Peg Cochran | Hobbies and Why I Took Up Writing

I’ve never really had a hobby. My grandmother was an accomplished
needlewoman (would
needleperson be more politically correct?), but I never got the hang of
crocheting or
knitting or embroidery. I don’t scrapbook. As a matter of fact, I haven’t
put any
pictures in albums since around 1985 (the rest are in those photo boxes you
can buy
in Hobby Lobby.) I don’t collect things—unless books count…

The one thing I have always liked to do is cook (it followed naturally on the heels of my liking to eat…) And write. So far I have managed to combine my two loves— cooking and writing—in two of my series. Gigi from my Gourmet De- Lite series prepares diet gourmet meals for her clients. In my Cranberry Cove series, Monica makes all the baked goods she and her brother sell at Sassamanash Farm. Both series include recipes. Even in my Lucille series, food comes into play as Lucille is forever cooking for her family.

The stove and I were relative strangers until I got married at 21, and my
husband and
I had to feed ourselves not being able to afford take-out every night. I
started
with a “Make it Now, Bake it Later” Cookbook. We discovered one casserole
we really
liked (now that I think about it…ugh! Canned tomato sauce, cheddar cheese,
pasta and
creamed corn) so we decided to try another one. Well, with the experience I
now have
under my belt, I would know better but back then the fact that the recipe
called for
several slices of WHITE bread and several cans of those teeny tiny shrimp
didn’t set
off any alarm bells. It should have. Moral of the story: always keep a
frozen
pizza on hand for culinary disasters.

Then I discovered Julia Child—her show and her cookbooks. Her recipes are
pages and
pages long, but they are a textbook on how to cook. I started with the
simplest
dishes (hard boiled eggs anyone?) and worked my way up to actually boning a
whole
chicken, combining the chopped meat with other ingredients and stuffing it
all back
into the chicken skin for a really wow dish.

Now that I’m writing along with a full-time job I don’t have as much time to
play in
the kitchen. But thanks to so many years spent learning the basics, I can
chop an
onion in no time, whip up a sauce without having it separate and know at a
glance
whether a recipe is going to be a winner or a big yuck!

What are your hobbies?

About Peg Cochran

Peg Cochran grew up in a New Jersey suburb about 25 miles outside of New York City. After college, she moved to the City where she managed an art gallery owned by the son of the artist Henri Matisse. When her first daughter, Francesca, arrived, the new family moved back to the New Jersey suburbs where her second daughter, Annabelle, was born.

After her husband died, Peg remarried and her new husband took a job in
Grand Rapids,
MI where they now live (on exile from NJ, she likes to joke). Peg managed to
segue
from the art world to marketing and is now the manager of marketing
communications
for a company that provides services to seniors.

Her greatest love though has always been writing-particularly mysteries! She
has two
cozy mystery series debuting from Berkley Prime Crime-the Gourmet De-Lite
series set
in Connecticut and featuring Gigi Fitzgerald who provides gourmet diet meals
to a
select group of clients, and the Sweet Nothings Vintage Lingerie series,
written as
Meg London, set in Paris, TN with Emma Taylor who finds murder and mayhem in
this
quiet country town.

As for pets - she has a schizophrenic cat (really) named Frazzle and a
Westhighland
White Terrier, Reggie, who is desperately in need of losing a few pounds.
But you
know what they say: If your dog is overweight, it means YOU aren't getting
enough
exercise!

When she's not writing, Peg can usually be found cooking, which she loves.
When asked
to bring a dish to a potluck she invariably opts to bring dessert - partly
because
she loves making sweet dishes and partly because she and her husband always
manage to
be late so there's no point in putting them in charge of the appetizer

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About BERRIED SERCRETS

It’s cranberry picking time—in an all-new mystery series from the national bestselling author of the Gourmet De-Lite Mysteries…

When Monica Albertson comes to Cranberry Cove—a charming town on the eastern
shore of
Lake Michigan—to help her half-brother Jeff on his cranberry farm, the last
thing she
expects to harvest is a dead body.

It seems that Sam Culbert, who ran the farm while Jeff was deployed overseas, had some juicy secrets that soon prove fatal, and Jeff is ripe for the picking as a prime suspect. Forming an uneasy alliance with her high-maintenance stepmother, Monica has her hands full trying to save the farm while searching for a killer. Culbert made plenty of enemies in the quaint small town…but which one was desperate enough to kill?