Summertime is salad time

 

By now, most of us know that the Caesar salad was invented in a restaurant in Mexico, but how many know about the Columbia 1905 Salad that legend says a waiter developed in 1940s for the Columbia, a Spanish restaurant in Sarasota, Florida. The salad eventually became standard at the Columbia, and they used it to combat the popularity of the salad bars that sprang up everywhere. It’s called their 1905 Salad, and if I have my facts in order, that’s because one family owns or owned a group of restaurants they called the 1905 restaurants. This recipe makes a main salad for two or a side for four. You could substitute shrimp or turkey for the ham

For the salad:

4 cups iceberg lettuce, torn into small pieces

1 ripe tomato, diced

½ cup baked ham, julienned

½ cup Swiss cheese, julienned

½ cup green Spanish olives, sliced

 

Toss ingredients in a large bowl. When ready to serve, make dressing.

 

1 cup "1905" Dressing

 

For the dressing:

½ cup Spanish olive oil

4 garlic cloves, minced

2 teaspoons dried oregano

⅛ cup white wine vinegar

Salt and pepper to taste

 

Finally, add to the salad and toss: Serve immediately

 

¼ cup Romano cheese, grated

2 Tbsp. Worcestershire Sauce

Juice of 1 lemon

 

This makes a great, refreshing summer supper for two!

 

A different salad

I forgot to take a picture, 
so this is borrowed from kathleenashmore.com.
You'll note it shows chickpeas, which I omitted

.

A high in the eighties is a cool snap if you’re in Texas, and we’re having said cool snap today after thunderstorms and brief but heavy rain last night. But I’m always on the lookout for new salads that will serve as the main dish for family meals. So when I came across this one, called LaScala Chopped Salad, I was intrigued by ingredients I don’t usually think of with salad.

The salad has nothing to do with the famous theater in Milan but everything to do with a Beverly Hills restaurant called, appropriately, La Scala and famed for its chopped salad. According to rumor, the Kardashians are extremely fond of this salad, but it is not the famous Kardashian salad which has chicken and carrots and who knows what. Frankly, I don’t care what the Kardashians eat. I am one of those who has never watched the show (it is a show, isn’t it?). But the salad, aside from the source of its fame, was surprisingly good—and popular with my family.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 head iceberg lettuce

¼ lb. salami

¼ lb. shredded mozzarella

1-1/2 can chickpeas, drained (I don’t happen to care much for chickpeas and didn’t have any on hand, so I omitted this)

3 Tbsp. olive oil

2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

½ tsp. each salt and pepper

Dressing:

½ cup olive oil

¼ cup red wine vinegar

2 tsp Dijon

½ tsp. each salt and pepper

¼ cup grated pecorino

Sound like the salad gets dressed twice, doesn’t it? Bear with me. Cut the salami into thin strips, not so long as to be difficult to eat. Chop the lettuce.

If you’re using chickpeas, whisk together the oil and vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper listed in ingredients and toss in the chickpeas. Trust me, it was good without them.

Mix together the dressing ingredients and shake or stir to emulsify.

Put the lettuce in a large bowl and toss with half the dressing. Add the salami and mozzarella and taste to adjust the seasoning. Add remaining dressing but be careful not to make your salad soupy.

Presentation is complicated if you use the chickpeas: drain and put in the bottom of a bowl. Pack your salad on top. Then, using a plate to keep everything in place, flip it so that the chickpeas are on top for serving. See? I told you it’s easier to leave out the chickpeas.

Not using the chickpeas? Serve in soup plates and top each serving with a bit more pecorino for appearance sake.

Bread salad? Are you kidding?

 

Bread salad

No, I don’t mean tossing some croutons out of a box and onto a bunch of lettuce and then drowning the whole thing in bottled Italian dressing. Panzanella has a long history in Tuscany and other sections of Italy. Food historians have even found a sixteenth-century poet who sang about onions in oil and vinegar served with toast. Until modern times, panzanella was all about onions, not tomatoes. The name is thought to come from a combination of “pane,” Italian for bread, and “zanella,” which is a deep dish, rather like a soup or salad plate.

Panzanella is generally considered to consist of cubes of stale bread, tomatoes, and onions in a vinaigrette. But in today’s kitchen you can throw in almost anything you want—lettuce, cucumber, celery, hard-boiled eggs, parsley, bell peppers, etc. Purists will frown at you, but, hey! It’s your salad.

Some recipes call for soaking the bread cubes in water so that they will soften and absorb the dressing. I prefer to have them hard. The vinaigrette marinates and softens them if you let the salad sit before serving. I would not recommend pre-packaged croutons for this.

For a long time, I sort of wondered about panzanella, not sure how I felt about bread salad. I knew for sure Jordan wouldn’t eat it, because she doesn’t even want croutons in a regular salad. But one night I made it when Jean came to supper, and we both loved it. We also found it was filling enough for a meal, though I have sometimes put some cottage cheese next to it. Okay, that’s my idiosyncrasy. You may laugh or recoil in horror.

Here's what I did:

To make the croutons (this will make enough for a salad for ten or twelve, but they are a bit of a pain to make and they freeze beautifully):

8-10 cups of cubed artisan bread (one-inch cubes), crusts removed only if you want/

Spread the bread in a single layer in a roasting pan and let it sit out overnight, so that the cubes become stale and hard. If you don’t have time, you can bake them for twenty minutes in a 300^o oven but watch that they don’t burn.

For the salad: (will serve two to three)

1 large heirloom tomato, chopped

¼ cucumber, diced

½ small red onion, sliced

For the dressing:

¼ cup olive oil

1/8 cup red wine vinegar

¼ tsp. salt

Pinch of fine ground pepper

Five or six finely sliced basil leaves – add just before serving

Combine the vegetables and about 3-4 cups croutons in a salad bowl. Pour dressing over and toss. Let the salad sit for at least one-half hour at room temperature before serving. It can sit as long as four hours and will only get better. Toss occasionally during this time. Add basil just before serving.

Pour a glass of good red Italian wine and enjoy!

 

 

The Chicken Salad Controversy

 

Not my picture but the texture of the salad looks close.
Also, I liked the platter idea for serving.

When the weather starts to warm, Jordan shies away from “heavy” meals like pot roast and prefers salads. I’m with her a hundred percent, but there are two males in the family to feed. So we try for substantial salads—Cobb Salad (not Christian’s favorite), Big Mac Salad and Taco Salad (both Christian’s favorites). Don’t even mention Salade Niçoise because tuna is not on the list of recommended foods, even though I buy it by the case for Jordan and me.

So the other night I tried chicken salad. Christian and I have texture differences. He doesn’t like diced or even minced celery because it’s crisp where he doesn’t want crisp; I love celery in salads but hold the chopped nuts. To me, they are the wrong texture in the wrong place. So I put celery in the chicken salad, and he picked it out. And gave the salad only a B rating because it had no grapes and no nuts. The whole reason I liked the idea was that it had flavors different from the usual.

There is also the matter of how you like chicken cut for a salad—ruling out grilled chicken salad which is to me a whole different dish. Some liked it diced in nice-sized chunks (when I looked online for pictures of chicken salad, almost all showed chunks); some like it shredded, but you have to start with a warm piece of chicken to do that effectively. I used to whir chicken in the processor, so that it was really fine, and the salad came out with a creamy, almost spreadable texture. Now my choice is to mince it (partly so I don’t have to get out the processor). So here’s what I did:

Cilantro/Lime Chicken Salad

3 cups minced chicken (from a rotisserie chicken)

2/3 cup regular mayonnaise (light mayo or yogurt work but not as well)

1 tsp. garlic powder

½ tsp. each salt and pepper

2/3 cup minced celery (do string the celery before mincing)

¼ cup minced sweet onion

¼ cup green onion, chopped fine (you can use all sweet union or all green according to taste; I am on a sweet onion kick but wanted the color from green onion tops)

½ cup finely chopped cilantro (no need to stem it first)

Juice of one lime (more or less, according to taste—Jordan and I like more)

Optional: 1 sweet bell pepper, finely diced (if you cook with me much at all, you’ll learn I never use bell pepper: it doesn’t like me, and I don’t like it)

Mix it all together and chill before serving. Nice in an avocado half. Jordan offered “the boys” tortillas, so they could make it into a wrap, but I don’t think that idea went over well with either of them. A fruit salad might be a nice accompaniment. We had a traditional, tossed green salad. I’ll make this again and again this summer.

A note on stringing celery: somehow in raising Jordan, I never taught her to string celery. She used to stuff celery with cream cheese as an appetizer, and I’d get stuck with these strings. I have since tried to show her the technique. It’s like the time I watched Jamie struggling to peel a hard-boiled egg. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you to peel them under running cold water?” I demanded. He said no. Now he knows. I’m quite sure my mom taught me those little tricks, along with a pinch of sugar in tomato sauces, but I never passed them on to my children.

Get creative with tuna

 

One of the shortcomings of the tiny kitchen in my cottage is the lack of storage space. And one of the things I need to store is a case of tuna—that’s twenty-four cans. I order it from a mom-and-pop fishing vessel in Oregon. It’s canned the day it’s caught, in water, only heated once. Delicious. Storage is only a problem for a while, because we eat a lot of tuna. (I also buy canned salmon from the same source—love it!)

Jordan, the resident daughter, loves the tuna salad we make, but she won’t consider tuna served any other way. In contrast, I am happy with tuna casserole, creamed tuna on toast, tuna Florentine (a complicated dish I just made for company), and I’m willing to try new ways with tuna. I think two or three weeks ago I mentioned a tuna/bean salad that didn’t come out the way I wanted. Here’s a version that did turn out right and couldn’t be easier—Megan, the Austin daughter, and I had it last weekend and gave it high marks, after I fiddled with it a bit.

Tuna/bean salad

1 15-oz. can white beans (should be cannellini, but I had navy beans and they worked just fine)

1 7 oz. can tuna (original recipe called for oil-packed, but I prefer to use water-packed and compensate with extra olive oil)

1 lemon, including zest.

¼ c. pesto

2 Tbsp. olive oil, or more to make up for using water-packed tuna.

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

Salt and pepper to taste

Drain and rinse beans; drain tuna; grate the lemon zest and then squeeze the lemon, saving the juice. Stir everything together. Chill before serving.

Want to do a sandwich something with a can of tuna? A tuna sandwich that is not tuna salad? Make it into a composed salad on bread—at least that’s the best way I can describe it.

A different tuna salad

Four ciabatta rolls or one loaf of French or Italian bread

1 7 oz. can tuna

4 hard-boiled eggs, sliced

Salt and pepper

Watercress; if not available, arugula or romaine lettuce (watercress adds a nice, peppery taste)

Salsa Verde (recipe follows)

Directions

Split rolls or bread; some might use a baguette, but I find them too skinny. If using French or Italian bread, cut into four serving-size pieces and split. Arrange lettuce, tuna, eggs artfully on one side of bread. Salt and pepper to taste. Cover generously with salsa. Either top with the other half of the bread or serve the sandwich open-faced.

Salsa Verde

1 c. parsley

½ c. good olive oil, more if needed

2 garlic cloves, micro planed or minced.

3 or 4 anchovy filets

1 Tbsp. capers

Zest of a lemon

Salt and pepper

Mix parsley and olive oil thoroughly in food processor. Add remaining ingredients by hand. Taste for salt and pepper. Add more olive oil if needed for a spreadable consistency. You want it thin enough to generously top the sandwiches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Composed salads

Salade Nicoise

No, composed salads are not those jellied concoctions that were popular in your grandma’s day and showed up on her table every Sunday when you were a kid. Remember? Orange Jell-O with grated carrots and pineapple chunks? Cherry Jell-O with dark cherries and—shhh! —port wine. Or jellied gazpacho. (I really liked some of those, though pistachio and Cool Whip were a bit much for me.)

Composed salads are simply salads where the ingredients are laid out on a plate instead of tossed in a bowl. Traditionally when you serve them at home, you lay the ingredients out on one large platter. Diners help themselves, but we all know that self-service can get kind of messy. For a small crowd—two to four—I sometimes serve individual salads laid out in soup plates. You can dress the individual dishes or pass a small pitcher of dressing.

The nice thing about them is you can use almost any ingredients that strike your fancy. There are, however, two basic composed salads familiar to everyone who has ever had lunch in a bistro café. Both of these are often served on a bed of lettuce.

Cobb salad

Cobb salad started in the 1930s at the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood. Owner Bob Cobb went prowling in his restaurant’s refrigerator for leftovers, arranged them on a plate, drizzled French dressing over the dish, and there it was. Within days it was on the menu

Traditional ingredients are cold chicken breast, often diced, tomato (halved cherry tomatoes are good), green beans, tiny potatoes, cheese (sometimes blue, sometimes cheddar), avocado, bacon bits, sometimes artichoke hearts.

Cobb used French dressing on his salad but use your imagination. I think a good vinaigrette is nice because it accents the flavor of the ingredients without overwhelming them. But restaurants frequently offer a choice, so feel free to use ranch, blue cheese, Italian, honey-mustard, whatever suits.

Salade Niçoise

Whereas Cobb features chicken, salade Niçoise is built around tuna. I like to do it with high quality canned albacore in water.

Olives are also traditional, but I omit them because olives are on the short list of things I just don’t eat. But tiny baby potatoes, peeled, boiled, and cut in quarters if necessary, green beans, hard-boiled eggs are all common. I sometimes add asparagus.

The following two dressings are good on Cobb salad or salade Niçoise as well as a plain green salad.

Avocado salad dressing

1 lg. avocado, soft, ready to use; peeled and cut into chunks

2 tsp. lemon juice

½ cup. Greek yogurt

Hot sauce to taste--I sprinkle a few drops

1/4 cup olive oil

2 garlic cloves

3/4 tsp. salt

Throw it all in the food processor. The avocado is hard to blend--chunks keep reappearing. It’s easier if the avocado is very ripe and soft. You have to scrape down the sides and continue to blend until you don't see chunks. But this is really good and healthy.

Creamy blue cheese salad dressing

2 Tbsp. each mayonnaise, sour cream, and buttermilk

1 tsp. lemon juice

¼ tsp. pepper

¼ tsp. Kosher salt

1 anchovy fillet, mashed (optional or use a tsp. of anchovy paste)

Blue cheese – 2-3 Tbsp. to taste

1 finely chopped scallion

Mix all ingredients, adding cheese and scallion last. If dressing is too thick, sparingly add more buttermilk.

This is classic for wedge salads but also good on torn leaf lettuce and any number of other good things.

Nothing better than a main-dish cold salad on a hot spring day.

A smorgasbord dish

I find myself beginning a lot of food-related posts with, “When I was a kid,” which only tells me that I got my love of food and cooking and feeding others as a child. I credit my mom, who was incredibly patient with me on the kitchen. This memory though comes from a restaurant that my parents took me to more than once. The Kungsholm in Chicago, located in the former McCormick Mansion on the near North Side, offered a true Swedish smorgasbord, a huge table filled with all kinds of delicacies from the three traditional stages of smorgasbord dining: herring and seafood; hot entrees, like Kalvfild a la Oscar (veal tenderloin with shrimp and asparagus tips covered by béarnaise sauce); and salads and cheeses, followed by dessert and coffee or wine. I think it was at that table that I loved to learn fishy things like herring and caviar.

An additional treat but not food related: after dinner we adjourned to a room that had been converted into a puppet theater, and that’s where any knowledge I may have of classic opera came from. I particularly remember seeing Faust there. The characters moved mechanically on tracks hidden in the floor; they were controlled by people behind the set, often young people with operatic ambitions—I had a friend whose brother worked there.

Back to food: last weekend, with neighbors, we had a pot-luck German dinner, and one of my contributions was the herring salad. If you think you don’t like pickled herring, I urge you to try this. I wanted to start with herring in wine, but the grocery gave me dill-flavored—no matter. It was good. This will serve four people as an appetizer or a side.

Herring salad

12 oz. jar pickled herring, drained but keep the onion rings

One large potato, cooked, peeled, and cubed (I find it easiest to boil the potato whole—watch that the pot doesn’t boil dry—and refrigerate. After a few hours, the chilled potato is easy to peel and holds together when you cube it

4 green onions, sliced

2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and diced

(The original recipe also called for one-half tart apple, cubed, but I found the hardness of the apple incompatible with the rest of the salad; I also omitted a half cup pickled cucumbers because I forgot to buy a cucumber, but sliced cucumber, pickled in equal parts vinegar and water, might add a really nice crunch without being as hard as an apple)

Salt as needed—you shouldn’t need much if any because the herring is salty

For the dressing:

¾ cup good Greek yogurt

½ c. mayonnaise

(you can vary the proportions, but I prefer mostly yogurt0

A pinch of white pepper (if you don’t have white, use black—it’s not the end of the world)

Juice of half a lemon

1 Tbsp. cream of horseradish or plain preserved horseradish

Chopped fresh parsley to decorate

Add the dressing a bit at a time—the quantities were in metric, and my translation to standard American measurements is loose. You want the ingredients lightly coated but not swimming in dressing.

Serve chilled.

In case you need a little encouragement to try herring, did you know that this fish helps produce red blood cells, is extremely high in Omega 3 Fatty Acids, promotes healthy bones, stimulates the brain nerve, lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, is high in antioxidants, and helps improve the memory and avoid dementia. Why, who knew a fish could be a miracle drug!

A spring salad

Spring is here, and it’s time to turn our kitchen thoughts to lighter dishes and more salads. My freezer has several small containers that combined will make one last pot of soup, and I’m wondering—almost wishing—for a cold snap so I can use them. But otherwise, my mind is on lighter eating.

And here’s a salad that is refreshing and different, but it requires a bit of dexterity. It means hollowing out a head of iceberg lettuce, so you can stuff it. Whatever you say about iceberg—tasteless, all water, etc.—you have to admit it is lovely in its crispness.

Get a good, firm head of lettuce and wash it thoroughly under cold running water. Peel off the outer layer of leaves and then core it. You can dig the core out with a paring knife, but there’s an easier, faster way. Hold the lettuce in your hands, core end down, above a cutting board. With all your might, slam it on that cutting board so that the core takes the brunt of the force. It should sleep right out. (This is also useful for making wedge salads.)

Scoop out as much lettuce as you can without threatening the integrity of the shell. If you want, chop a bit of the extra lettuce fine and mix it into the filling.

Separately, mix the filling:

1 pkg. cream cheese, softened to room temperature

2 Tbsp. soft, creamy blue cheese

2 Tbsp. grated carrot

2 Tbsp. fresh tomato, diced fine

1 large scallion, diced fine

Salt and pepper to taste but be cautious—it’s easy to overdo here.

Pack the filling into the center of the head of lettuce. You will think you have way too much filling but keep packing, pushing down into all the spaces, You’ll be surprised at how much fits in.

Wrap the finished salad in clear wrap and chill for an hour before serving. Slice to serve. Serves four.

Makes a nice change from a tossed salad. Enjoy!

Those ubiquitous green salads

For most of my life, I considered a green salad an essential ingredient of a meal, and I made them the way my mom did: put chopped tomatoes, scallions, maybe red onion, whatever else in the bottom of a wooden bowel (always unfinished wood), season with salt, pepper, garlic, whatever and toss. Mom was creative--sometimes there's be avocado, frequently blue cheese, sometimes parmesan for variety; she went through one spell of using smoked salt until I think we both overdid it. But you put the lettuce (preferably home-grown) in at the last minute and tossed it with vinaigrette--a standard homemade dressing but in those days we didn't use olive oil--always Mazola, which she claimed was healthy. We never had head lettuce, let alone a wedge with Thousand Island (never saw that in my house though occasionally I like it now as a topping on an open-faced sandwich--but I make my own--never comes out that same way twice).
In recent years I've grown tired of the usual tossed salad and stopped fixing them. But three salads remain favorites:

The first is wilted lettuce, for which you need very fresh leaf lettuce. Fry some bacon (maybe two pieces per person), drain and reserve grease. Heat together about equal parts bacon grease and cider vinegar; just before serving, pour hot mixture over the greens (not so much that you drown them) and crumble bacon over it.

The second salad is Jordan's to make whenever I cook dinner and salad is on the menu. Rub a wooden bowl thoroughly with a cut garlic clove; then with salt, pepper, and dry mustard (Jordan sometimes has a heavy hand and gets the dressing a bit stout); pour some vinegar in the bottom of the bowl--and here I'm lost for measurements. Not too much, because you'll need to add 1/3 again that much olive oil--if you end up with too much dressing, refrigerate; it keeps. Crumble blue cheese into vinegar and whisk with a fork until it's a fairly smooth mixture. Add olive oil and whisk again. This can be done a bit ahead but not too far because you don't want that good wooden bowl to soak up all your dressing. Tear lettuce leaves and toss just before serving. I suppose you could add croutons--we never do since Jordan is perpetually on a no-carb diet.

And the third: an overnight salad I have in the fridge right now. I get the recipe from a neighbor who

got it from a friend, but I feel like it's mine now since I've made it several times. Today I made it early this morning, so by supper it will have been refrigerated overnight. This is the salad before tossing.
You need:

3 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
9 Tbsp. olive oil
6 green onions, chopped
1 tsp. seasoned salt (I used regular salt)
4-6 cloves garlic, minced--I mashed four because I don't like finding little bits of garlic in my mouth, and I don't mince well
2 avocados, peeled and cut into chunks
I head romaine
3/4 c. grated Parmesan

Use a 9x13 glass baking dish (never metal or aluminum), combine lemon juice, oil, onions, salt and garlic. Add avocado chunks and stir until all is coated well. Tear romaine and layer on top of mixture. Cover with Parmesan. DO NOT STIR AT THIS POINT.
Seal tightly with plastic wrap--I used two layers and then a layer of foil--and refrigerate. Stir just before serving. Left is the salad on a pate after tossing, with meatloaf and corn casserole.

And these days, I kind of like a wedge of head lettuce, with a blue cheese/tomato/bacon dressing. But it's not as healthy as the salads above. Okay, maybe wilted lettuce isn't too healthy.
 

Salade Nicoise

 

 

A guest post by Edith Maxwell,

author of A Tine to Die

 

 

 

In A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die (Kensington Publishing, 2013), former software engineer Cam Flaherty grows organic vegetables on her farm in northeastern Massachusetts. She sells them to the local foods enthusiasts who belong to her farm-share program as well as to a tall intense chef. What she didn't plan on was encountering locally sourced murder, too.

 “With an insider's look at organic farming and a loyal, persistent heroine, Maxwell offers a series that cozy mystery fans will root for.” Lucy Burdette, author of the Key West Food Critic series.

 Summer is a perfect time to make this scaled-down version of Salade Nicoise. It skips the tuna and the potatoes but is a great light meal accompanied by a loaf of sourdough and a glass of chilled Pinot Grigio.

Tomato-Bean Salad with Eggs

 Ingredients

For salad:

2 lbs freshly picked slim green beans

6 eggs, hard boiled

Four medium size fresh tomatoes

2-3 T capers

1/2 c fresh parsley, minced

 

For dressing:

2 strips of fresh lemon peel, 1 by 2 1/2 inches each

1/4 t salt, plus more, if needed

1/2 T Dijon-type prepared mustard

1 to 2 T freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/2 c high-quality olive oil

Freshly ground pepper

 1.    Wash and trim the beans. Cut into two-inch pieces. Steam lightly until bright green and then chill in ice water. Drain and dry in a dish towel.

2.    Cut the tomatoes into quarters.

3.    Peel the eggs and carefully cut in half lengthwise.

4.    Lay the beans in a shallow serving dish. Intersperse the tomatoes and eggs, cut side up, in an artful way.

5.    Mince the lemon peel very finely with the salt, scrape it into the mortar or bowl, and mash into a fine paste with the pestle or spoon.

6.    Beat in the mustard and 1 tablespoon of the lemon juice; when thoroughly blended start beating in the oil by droplets to make a homogeneous sauce—easier when done with a small electric mixer.

7.    Beat in droplets more lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste.

8.    Pour the dressing over the salad.

9.    Sprinkle capers and parsley on top and add freshly ground pepper.

10. Serve at room temperature or chill if not serving soon.

 Locavore Edith Maxwell's A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die in the Local Foods Mystery series (Kensington Publishing, 2013) lets her relive her days as an organic farmer in Massachusetts, although murder in the greenhouse is new. A fourth-generation Californian, she has also published short stories of murderous revenge, most recently in the Fish Nets and Thin Ice anthologies.

Edith Maxwell's alter-ego Tace Baker authored Speaking of Murder, which features Quaker linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau and campus intrigue after her sexy star student is killed (Barking Rain Press, 2012). Edith is a long-time Quaker and holds a long-unused doctorate in linguistics.

A mother and former technical writer, Edith lives north of Boston in an antique house with her beau and three cats. You can find her at @edithmaxwell, on Facebook, and at www.edithmaxwell.com