Today, I welcome Kathy L Wheeler to Food, Fiction, and Foolishness where she shares a delicious recipe just in time for July 4th celebrations! What’s more American than Apple Pie? For the fiction portion of the blog, Kathy’s sharing her Mail Order Bride Series. Check them out. They sound like a lot of fun, and who doesn’t like a good arranged marriage story!!

FOOD

Apple Pie
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
6 to 7 cups thinly sliced peeled tart apples
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Pastry for double-crust pie (9 inches)
1 tablespoon butter
1 large egg white
Additional sugar

Directions
• In a small bowl, combine the sugars, flour and spices; set aside. In a large bowl, toss apples with lemon juice. Add sugar mixture; toss to coat.
• Line a 9-in. pie plate with bottom crust; trim even with edge. Fill with apple mixture; dot with butter. Roll remaining crust to fit top of pie; place over filling. Trim, seal and flute edges. Cut slits in crust.
• Beat egg white until foamy; brush over crust. Sprinkle with sugar. Cover edges loosely with foil.
Bake at 375° for 25 minutes. Remove foil and bake until crust is golden brown and filling is bubbly, 20-25 minutes longer. Cool on a wire rack.

Kathy L Wheeler (a.k.a. Kae Elle Wheeler for her Cinderella Series) has a BA in Management Information Systems from the University of Central Oklahoma that includes over forty credit hours of vocal music. She was a computer programmer for the Hertz Corporation for over fifteen years and utilizes karaoke for her vocal music talents. Other passions include the NFL, the NBA, travel, musical theatre, painting, reading, and writing.
She is a member of several chapters of the Romance Writers of America: Greater Seattle chapter, Olympia and Eastside chapters, The Beau Monde Chapter and Hearts Through History.
Her main sources of inspiration come from mostly an over-active imagination. She currently resides in the Seattle area with her musically talented husband, Al, and their bossy cat, Carly, and sweet dog, Angel.

https://kathylwheeler.com
https://twitter.com/kathylwheeler
https://facebook.com/kathylwheeler
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https://instagram.com/kathylwheeler

FICTION

Mail Order Bride: The Counterfeit: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Q7P84ZB/

After a disastrous first marriage, Will Jeffers hasn’t the stomach for another emotionally entailed union. All he needs is a wife to cook, nurse his mother, and look after the homestead. But good women are few and far between in Colorado mining country. A mail order bride is the perfect solution.
Amelia Johannasen is running for her life. Her mother has decided it’s time her daughter joined the family business, shattering Amy’s dreams of marrying for love. Imagine her surprise when she is mistaken for Will Jeffers mail order bride.
With a head for numbers and talent for spinning tall-tales but no notion of how to cook or nurse a manipulative old woman how can she reach the heart of a man once burned so badly, he’s sworn off love?

Excerpt: Mail Order Bride: The Counterfeit

“I’m happy to see you made it safe, ma’am. I apologize for being late, but as I mentioned in my letters, my ma, well, with her sick and all. I figured we oughta to start back right after the ceremony.”
She froze still as a statue. “Ceremony?”
“Our nuptials. I’m afraid I can’t leave Ma alone for long. No tellin’ what kind of—” He chuckled, but even to his own ears it sounded forced. “We can, uh, talk about that later. Your nursin’ skills and all.”
Those lovely eyes blinked up at him. And once again, he found himself drowning in bewitching sensations.
She heaved in a deep breath and let it out slow. “We’re to be … m-married? Now?”
He hardened his tone. “Yes’m.” He had no time for cold feet or feminine hysterics. “It’s what we agreed on, ma’am.” He bit out the words, tamping down the surge of irritation…and something he couldn’t define. Panic, that she wouldn’t follow through? It was ridiculous, an outrageous thought. He shook it off and pressed on, determined to see his plans fulfilled. “Er, I don’t get to the Springs all that often. And there ain’t no preacher within twenty miles of Cripple Creek.”
Her plump lips turned down. The sight coiled his insides tighter than a rattler ready to strike. “Cripple Creek? That’s a long way, right?”
Was she trying to renege? He steeled his spine. He’d done wasted enough time and money getting’ her here. More than anything he wanted, no needed, to secure this marriage.
Something banded his chest, squeezing out every square inch of air, at the same time, softened him inside. Desire rippled through him. “I’m working the mines near there,” he said gently. “The homestead isn’t quite that far out.”
The small breath and small nod she gave, released his own held breath.
He cleared his throat. “Yeah, it’s a long way.”

Mail Order Bride: The Breakaway: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Q7R46CF/

Tragedy sent Sherman Elias McHuay west twelve years ago. But his troubled past barrels in like a runaway train or—more appropriately—smacks him over the head in the form of a violet-eyed miss without a lick of common sense to her name. If one could actually determine her name.
Amaris Johnston’s carefully laid plans to head west as a mail order bride ratchet up when an announcement for her impending nuptials to the son of a prominent US Senator are set to go public. Not that she’d agreed to marry in the first place. A forced engagement and her family—a conniving slew of ambitious and power-hungry tyrants—send her running for the Colorado hills.
Can a slow talking sheriff and a headstrong girl bent on recklessness outwit her powerful family?

Excerpt: Mail Order Bride: The Breakaway

“Who are you, Mari Jones?”
She didn’t disappoint, leaning into him and whispering, “Aw, Sheriff, you don’t really want to know.” He couldn’t tell if she was teasing him as an interminable silence blanketed them before she seemed to come to her senses. She squared her shoulders and stepped back, clinging to his damn cat. She turned her back to him, clearing her throat. “The truth is, Sheriff. I’m a mail order bride. Already bought and paid for,” she said primly.
The words didn’t penetrate until she was halfway down the path. An unexplained fury roared through him and he was on her, grasping her upper arms spinning her around. “The hell you are,” he bit out before he crashed his mouth over hers with an unleashed violence he hadn’t experienced since Johnston held his hand over fire coercing his promise to leave town.
The desire to invade this beauty’s mouth threatened his ability in remaining upright. Her shock softened into the sweetest response. It was life-changing, life-saving. How was it possible?
Comprehension ricocheted seeped through a veil of fog. A single searing bullet that imploded his chest. Innocent. She was an innocent and he was in the worst danger of violating her. He tore his mouth away with a sharpness that left him gasping for breath, his lungs burning with need. His scarred hand throbbed.
The only sound in the still night was the harsh intake of their breathing. Relief flooded him. He was not the only one affected. Her large purple eyes glowed like ice in the slivered moonlight.

FOOLISHNESS