Most mornings I wake up hoping for a typical day, but with Irene Foxglove—“Please call me Madame”—as my boss, no day is typical. Madame is the star of a second-tier, low-budget TV cooking show on an independent channel in Chicago, and I am her assistant. Which means I’m her gofer—I pre-measure ingredients and hand them to her while she cooks on camera, do the shopping, try out the recipes, and do whatever Irene doesn’t want to do—which is a lot.
It’s not quite the glamorous life I envisioned when I left Texas for Chicago, but it has its good sides, like my vintage apartment in Chicago’s historic Hyde Park neighborhood with lots of restaurants and pubs and great grocery stores. And the lake, always Lake Michigan. And then there’s Patrick, the gay guy in the apartment next to mine. He’s become my best friend and confidante.
Madame and I supposedly have a schedule—on Mondays and Thursdays, we plan menus. Two days a week, we shoot the show, taking whatever slack time the studio has available—it’s cheaper than paying for prime time, and Irene’s husband, Howard, who manages the show, is all about saving money. That leaves one day a week for me to putter in my kitchen, trying out recipes so I can report to Madame.
Let me tell you about Irene Foxglove. At five foot nine, she towers over me by a good five inches. This is particularly unpleasant when she’s angry, upset, worried, or plain out of sorts, which is much of the time. Madame takes great pride in her French culinary training and sprinkles her talk with French phrases. Still, I have my doubts. I think she might have gone to Kendall College, right here in Chicago.
And Madame keeps secrets. Recently I accidentally found her in a small anteroom off the kitchen, crumpled-up paper clutched in her fist, tears running down her face, carrying mascara and makeup with them. Another day, Irene had a mysterious and lengthy appointment in the Loop and ended the day with a broken wrist. The story was that someone shoved her off a curb in a crowd waiting to cross State Street. Then the spoiled daughter she dotes on, Gabrielle, secretly asked me to find her biological father. It’s all too much, and I smell trouble, like a curdled Hollandaise sauce.
So when I wake in the morning, I never know what version of Irene to expect that day—the suave chef who can be charming, the petulant, spoiled diva, the clearly worried mother, or the woman with a thousand secrets. I am on edge most days, knowing trouble is simmering like a stew on the stove, and waiting for the pot to bubble over with some catastrophic event. Patrick tells me I’m imagining things, but I know better. Something is going wrong.
GIVEAWAY: Judy will give a print copy to the reader who responds with the best comment about the fun of cooking. Henny needs to be reminded it can be fun. Giveaway ends October 17, 2020 and is limited to U.S. residents. Good luck everyone!
Saving Irene is a culinary mystery, released September 16, 2020.
Irene Foxglove wishes she were a French chef. Henrietta “Henny” James, her assistant, knows she is nothing more than a small-time TV chef on a local Chicago channel. And yet when Irene is threatened, Henny tries desperately to save her, wishing always that “Madame” would tell her the truth–about her marriage, her spoiled daughter, her days in France, the man who threatens her. Henny’s best friend, the gay guy who lives next door, teases her, encourages her, and shares meals with her, even as she wishes for more. Murder, kidnapping, and some French gossip complicate this mystery, set in Chicago and redolent with the aroma of fine food.
About the author 
After an established, award-winning career writing historical fiction about women of the nineteenth-century American West, Judy Alter turned her attention to contemporary cozy mysteries and wrote three series: Kelly O’Connell Mysteries, Blue Plate Café Mysteries, and Oak Grove Mysteries. Saving Irene set in her hometown of Chicago, is a stand-alone, or maybe the first in a series. Who knows? Judy is an active member of Sisters in Crime, Guppies, Women Writing the West, and Story Circle Network. Retired from a career as director of a small academic press, she lives in a charming cottage in Fort Worth, Texas with her dog, Sophie.
All comments are welcomed.
I think it’s fun to tweak recipes–sometimes out of necessity if you don’t have one or more of the essential ingredients. Sometimes the result is surprisingly good. (But not always.)
My brother started having his grandson help him in the kitchen several years ago. The grandson is now 10 and can cook lunch for his grandmother by himself. I love going back and seeing the pictures of him standing on a stool and helping my brother cook.
Hi Henny, I know how hard it is to work with tempermental people. When I bake, I like to pre-measure the ingredients, like you do for Madame. I have music playing and enjoy the flow of whatever I’m baking. I usually go with chocolate. Back in the old days when small towns held radio auctions to raise money for charity or whatever, my Grandmother Hubbard told me she always made a chocolate cake. She always listened to the entire auction and learned anything involving chocolate brought more money. So my advice is to go with chocolate.
Sharon, I do a lot of tweaking because my tiny kitchen has only an induction hot plate and a toaster oven. I’ve found I can cook almost anything by adapting a recipe to those limitations. I even wrote a cookbook about it, Gourmet on a Hot Plate. Sandy G., starting kids in the kitchen early is the way to create lifetime cooks–my mom did that with me, and I’m eternally grateful. Yesterday my neighbor’s twelve-year-old made “crack chicken soup” (look it up–rich and delicious) and zucchini bread for here family of six! Yay for your brother.
Jackie, I so totally agree with you about chocolate. Come to think of it, there’s not a chocolate recipe in Saving Irene. I’ll have to fix that in the next book. Thanks for reminding me.
I have always found baking helps me deal with stress. I have included my daughters in the baking process and they really love it too. We tend to experiment with dairy free recipes as one of my girls is allergic to dairy and I am lactose intolerant . For the most part the baking goes well and tastes good. Other times there can be some mishaps in the kitchen where someone (I won’t name names) forgets to add an ingredient and remembers once the baking has already been placed in the oven and started,But still fun to spend time with each other.
When I was young my Bobbeh lived with us for 7 years. She was a very talented cook and baker who ruled the kitchen with an iron fist. I thought that this would give me the opportunity to learn from her except it never did happen. I admired her skill and tasty dishes and wonderful blintzes, stews, roly polys, mandelbroit and delicious feasts. I could never replicate these tempting dishes. She never had a trouble remembering what to add nor how much. Her method was a bissel of this and shit arin. Her method was successful, of course. I only learned from what I remembered since she never would teach me. I am basically now a cook with good skills but not as creative nor amazing as she was.
Anne, it’s too bad she wouldn’t teach you–some of those wonderful Jewish dishes seem to be disappearing, savored these days by only a few traditional families. On the other hand, I bet you’re more creative than you give yourself credit for.
You have to find the fun where you can. When I was little, I was helping my mom make Christmas cookies and making it “snow” by pushing flour off the table. Mom still tells that story every year with an eye roll and a laugh. Another time my sister dropped a whole carton of eggs on the floor. Despite this, we were still allowed in the kitchen and helped make things all the time. My grandma, who lived next door, would make my favorite bars if I came over and unwrapped the caramels (her arthritis made it difficult). I still find something as simple as unwrapping caramels to be fun.
I decided the computer did eat what i said earlier. I was praising your mom for patience and understanding. My mom also let me make a mess in the kitchen. As she explained once to someone, if she didn’t, I’d never learn to cook. I learned by cooking with her from the time I was quite young, and cooking has been my avocation all my life.
The best summer cooking at camp was the pineapple upside down cake baked in a cast iron dutch oven & a smallish wood fired burned down to coals. It required careful, occasional turning of the pot for even heat even with some coals on the concave lid. Delish!
Amy, pineapple upside-down cake is a childhood memory of mine, although my mom never made it over a campfire. Yum!
The best comment about the fun of cooking?
it’s great fun, exciting, challenging, and delicious…
Until it isn’t!
I love to cook. (I studied under the finest chef’s tv has to offer! ) Mostly this is because I want to enjoy the same foods as everyone else. So pork becomes veal or lamb depending on the dish. I once asked ATK if I could replace pork shoulder with something else. Their response was “we don’t test other meats.. So do it our way or don’t bother at all.
That got me going. My collection of cookbooks is quite eclectic also. From the 2nd ave Deli to The Ultimate Chinese and Asian Cookbook edited by Linda Doeser.
Ha! I studied under Guy Fieri, except sometimes I’m not sure I want what he’s serving Giada de Laurnetiis is more to my taste. Or Ina Garten–I love her scallop recipe. I lost a whole collection of cookbooks when a roof collapsed during a storm. Now i mostly use the internet–and some paper files I had accumulated What’s ATK?
America’s Test Kitchen.
I chuckled a bit to read about Madame. My mother-in-law (a Dane) studied French cooking while living in France and was a rather exacting woman. As the years advanced she was found to have dementia and my husband and I moved in to care for her. One of the first signs to people of her memory issue was that her cooking was far simpler than it had been. She had a particular palate and wished for her recipes to be used. Unfortunately, she had neglected to write down much in the recipes other than the ingredients and general/vague instructions since she had been so familiar with the steps and tricks to successfully making the dishes she had cooked in her heyday.
Needless to say that she was disappointed with the results when I tried to replicate her favorites. A measure of success came with me putting my own spin on things in regular dishes and specialty ones. Instead of her pate, I could bake chicken livers in a bit of white wine with diced onion and garnished with chopped parsley to serve with baguette. Or in place of her gingerbread men and gingerbread house, I could form gingerbread teddy bears (bits of dough rolled for nose and eyes) and a gingerbread log cabin with a thorough dusting of powdered sugar for snow. So long as the items did not look like her recipes, she could accept the difference in flavor.
Henny will likely find the fun of cooking again by cooking what she likes and how she likes when off-duty in her vintage apt!
Your mother-in-law in her prime could have been a model for Irene. That’s reassuring to me because sometimes I was afraid I’d drawn her with too broad strokes.
I had considered the situation similar to repeatedly performing the Technical challenge on The Great British Baking Show.
I think cooking is the most fun when you can do it with kids. Especially little kids. There are no worries about how appetizing (or not appetizing) it looks. It’s just about the process & learning & fun.
Some of my grandkids were interested in cooking as little ones, but then they went off in different directions. And two became vegetarian, which is hard for me–one permanently and one only temporarily, because she still ate pot roast and ribs!
Lily, you’re so right. I cook supper many weeknights, and always breathe a sigh of relief when my son-in-law takes over on weekends. He likes to experiment with Asian dishes, which are not my forte!
I enjoy cooking and it’s always fun when I make my own changes to the recipe and it turns out delicious. Looking forward to reading the book, I like reading books set in Chicago.
I enjoy cooking, especially baking, and learned from my mom, along with my sisters. My mother was one of those cooks who didn’t really follow a recipe, and didn’t really need one. She learned from my grandmother who had recipes that called for butter the size of an egg. My sister, on the other hand, is a very precise person. One year she tried to make an oatmeal cake with a broiled frosting, which sounded good. when we all bit into it, it was way too salty. She had used a quarter cup of salt rather than a quarter teaspoon. We all had a good laugh about that and from that day forward learned you can never be too careful when you read the recipe.
**** WINNER ****
Saving Irene is GB
Congratulations!
Thanks so much!