR, which finally marries her love of historicals with her own working-class roots, but right now, she’s writing the sixth book in what was supposed to be the Last Ditch trilogy.

Catriona is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime. You can find out more about her at her website, friend her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter. 

 

A mysterious object the size of a suitcase, all wrapped in bacon and smelling of syrup, can mean only one thing: Thanksgiving at the Last Ditch Motel. This year the motel residents are in extra-celebratory mood as the holiday brings a new arrival to the group - a bouncing baby girl.

But as one life enters the Ditch, another leaves it. Menzies Lassiter has only just checked in. When resident counsellor Lexy Campbell tries to deliver his breakfast the next day, she finds him checked out. Permanently. Shocking enough if he was a stranger, but Lexy recognises that face. Menzies was her first love until he broke her heart many years ago.

What's he doing at the Last Ditch? What's he doing dead? And how can Lexy escape the fact that she alone had the means, the opportunity - and certainly the motive - to kill him?