An Eggnog to Die For - Traditions: Guest Post

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An Eggnog to Die For (A Cape Cod Foodie Mystery)

by Amy Pershing

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An Eggnog to Die For (A Cape Cod Foodie Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
2nd in Series
Setting – Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Berkley (November 2, 2021)
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages

Professional foodie Samantha Barnes has a simple Christmas list: a quiet holiday at home with her dog and a certain handsome harbormaster; no embarrassing viral videos; and no finding dead bodies. Unfortunately, she’s got family visiting, she’s spending a lot of time in front of the camera, and she’s just stumbled over the lifeless body of the town’s Santa Claus.

Plus, Sam’s plans for Christmas Eve are getting complicated. There’s the great eggnog debate among her very opinionated guests. There’s the “all edible” Christmas tree to decorate. And there’s her Feast of the Five Fishes prepare. Nonetheless, Sam finds herself once again in the role of sleuth. She needs to find out who slayed this Santa—but can she pull off a perfect feast and nab a killer?

Guest post: Why We Have Holiday Traditions (Hint: It’s all about maintaining your sanity!)

When I was a child, my mother ruled Christmas with an iron hand. We had traditions and we were sticking to them. There was a method to her madness, but I only figured it out years later when I had a family of my own. Here’s how Mom’s Christmas went down:

On Christmas Eve, my mother (who was usually all about food) made something simple like spaghetti. The Big Event was trimming the tree so who cared what we ate?

On Christmas morning, we had to wait until Mom and Dad were awake, and then all of us (two parents, five kids, one grandfather) gathered at the top of the stairs. As we descended, we sang “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” until we arrived in the living room with its vast pile of treasures under the tree. We were allowed to tear into our stockings and open one present of our choice before we all sat down for a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon served on paper plates (Christmas paper plates, but still – paper plates).

Then back to opening the presents one by one so that my mother could keep a list of who got what from whom for future thank you notes (do you remember the days when children were expected to write thank you notes?). With five kids, this took a couple of hours.

Then we played with our toys (or in my case began reading my new books) until the Other Big Event, Christmas Dinner, which usually took place mid-afternoon. My mother’s Christmas dinner was always the same – a huge roast beef (remember the days when Dad’s would only eat meat?), steamed broccoli with pounds of melted butter, baked potatoes with chives and sour cream, and hot fudge sundaes for dessert.

Then my mother would retire for a nap and my father would clean up the kitchen. My mother’s nap pretty much lasted until the next day.

It wasn’t until I had my own family that I realized that my mother wasn’t a Christmas control freak. She was just trying to keep her sanity. If we had spaghetti on Christmas Eve, the prep and clean up were minimal and no one cared what they ate anyway — because Christmas tree! If the kids had to wait for Mom and Dad to wake up the next morning before the big song-fest, that would allow the ‘rents at least a couple of hours of shut-eye after a late night wrapping presents from Santa and putting together doll houses and bicycles. If we ate breakfast before opening presents, Mom and Dad could down a couple of cups of coffee and pretend to be human beings.

And paper plates meant minimal clean up. But most important, if Mom kept Christmas dinner as splashy but as simple as possible – there really is nothing to throwing a rib roast and a bunch of potatoes into the oven and there is no kid on earth who doesn’t think hot fudge sundaes are the best dessert ever – she might actually avoid collapsing before the Big Nap.

To this day, I follow my mother’s “prescription” for Christmas, and it has never failed me.

I wish things were going as well for Samantha Barnes in An Eggnog to Die For:

In an attempt to distract myself from the challenges of putting my parents up in a house where hot water for your shower is pretty much a roll of the dice, I turned for consolation, as I always do, to food. I decided that what would cheer me up was to go all-in on a Christmas Eve Friends and Family Feast of the Five Fishes. Okay, so traditionally it’s seven fishes or even twelve. But times have changed. The holidays are stressful enough. Christmas Eve should be fun.

You would think my friends and family would get that, but no. Nobody was exactly cooperating. My mother began sending me recipes for soy “fish.” Jenny said she’d only eat real fish and then only if it didn’t “smell fishy” (which it doesn’t if it’s fresh, but try convincing her of that). Her kids, known collectively as the Three Things, essentially only ate sugar, and Miles only organic. Helene, being Jewish, wanted the traditional Chinese takeout.

My friend/boss Krista said she didn’t care what she ate as long as she didn’t have to cook it. (Krista’s lack of sentiment is sometimes a good thing.) I’d also invited a newish friend, Jillian Munsell, the manager of Shawme Manor, Fair Harbor’s combined nursing home and assisted living facility, who’d announced that she would bring dessert. She wouldn’t tell me what it would be, though, insisting that it should be a surprise. (Not a good thing. When I plan a meal, I don’t like surprises. I like control.)

The only thing anyone could agree on was that there had to be eggnog.

But, it turned out, my guests had strong feelings there, too. My e-mail was dinging regularly with “best eggnog ever” recipes—rum eggnog, bourbon eggnog, vanilla bean eggnog, you name it. I didn’t have a dog in this fight, but I was going to have to declare a winner. This could not end well.

Needless to say, it doesn’t. In an effort to come up with an eggnog that everyone can agree on, Sam finds herself stumbling over a very dead Santa in a very hip restaurant. Leading to the real mystery in An Eggnog to Die For: Can Sam save Christmas Eve and figure out who slayed Santa?

About Amy Pershing

Amy Pershing, who spent every summer of her childhood on Cape Cod, was an editor, a restaurant reviewer and a journalist before leading employee communications at a global bank. A few years ago she waved goodbye to Wall Street to write full time. An Eggnog to Die For is the second of the Cape Cod Foodie mysteries featuring Samantha Barnes, a disgraced but resilient ex-chef who retreats home to Cape Cod where she finds herself juggling a new job as the local paper’s “Cape Cod Foodie,” a complicated love life, a posse of just-slightly-odd friends, a falling-down house, a ginormous puppy and a propensity for falling over dead bodies.

Kirkus Reviews gave An Eggnog to Die For a starred review, saying, “A delightful sleuth, a complex mystery, and lovingly described cuisine: a winner for both foodies and mystery mavens.” A Side of Murder, the first of the Cape Cod Foodie mysteries, which Elizabeth Gilbert called “the freshest, funniest mystery I have ever read,” was the first book in the series. The third, Murder Is No Picnic, will be published in May 2022.

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