🍴:

Mon – pulled pork bowls with sweet potatoes and beans, salad

Tues – creamy goat cheese mushroom gnocchi, salad

Wed – Dijon-marinated flat iron, grilled endive with warm lemon/caper dressing (we subbed miso for anchovy vs. opening a tin for a tiny amount) and green beans

Thurs – coq au vin blanc, mash, arugula salad

Fri – Sushi Empire at Lesser Known before a Mystery Men rehearsal

Sat – veal osso bucco — that turned into a ragu? Ish? It cooked much faster than planned and I couldn’t cut good pieces to share, so I chopped it up and threw it in with the carrot and fennel cooking sauce and there we go. Served with goat cheese polenta, arugula salad

Sun – Earl’s with Hampton’s dad and stepmom-to-be up from Alabama before our murder mystery down the street at Radar.

🥃: as my character in the new Mystery Men show was Emogene, or “Em”, the head of “MI17”, I made a thermos of decaf Earl Grey and kept topping up a tiny vintage tea cup, which amused me as a character choice.

🐶:

📚: happy pub week to the second Cordy and Ruby mystery – Death at the Door. I had hoped we’d get answers about Cordelia’s death, but there are even more questions now with the arrival of neighbor Tosh.

I suppose I will be happy knowing there will be at least one more book in the series. And if not, I will haunt the publisher, Minotaur Books, myself, even if they are kind about giving my tiny blog ARCs.

🎭: As mentioned, we rolled out a new murder mystery for Halloween 2025, Murder is Forever, featuring detective Jimmy Dawn, reformed villain Dr. Silverthumb, and tech guru Q Veecee. Hampton is the also-ran to Jimmy Dawn, Sebastian Dusk, and we have not one but two Dawn girls.

Our show tonight was extra fun because it was our boss’s first birthday celebration (the second will be talked about here next week!) and because Hampton’s dad and his fiancée got to see us do one of these for the first time.

My British accent may be questionable, but at least I got to be frosty and grumpy the whole time, which is always entertaining during interrogations. As much as I adore Dame Judi, I hate Bond’s blatant sexism, so I haven’t seen her M. Instead, I tried to channel Kristin Scott Thomas on Slow Horses. But taller.