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Friday, April 11, 2014

The Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off Recipe-Sharing Virtual Tour

We are excited to be the last stop on the Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off Recipe-Sharing Virtual Tour with author Carolyn Brown.  Her latest book,  The Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off is in stores this month.  Enjoy her post after my thoughts on the book.  

Giveaway details: We are giving away 2 exciting prizes to 2 lucky winners.  Fill out the Rafflecopter below for your chance to win one of the following:
-       
           Prize #1: a print copy of The Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off
-          Prize #2: A Carolyn Brown Prize Pack
o   Print copy of The Blue-Ribbon Jalapeno Society Jubilee
o   Print copy of The Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off
o   Cute recipe card set—so the winner can save the recipes shared along the tour!

Publisher: Sourcebooks
Date of publication: April 2014

More Than the Chili's Heating Up Cadillac, Texas

Carlene Lovelle, co-owner of Bless My Bloomers lingerie shop, found a pair of fancy red-silk panties in her husband's briefcase, and all hell is breaking loose. She custom-made those fancy bloomers herself—and she remembers the bimbo who bought them. If her husband had a lick of sense, he'd known there are no secrets in a town like Cadillac.

Carlene's cohorts—and their mamas—plan to exact revenge on Lenny Joe where it'll hurt the most: break his ten-year winning streak at the prestigious Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off. Never before has a woman dared to compete. But the ladies of Bless My Bloomers are cooking up a storm...and it seems the whole town is taking sides in the showdown.

Welcome to Cadillac, Texas, where the chili is hot, the gossip is hotter, and friends stick by each other, no matter what the challenge.

My thoughts:

I love when a book can make me laugh out loud.  The Red-Hot Chili Cook off definitely fit the bill for that!  I really enjoyed the book.  While it is a sequel, I felt like it can be read as a stand alone book.  I loved the characters.  They are really what made the book for me.  Carlene, Patrice, and Alma-Grace are three cousins who own Bless Your Bloomers, a custom lingerie shop in town.  Their mothers are sisters and women who fight fiercely for their daughters. I loved how everyone rallied around Carlene after she left her cheating husband.    Being a small town, the gossip is always flying.  The way the rumors kept getting out of hand is one of the things that made me laugh the most. This is a great book and I do hope you will spend some time visiting the town of Cadillac and it's very colorful residents!


Thank you folks at TBR Pile for letting me stop by here for the final blog on the recipe tour for The Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off. Since this brings us to the end of our recipe blog tour, I have to admit I was sorely tempted to share the prize winning chili recipe with all y’all, but that would be a definite spoiler since at this point it’s still anyone’s game so I decided to share a recipe for homemade ice cream. The Red Hot Bloomers Team is serving those little cups of ice cream with their chili because it is so damned hot.

The day is here. Lenny is sure he’s going to win for the sixth year in a row and the ladies from the Bless My Bloomer’s lingerie shop are giving it all the southern charm they can find. In case you missed the rest of the blog tour, three cousins, Carlene, Alma Grace and Patrice, own and operate the Bless My Bloomers shop. Josie, their seamstress at the shop, and their three mothers, Tansy, Gigi and Sugar, make up the seven member team. Lenny Joe, bless his heart is one of those men who were born stupid. He left a pair of his girlfriend’s bikini underwear in his briefcase and Carlene, his wife, found them. It was a double whammy for humiliation because she made the under britches at her shop. The family has joined together, religious and not so religious alike, to be the first women in the chili cook-off in Cadillac. Hopefully, they’ll take the trophy right out of Lenny Joe’s cheatin’ hands. It’s time for the judges to do their tasting…

A slightly abbreviated excerpt:
Carlene stirred the chili one more time so the aroma of their special blend would fill the judge’s noses before they ever tasted it. Six judges lined up in front of the Red-Hot Bloomers stand, laid their clipboards with a blank page covering the stack of entries on the table, and eyed the whole display from back to front.
Alma Grace opened the freezer and removed six cups of ice cream with six special little wooden spoons on top imprinted with, “Red-Hot Bloomers thank you.” She set one in front of each judge’s station.
“Good morning,” Patrice greeted the judges with her best smile. “We realize that you are only allowed to taste the chili, itself, but in appreciation for all your work, we have an envelope for each of you. Inside you’ll find a coupon redeemable anytime today for a bowl of chili with or without chips or condiments, a free glass of sweet tea, and another cup of ice cream.” She laid them on top of their clipboards as Josie carefully measured one fourth of a cup of chili into each hot-pink plastic bowl with the team logo printed on the side.
Isaac looked down the row and nodded. They all scooped up a spoonful and put it in their mouths.
“Holy smoke, that’s hot!” Isaac grabbed the ice cream and shoveled two bites into his mouth before picking up his clipboard and writing.
“I taste a bit of Cajun. I like it,” Floy’s husband wrote on his clipboard before he opened his ice cream.
Tip ate the whole sampling, pulled a snowy white hanky from his hip pocket, and wiped his brow. “Now that is some damn good chili.”
John, the owner of the Rib Joint, tasted, thought a few minutes, and tasted again. “I’d put chili on my menu with this recipe. Fine job, ladies.”
Barbara Culpepper, bless her heart and God love her soul, couldn’t get to the ice cream fast enough. Steam rolled out her ears and she fanned her face with her clipboard, all the while reaching for a bottle of water in the shoulder purse hanging across her chest.
“Ice cream, darlin’.” Gigi opened it for her and stuck the little spoon in the middle. “It coats the palate and takes away the burn.”
Mayor Jim Burdette tasted, wrote on his clipboard, nodded at the ladies, and left his ice cream sitting on the table.
“Good luck to you,” he said as he moved to the next exhibition.
Carlene waited until they were at the next tent before she sat down at the picnic table. “Well? Aunt Tansy, you’re the psychic. What do you think?”
“I’m not a bit worried, darlin’,” Tansy said.
“Alma Grace, your opinion?” Carlene asked.
“Well, I think that after eating that chili, Barbara Culpepper may sing a little better come Sunday morning,” she said.
Carlene looked at Josie. “Mayor was on the fence. I wouldn’t even play poker with him on a good night. Can’t read his face a damn bit.”
“No strings of Spanish?” Gigi asked Josie.
“Not today. Today it’s press one for English.”
Patrice sat down beside Carlene. “They’re going to taste twenty kinds of chili and there won’t be a nickels worth of difference in any of it, but they won’t forget ours or our tent.”
Gigi nodded. “We are breaking ground for women of the future even though I will not do this ever again. One trophy is enough for me.”
Agnes waved from the tape at the back of the tent. “Hey, y’all! You been judged yet? I’d duck under this tape but that sorry ass Lenny might say that you had more in your tent than seven and get you thrown out.”
“We’ve been judged Miz Agnes. Heard you had a little mix-up last night,” Sugar said.
“Violet don’t have any idea when to shut her mouth. I swear that woman’s got a magic mirror in her house and when she looks in it she sees Marilyn Monroe or Betty Boop instead of an old, chubby woman who’s trying to outrun wrinkles and age,” Agnes declared.

Summer isn’t far away and that’s a time for home made ice cream and long, lazy evenings out under the shade trees, visitin’ while the kids play catch or toss Frisbees around. Have you got a favorite ice cream recipe you’d like to share with us?

SOUTHERN STYLE HOME CHURNED ICE CREAM

1 quart whipping cream
1 quart + 3 cups whole milk (do not substitute 2% milk)
12 egg Yolks
4 tablespoons vanilla
3 cups sugar
2 teaspoons salt

Scald milk in a large 6 quart saucepan. In a large bowl, beat together egg yolks and salt. Add about 3 cups of the hot milk to the egg yolks slowly while stirring constantly. Then return this mixture to the milk in the pan. Add sugar and keep stirring while cooking at medium heat. When mixture coats the spoon or just starts to boil, remove from heat. In most cases, the mix will be lumpy. No worry. Just remember to strain out the lumps when you pour it into the canister. You will have lots of left over egg whites. Use them for make some meringue shells to serve the ice cream in.
By substituting additional cream for some of the milk, this can be made even richer. In the south we don’t think anything can be “too rich.”
Either use a “hand cranked” freezer or an electric one. Use lots of rock salt and plenty of ice and let it set for fifteen or twenty minutes after it’s churned before serving.

Be sure to follow along on The Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off Recipe Sharing Tour!

April 3: Fresh Fiction
April 4: Book’d Out

Learn more about The Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off and find out some delicious recipes from Carolyn and other readers along the way. Chances to win at each stop!

About the author:

Carolyn Brown is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author with more than sixty books published. Her bestselling cowboy romance series include the Lucky trilogy, the Honky Tonk series, Spikes & Spurs, Cowboys & Brides, and the new Burnt Boot, Texas series. She has also launched into women’s fiction with a Texas twang. Born in Texas and raised in southern Oklahoma, Carolyn and her husband make their home in the town of Davis, Oklahoma, where she credits her eclectic family for her humor and writing ideas. For more information, please visit http://carolynlbrown.com/

To Purchase The Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off:

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