Mary Lee Ashford's Sugar & Spice Mysteries

Game of Scones

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” my Aunt Cricket is fond of saying. And though that is great advice, everybody can’t actually leave, can they? I mean, someone has to stay in the kitchen and take the heat or nobody eats.

Today that person was me, Rosetta Sugarbaker Calloway, aka Sugar to my friends. Up until six months ago, I had been a highfalutin senior food editor for a major magazine headquartered right here in the Midwest. Corner office, nice salary, corporate trips. Now, thanks to a downturn in advertising revenues which resulted in downsizing at Mammoth Publishing, I had a new calling.

Cookbooks.

In partnership with Dixie Spicer, a woman who is, without a doubt, the best cook in Jameson County if not the whole world, I’m the Sugar half of Sugar and Spice Publishing. The Spice part comes in, not just because it has a nice ring to it, but because Spice is Dixie’s nickname. A moniker she claims came about because of her last name, Spicer, and her hair color, which is a rich cinnamon. To tell you the God’s honest truth, the nickname probably had a lot to do with her personality, but more about that later. In any case, Dixie and I publish cookbooks.
Most days I thought my exit from the corporate grind and the new venture it had brought about was brilliant. But then today Scone Wars had broken out.