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
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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!
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/.
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Purchase The Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off:
