The Book Tour Stops Here: A Review of The Secrets of Ohnita Harbor by Patricia Crisafulli, Served with Three Favorite Pasta Dishes

Happy Friday Eve! Really the best day of the week, especially when Friday is your birthday and you took it off. I'm happy to be today's stop on the TLC Book Tour for a new start to a cozy mystery series, The Secrets of Ohnita Harbor by Patricia Crisafulli. Accompanying my review are three favorite recipes using pasta inspired by my reading. 

Publisher's Blurb:

Amid a mountain of rain-soaked donations to the Ohnita Harbor Public Library rummage sale, Gabriela Domenici finds a small box that contains an odd-looking cross. When the carved center turns out to be ivory and a clue links the cross to Catherine of Siena, a medieval saint, Gabriela turns to her expertise as an authenticator of historic documents to lead the quest to discover the truth about this mysterious object. But the cross isn’t the only secret in town: first, a beloved Ohnita Harbor resident is found floating in the harbor and then someone else is murdered on the library lawn. As Gabriela races to solve the mystery of the cross, she discerns between infatuation and what could be the start of true love. All the while, she must stay one step ahead of the danger that slowly encircles her.

Publisher: Woodhall Press (September 6, 2022)

Paperback: 394 pages

My Review:

I like cozy mysteries, they are easy reads and great palate refreshers between heavier books. I also love it when they are set in bookish settings like libraries or book stores. This one is set in an a public library in a small harbor town in update New York. Gabriela Domenici has returned to town with her young son after her divorce and the death of her father to care for her mother. She's Director of Circulation and Head of Programing at the local library and is in the midst of organizing a rummage sale to help with funding as they await a referendum vote that will help them save and improve it when a mysterious ivory cross is left with the other donations. When Gabriela's former classmate and friend dies in the harbor, the police and her family think it was suicide, but Gabriela isn't so sure. Then mysterious things start happening and another resident is murdered and it all seems to be tied to the cross. 

I liked that Gabriela is 40, smart, and I didn't have to yell at her in my head about her choices as much as some cozy mystery main characters. I did yell at her for some other things--especially in the beginning, I found her to be somewhat judgy in regards to other characters and that annoyed me, but she ended up growing on me and I really enjoyed her mother, son and her potential love interest as well as some of the other secondary characters. The mystery was pretty good, I did have the killer figured out, but I was unsure of my pick until the reveal. The information about the cross and the process of authentication was interesting and gave the book depth. Overall, it was a good escape read and I will definitely look for the second in the the series. 

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Author Notes: Patricia Crisafulli is an award-winning author. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Northwestern University, where she received the Distinguished Thesis Award in Creative Writing. She also received the grand prize for fiction from TallGrass Writers Guild/Outrider Press for a story, Loon Magic and Other Night Sounds, for which she was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Patricia is the author of a collection of short stories and essays titled Inspired Every Day, published by Hallmark, and is also the founder of FaithHopeandFiction.com.

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Food is not really front and center in this cozy mystery but there were some mentions including casseroles, macaroni-n-cheese, Fried egg and green pepper sandwiches on Italian bread, coffee, granola bars and a banana, seafood Cobb salad, fish sandwich, iced tea, chicken and potatoes roasted in garlic, olive oil and herbs. 

Since Gabriela's mother is from Italy I decided to pair my reading with three pasta dishes I enjoyed-a pasta, pasta salad and soup. You can follow the links below to the recipes.

Cacio e Pepe By Geoffrey Zakarian via FoodNetwork.com is an easy classic:

  

Caprese Pasta Salad from Giada De Laurentiis via The Cooking Channel is perfect if you are a caprese fan and love pasta salads too:

Alphabet Pastina Soup from Happy Cooking by Giada De Laurentiis with it's fun pasta letters, it's the perfect vibe for a library full of books:

Note: A review copy of "The Secrets of Ohnita Harbor" was provided to me by the author and the publisher via TLC Book Tours. I was not compensated for this review and as always, my thoughts and opinions are my own.  

You can see the stops for the rest of this TLC Book Tour and learn what other reviewers thought about the book below.

TLC Tour Schedule:

Saturday, September 17th: The Cozy Book Blog – author guest post

Monday, September 19th: From the TBR Pile – author guest post

Saturday, September 24th: @abduliacoffeebookaddict23

Monday, September 26th: Bookchickdi

Wednesday, September 28th: @kristens.reading.nook

Thursday, September 29th: @paws.read.repeat

Friday, September 30th: @fashionablyfifty

Monday, October 3rd: Laura’s Reviews and @laurasreviews_1

Monday, October 3rd: @kenzathome

Tuesday, October 4th: From the TBR Pile

Thursday, October 6th: What is That Book About – author guest post

Thursday, October 6th: Kahakai Kitchen

Sunday, October 9th: Subakka.bookstuff and @subakka.bookstuff

Wednesday, October 12th: @thebookishalix

Wednesday, October 12th: @always_reading1

Friday, October 14th: @books.ashley.reads

Monday, October 17th: @welovebigbooksandwecannotlie

Monday, October 17th: She Just Loves Books and @shejustlovesbooks

Wednesday, October 19th: @booksandcoffeemx

 

The Book Tour Stops Here: A Review of "Mrs. Rochester's Ghost" by Lindsay Marcott, Served with a Shrimp Cobb Salad & a Blue Cheese Dressing Recipe

It's almost Friday! I am excited about that and the fact that I am today's TLC Book Tour stop for Mrs. Rochester's Ghost by Lindsay Marcott, a modern retelling of Jane Eyre.  Accompanying my review is a Shrimp Cobb Salad from a nearby restaurant and a recipe for one of my favorite Blue Cheese Salad Dressings.  

Publisher's Blurb:

In a modern and twisty retelling of Jane Eyre, a young woman must question everything she thinks she knows about love, loyalty, and murder.

Jane has lost everything: job, mother, relationship, even her home. A friend calls to offer an unusual deal, a cottage above the crashing surf of Big Sur on the estate of his employer, Evan Rochester. In return, Jane will tutor his teenage daughter. She accepts.

But nothing is quite as it seems at the Rochester estate. Though he’s been accused of murdering his glamorous and troubled wife, Evan Rochester insists she drowned herself. Jane is skeptical, but she still finds herself falling for the brilliant and secretive entrepreneur and growing close to his daughter.

And yet her deepening feelings for Evan can’t disguise dark suspicions aroused when a ghostly presence repeatedly appears in the night’s mist and fog. Jane embarks on an intense search for answers and uncovers evidence that soon puts Evan’s innocence into question. She’s determined to discover what really happened that fateful night, but what will the truth cost her?

Hardcover: 398 Pages

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer (August 1, 2021)

My Review: 

Although Jane Eyre and Charlotte Bronte does not garner the same level of love and devotion from me as Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion and Jane Austen do, I have always enjoyed it and have read it four or five times throughout my life. This made me more than happy to jump on the tour for Mrs. Rochester's Wife, the modernization of the classic novel. I love a good retelling--preferably where the author doesn't just pick up the novel and put it in a different time or setting, but rather one that reaches out and gives me another angle to explore. 

Mrs. Rochester's Wife manages to keep the dark gothic vibe of the original, even as it moves the story to the dramatic and rugged coastline of Big Sur. Jane is now the unemployed writer of a gothic television series that was recently canceled--making it impossible to afford her rent. She is also recently an orphan, having lost her mother to cancer, and she also lost her boyfriend and best friend who together, betrayed her when her mother was sick. An old friend calls and talks her into leaving New York for California to take a summer job tutoring a notorious tech mogul's teenage daughter and living in a cottage on a massive coastal estate, she is unsure but low on options. Evan Rochester is darkly handsome, and is thought to have killed his mentally unstable wife Beatrice--although no one has been able to prove it. Jane begins to look for answers and finds herself falling for her employer at the same time.

The story is told both by Jane and in flashbacks of Beatrice Rochester which adds an interesting element, as she is quite mad and these bits are very dark and twisty. I liked how the Thorn Bluffs estate setting was brought to creepy and gothic life and how some of the supporting characters in Bronte's work were reimagined here. I did get annoyed a time or two by Jane and some of her actions, and at how quickly she fell for Evan, despiser her misgivings, his secrets and lies, and some pretty good evidence that at the very least, he may have driven his wife to drown herself. But, I get a bit annoyed at the original Jane Eyre too--so it wasn't a new feeling. For me, overall it worked and I had a hard time putting the last third of the book down. I think someone with an appreciation for the original novel (but who is also open to interpretations of it) will enjoy it and someone less familiar or completely new to the story will appreciate it as a slightly soapy and gothic mystery/thriller. 

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Author Notes: Lindsay Marcott is the author of The Producer’s Daughter and six previous novels written as Lindsay Maracotta. Her books have been translated into eleven languages and adapted for cable. She also wrote for the Emmy-nominated HBO series The Hitchhiker and coproduced a number of films, including Hallmark’s The Hollywood Moms Mystery and the feature Breaking at the Edge. She lives on the coast of California.

You can connect with Lindsay on her website, Twitter or Instagram

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Food Inspiration:

Jane's friend and Rochester's cousin is the chef on the estate and so there was plenty of food and drink to be found in Mrs. Rochester's Ghost. Mentions included, a menu of pear and allium to start, black cod with caviar beurre blanc, chocolate ganache, and cocktails made of lavender and lemonade, caraway cookies, a bottle of Sancerre, tapas, peanuts, cabernet, Frappuccinos, a turkey wrap, margarita, coffee, orange juice, homemade cranberry muffins, honey, gelato, a $27 Cobb salad at a sidewalk cafe, a Manhattan, copping (chunky with fresh seafood and fragrant with anise and oregano), a mascarpone fig tart, Cristal, baby back ribs, cheese, soba noodles, garlic, cherries, mojitos, a turkey and Swiss clubs, tubs of assorted salads, apples, peaches, Argentinian Malbec, liqueur, kirsch, chicken tikka masala, mezcal, venison chili, clove tea and lacy rose water cookies, Dr. Browns Black Cherry Soda, cokes, Wavy Lays, burgers, wilted kale and a pear, kugel and potato knishes, matzo ball soup, egg creams with extra Hershey's, Le gloop (penne pasta glooped together with a bunch of random ingredients from the fridge like leftover steak, sour cream, Greek olives), a tale of eating fried rattlesnake, cantaloupes, pizza, popcorn shrimp, Mac and cheese, candy-colored tropical fruit drinks, breadsticks shrimp in cocktail sauce, crab salad lemonade, Perrier, salmon, chocolate-hazelnut biscotti, an açaí bowl, soft-shell crabs, eggs, Fat Tire beer, sushi, bison burger, sweet potato fries, zinfandel, Vanilla Spice Energy tea, fried food, Grape Nuts with blueberries on top, a salad of arugula, radicchio, and fennel with white sardines and toasted slices of sourdough, pistachios, croissants, strawberry-and-kiwi tonics, champagne, martinis, vegetable curry, carrot cake, ice-cold Stoli, Sweet Chili Doritos, steak, and cranberry-bread toast and vanilla yogurt. 

Set in Big Sur, California, salads seemed to feature heavily-- a crab salad for Beatrice, a Cobb salad Jane purchases on a first day there and various salads that Otis made. I decided on a Cobb salad--mainly because it sounded good for a hot and humid night. It has been a long and busy week, and even though a Cobb Salad is not at all difficult to make, I wanted someone to make it for me so I ordered one from a local restaurant/brewery by my house and ran in and grabbed it. I subbed in shrimp for the chicken and although I asked them to hold the bacon, it came with it. 

But, because you probably come here for a recipe, I am including one of my favorite easy blue cheese dressing recipes, perfect for a Cobb salad. It comes from Ina Garten and I first tried it on her Crunchy Iceberg Salad with Creamy Blue Cheese, here. 

Creamy Blue Cheese Dressing
Slightly Adapted from Ina Garten via BarefootContessa.com
(Serves 4)

For the Dressing:
4 oz Roquefort blue cheese, crumbled
2/3 cup good mayonnaise
1/3 cup plain Greek yogurt
1 Tbsp sherry vinegar

kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 

For the dressing, place 4 ounces of blue cheese in a small bowl and microwave for 15 seconds, until it begins to melt. Place the mayonnaise, yogurt, warm blue cheese, sherry vinegar, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade and process until smooth. Set aside or refrigerate until ready to use.

Notes/Results: Never underestimate the power of a good Cobb Salad. This totally hit the spot and I didn't complain that they left the bacon on. ;-) I will order it again. 

 

Ina's dressing recipe above is pretty perfect too--just blue cheesy enough without being too overpowering and thick and creamy enough to be a dip or spread. If you love blue cheese, give it a try.

I'm sharing this post with the Weekend Cooking event  being hosted by Marg at The Adventures of An Intrepid Reader. It's a weekly event that is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share. Here's a link to this week's post. 

And of course a delicious salad and dressing has to get linked up here at Kahakai Kitchen for this week's Souper Sundays post, my weekly feature where anyone can share their soup, salad or sandwich recipes. Here's the link to this weeks post. 

Note: A review copy of Mrs. Rochester's Ghost was provided to me by the author and the publisher via TLC Book Tours. I was not compensated for this review and as always, my thoughts and opinions are my own.   

 
You can see the stops for the rest of this TLC Book Tour and what other reviewers thought about the book here. 

 

The Book Tour Stops Here: A Review of "The North Face of the Heart" by Dolores Redondo, Served with a Deconstructed Shrimp Po' Boy with Remoulade Dressing

Friday's are great days to talk about books and so I am very happy to be today's stop on the TLC Book Tour for The North Face of the Heart by Dolores Redondo. Accompanying my book review is a recipe for a Deconstructed Shrimp Po' Boy with Remoulade Dressing, inspired by the book's New Orleans setting. 

Publisher's Blurb:

Amaia Salazar, a young detective from the north of Spain, has joined a group of trainees at the FBI Academy in Virginia. Haunted by her past and having already tracked down a predator on her own, Amaia is no typical rookie. And this is no ordinary student lecture at Quantico. FBI agent Aloisius Dupree is already well acquainted with Amaia’s skills, her intuition, and her ability to understand evil. He now needs her help in hunting an elusive serial killer dubbed “the Composer,” and in solving another case that’s been following him his whole life.

From New Jersey to Oklahoma to Texas, the Composer’s victims are entire families annihilated in the chaos of natural disasters, their bodies posed with chilling purpose amid the ruins. Dupree and Amaia follow his trail to New Orleans. The clock is ticking. It’s the eve of the worst hurricane in the city’s history. But a troubling call from Amaia’s aunt back home awakens in Amaia the ghosts from her childhood and sends her down a path as dark as that of the coming storm.

Hardcover: 496 Pages

Publisher: Amazon Crossing (June 1, 2021)

My Review:

True crime and thrillers and crime fiction are among my favorite genres. I love a good dark thriller and when you add a serial killer and FBI profilers, it hits all my sweet spots. Still, I was worried when The North Face of the Heart arrived because of the size of the book--at almost 500 pages is a big commitment for me with an insane work schedule and many other books for review, book clubs and buddy reads competing for my attention. Also translated books (this one from Spanish) can sometimes get bogged down in the translation. But this one got under my skin pretty quickly, and I found myself compelled to read it and find out what was going to happen next. 

Amaia Salazar is twenty-five and already an Assistant Inspector in Paloma, Spain who has gained some notoriety for solving a cold case when she is sent to the Quantico with a group of European police officers for training. Her profiling abilities and confidence get her noticed by the senior agent working on a case where a serial killer is targeting and murdering families during storms and natural disasters and has been getting away with it for almost two decades. Soon she is placed on the profiling team and headed for New Orleans and one of the biggest disasters in U.S. history, Hurricane Katrina. The book alternates between 2005 and flashbacks to Amaia's childhood where she suffered some serious trauma that still impacts her as an adult. Although primarily told through Amaia's eyes, we get the POV of other characters, past and present. The pacing was good--you could feel the tension build along with the gale-force winds of Katrina and that made it hard to put the book down. Amaia is a great character and the most fully flushed out in the book--it was easy to root for her. This book is apparently a prequel of sorts to the author's bestselling Spanish Baztán trilogy. (I was happy to find that Netflix made this into a trio of films that I am going to start streaming this weekend). I liked the darkness of the story, the crushing and horrific reality of the people who suffered through Hurricane Katrina (difficult to read but so compelling) and the bits of Spanish and Creole folklore that is woven into it all. It's not a perfect book, the dialogue gets a bit clunky, possibly due to the translation, and some of the characters seem to fall into crime fiction tropes, but overall, I really enjoyed it, it was well-worth my time, and I plan to seek out the author's other books.  

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Author Notes: Dolores Redondo studied law and the culinary arts before writing The Baztán Trilogy, a successful crime series set in the Basque Pyrenees that has sold over 1.5 million copies in Spanish, has been translated into more than thirty-five languages, and was adapted into a popular film series. Twice nominated for the CWA International Dagger Award and a finalist for the Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle, Redondo was the recipient of the 2016 Premio Planeta—one of Spain’s most distinguished literary awards—for her stand-alone thriller All This I Will Give to You, which has also been optioned for feature film and television development and will be translated into eighteen languages.

Connect with Delores on her website, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

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Food Inspiration:

Serial killers and hurricanes don't leave a lot of time for eating but there was food to be found in The north Face of the Heart. Mentions included: chocolate bars and bottled water, oysters Bienville and crawfish, beer, outstanding fig ice cream from a cafe, scrambled eggs and coffee,toast, sandwiches (lots of sandwiches), candy and granola bars, ham and shrimp, jambalaya, cookies and crackers.

I was going to go with a shrimp po' boy-style sandwich for my bookish dish for the sandwiches the characters ate as fuel while working the case and as a nod to New Orleans. Then I decided I was more in the mood for a salad--given the humid weather this week. So, I. decided to take some of the elements of a shrimp po' boy--the spicy shrimp, iceberg lettuce, tomato, and a homemade remoulade and deconstruct them into a salad. Then some leftover red beans and rice found their way into the bowl and a leftover roll got halved and dipped into the shrimps spices and toasted. It's pretty freeform and open to putting in more veggies and what you like and have on hand so I am just giving you the remoulade recipe and how I prepped the shrimp and bread and assembled the salad below. 

Deconstructed Shrimp Po' Boy with Remoulade Dressing

By Deb, Kahakain Kitchen

(Makes 2 Large Salad Bowls)

 

Remoulade Dressing

By Deb, Kahakai Kitchen

(Makes about 1 1/2 Cups)

 

3/4 cup mayonnaise of choice

3/4 cup sour cream

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 Tbsp mustard (Creole mustard if possible or grainy mustard)

2 Tbsp capers + about 1 tsp juice

2 Tbsp green onions, finely chopped

1 Tbsp dried parsley

1/2 Tbsp dried tarragon

1 tsp Tony Chachere's Original Creole Seasoning or Cajun/Creole seasoning mix of choice

1 Tbsp lemon juice, or more to thin out as needed

1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

 

Place all ingredients into a pint jar and place lid on tightly. Shake jar until dressing is well-blended. And additional liquid as needed for thinning (lemon juice, water or milk) to desired consistency. I like it thick and creamy but still pour-able. Place jar in fridge for 1 to 2 hours before using.

 

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Spicy Creole Shrimp:

1lb (16-20 count) shrimp, peeled and deveined

3 Tbsp butter, melted 

2 Tbsp Tony Chachere's Original Creole Seasoning or Cajun/Creole seasoning mix of choice

Melt butter and pour into a large Ziploc bag. Add seasoning mix and shrimp, seal bag securely and shake/move shrimp around until completely coated with spices.

In a large skillet, pour in the shrimp and cook over medium heat for a few minutes on both sides until pink and cooked through. Gently lift out shrimp and set aside, keeping warm until ready to add to salad. If making bread/toast, don't clean the pan and see recipe below.

 

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To Make Creole Toast

Take bread or (split) roll of choice and place slices face-down in the pan, moving them around to ensure they are coated with the butter/spice mixture. If desired, flip bread over and continue moving slices to coat the other side.

Toast bread in pan over medium heat until crispy and golden brown. Flip and repeat on other side if desired. Set aside to serve with salad bowl.

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To Assemble Deconstructed Shrimp Po' Boy:

 

 I used:

 

1 small head iceberg lettuce, coarsely shredded

1  pint cherry tomatoes, sliced in half

1/3 cup chopped green onions

leftover Cajun red beans and rice if desired

Spicy Creole Shrimp

Remoulade Dressing 

Creole Toast to serve

 

Divide ingredients between two large plates or bowls. (Note: I like two add a layer of the dressing on top of my lettuce, then drizzle more on top after I have placed the shrimp.) Enjoy!

Notes/Results:  This salad made me happy--so much good flavor and wonderful textures from the crisp iceberg lettuce to the sweet juicy shrimp and tomatoes and creamy dressing. I'd be happy to eat the remoulade off of a stick--the capers and tarragon, along with the cajun/creole spices make it zippy and devious. I will happily make it again. 

I'm sharing this post with the Weekend Cooking event  being hosted by Marg at The Adventures of An Intrepid Reader. It's a weekly event that is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share. Here's a link to this week's post. 

And of course a delicious salad based on a sandwich has to get linked up here at Kahakai Kitchen for this week's Souper Sundays post, my weekly feature where anyone can share their soup, salad or sandwich recipes. Here's the link to this weeks post. 

Note: A review copy of The North Face of the Heart was provided to me by the author and the publisher via TLC Book Tours. I was not compensated for this review and as always, my thoughts and opinions are my own.   
 
You can see the stops for the rest of this TLC Book Tour and what other reviewers thought about the book here. 

 

The Book Tour Stops Here: A Review of "The Outlook for Earthlings" by Joan Frank, Served with a Recipe for Shredded Tofu Egg-less Salad

Happy Friday! I can't believe that we are midway through October already, the time is just flying by. Today I am happy to be a stop on the TLC Book Tour for The Outlook for Earthlings, a novel by Joan Frank. Accompanying my review is a recipe for Shredded Tofu Egg-less Salad. 

Publisher's Blurb:

The Outlook For Earthlings traces a difficult friendship across a lifetime. Melanie Taper is rule-bound, timid, self-erasing. Yet in unguarded moments she demonstrates such deadly insight into human foibles as to suggest a strength that has, for dark reasons, deliberately hidden itself lifelong. Scarlet Rand is rash, willful, abrasive—vexed by “demure” traits and “small fussing motions.” Shocked by Mel’s passivity and near-archaic saintliness, Scarlet disbelieves it. Their friendship suggests to each a final frontier, a saving sanctuary. Yet at its core each woman takes a secret, moral offense at the other’s inmost nature—and her choices. Against the deadline of the illness which is slowly destroying one of them, a reckoning must occur.

The Outlook for Earthlings considers the limits of friendship—and of witnessing. It asks how we may finally measure a life—and who should do the measuring.

Paperback: 237 pages

Publisher: Regal House Publishing (October 2, 2020)

 My Review:

The most surprising thing about The Outlook for Earthlings is the amount of story that the author packs into about 230 pages. She covers decades in the friendship between two very different women, and their lives and their choices. Children of the sixties, Mel and Scarlet meet on the school bus and remain friends throughout the years even as their paths diverge and each goes their own way. Mel takes the more traditional route of marriage and a family while Scarlet is a journalist who travels the world. After a couple decades apart, they reunite, but that reunion is not without a lot of judgment about the decisions the other has made.

Women's friendship is an interesting thing--who we choose as friends, who we choose to stay friends with, and how that friendship ebbs and flows over the years, changing and evolving. Frank captures the story of these two women in beautiful, slightly melancholy prose. Although I didn't really connect and identify with either Mel or Scarlet, I enjoyed reading about their lives and friendship. I could easily relate to how it feels to reconnect with a childhood friend who has a completely different view on life than I do, but whom I love--even while I can't help but wonder at (and yes, sometimes judge) their choices. This one gave me plenty to think about. 

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Author Notes: Joan Frank is the author of ten books: eight of literary fiction and two essay collections. Her recent books are WHERE YOU’RE ALL GOING: FOUR NOVELLAS and TRY TO GET LOST: ESSAYS ON TRAVEL AND PLACE. A MacDowell Fellow and recipient of many honors and awards, Joan also reviews literary fiction and nonfiction for the Washington Post.

Find out more about Joan at her website.

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Food Inspiration:

Since it is such a short book, I wondered if there would be much food in it and there actually was with mentions including rigatoni, cereal, fish on Fridays, persimmons, plums, chestnuts, popped wheat with skimmed milk, coffee, oranges, Chinese food, ice cream, eggs, ginger, fried onions, chicken, a really bad sounding meatloaf dinner, toast with butter, oatmeal, tea, tequila and orange juice, muffins, pound cake, crackers, beef stew, Calvados, chocolate biscuits, crepes, pizza slices with an egg cooked onto them, burgers, pomegranate juice, quiche. The catch up meal for Scarlet and Mel from which I took my inspiration was:

"Upon it, glasses of iced black currant tea, homemade carrot soup--these from Mel. The wheat bagels, organic wine, fake egg salad made of tofu, organic pears, red and green grapes, brick of Gruyere, rye crackers, tub of chive and garlic hummus, diet tonic water, Kalamata olives, small package of baby carrots, organic Fuji apples, fresh-squeezed orange juice, whole grain chocolate chip cookies, raw cashews. salted pistachios, low-fat popcorn, menthol cough drops (in case throats got sore)--these were from Scarlet. In the tiny fridge, a box of organic spinach and a bottle of diet root beer." 

For my bookish dish I decided to go with the "fake egg salad made of tofu." I like egg salad with eggs and sometimes, I like a vegan or egg-less egg salad. I used to buy some pre-made at Whole Foods but I haven't seen it there in a while. I'm a little picky that I don't like it too gloppy or big crumbles of tofu. I had seen Heidi Swanson's Quick Shredded Tofu Stir-Fry and had been meaning to try it. I wondered if pressing and grating the tofu would make it lighter in the egg salad. I found a couple of recipes online but I ended up making up my own. With a vegan mayo, you can keep it vegan of course or just use your favorite mayo or yogurt if you want to keep to a no-egg theme. 

Tofu Egg-Less Salad

By Deb, Kahakai Kitchen

(Makes About 2-ish Cups of Salad)

1 block extra-firm tofu, water pressed out and patted dry

1/3 cup vegan mayo or to taste

1 medium celery stalk, finely diced

1 Tbsp dried or fresh shallots, chopped

2 Tbsp chives, finely chopped

1 tsp coarse ground mustard or mustard of choice

1/2 tsp celery salt

sea salt and black pepper to taste

extra chives to garnish

Mix the mayo, celery, shallots chives, mustard, celery salt and salt and pepper in a medium bowl. Using a box grater, grate the pressed tofu into the mixture. Some tofu may crumble and that's OK. (I found it easier and less messy to cut the tofu into quarters and grate each quarter section). Gently stir until combined. Taste and season with additional salt and pepper as desired. 

Serve on bread, lettuce, or crackers. I used some locally made sesame lavosh crackers. Enjoy!

Notes/Results: I really liked this tofu egg-less salad. The texture was light and the flavor really good. I normally like my egg salad simple--mayo, tiny dab of mustard, salt & pepper but since there is no yolk, the extra flavor from the chives, shallots and celery salt is welcome with the tofu. It was great on the crackers and I think the leftovers will be excellent in a sandwich. I will happily make it again and I plan to experiment more with grated tofu.

 

Linking up with Novel Meals # 40 hosted by my friend Simona of briciole, an event celebrating food inspired by the written word. The deadline for this round is Sunday, October 18th. 

I'm linking up to Souper Sundays here at Kahakai Kitchen where we highlight soups, salads and sandwiches from bloggers who join in. Here's the link to this week's link up post. 

 

Finally, I'm sharing this post with the Weekend Cooking event  being hosted by Marg at The Adventures of An Intrepid Reader. It's a weekly event that is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share. Here's the link to this week's post.

Note: A review copy of "The Outlook for Earthlings" was provided to me by the author and the publisher via TLC Book Tours. I was not compensated for my review and as always, my thoughts and opinions are my own. 
 
You can see the other stops for this TLC Book Tour and what other bloggers thought of the book here.