A collection of six short stories with recipes.
I chose to write about pumpkin blossoms because my husband grows them in our garden and he loves to eat them.
But the title “Pumpkin Blossom’s” is a pun.
Jillian’s dad called her pumpkin, and in my story Pumpkin blossoms.
Jillian yearns for love and falls for a dog and her sister’s ex-boyfriend. But the dog bolts and the boyfriend still seems to have feelings for Jillian’s sister. Will the man she falls for be able to see her not as a kid sister, but who she really is?
This story was fun to write because if I wrote a story that included a food such as brownies and the book already had a brownie recipe, then my story would not be chosen. So the food had to be unusual, but also a favorite.
My husband’s mother introduced me to pumpkin blossoms. To my husband, fried pumpkin blossoms taste like fried morel mushrooms. While researching for the book, I learned pumpkin blossoms could be eaten raw. That’s my favorite way. They taste like a fresh pumpkin.
On our trip to Italy, I discovered pumpkin blossoms filled with cheese on the menu and ordered them. They were great.
Enjoy reading my story, while trying pumpkin blossoms.
Here are why a few of the other stories were written.
Why Peanut Butter Kisses was Written
When my publisher opened up submissions for a short story in the Food and Romance Go Together, Vol 1 anthology, I jumped at the chance. I had a file filled with story ideas and knew the one I wanted to write would make a great short story, but you had to have a recipe to go along with and play a role in the story. Figuring out which recipe I was going to use and how to incorporate the food into the story was harder than writing the story.
I had a high school reunion story line with the recipe for my peanut butter cookies, but I had to put the two together. Thinking I had to have my heroine Beth be the one to make the cookies, it was while writing the story that I quickly discovered my hero Hank who would be the baker.
Join Beth at her ten-year reunion, as she hopes to see her long-time secret crush Hank, what happens at the reunion, and what transpires afterward. I hope you enjoy Peanut Butter Kisses and try the cookies, as they are a family favorite.
Ryan Jo Summers
Melange Books had calls for two different submissions; one was to love a Scotsman and one was for a food-themed story.I really preferred to do the love a Scotsman story, and even dreamed up a hunky Scot complete with kilt and attitude. Over the following days, I could not come up withe anything else to add and finally had to admit there just wasn’t a story. Sometimes you can’t force these things. What a shame, because my Scotsman was a dream-boat. (Sigh)
Meanwhile, over in the kitchen, the food-themed story was taking off. I was popping out characters, plot-lines, and even dialogue like kernels of corn in a microwave. I let the whole thing cook a bit, took it out of the mental oven of my mind and poured some buttery fine-tuning revisions over it and had a story. Sort of like pulling a frozen dinner from the oven.
It was based on the coffee cakes I used to bake for hubby in the mornings for him to take to work and share with his co-workers. The idea of a caterer came because I pet-sit/ dog walk as a side job and one of my clients was a pair of caterers. The two meshed and became “Coffeecake Chaos. There you have the story behind the story.