Cooking With Author Lisa Lickel

Today we welcome Lisa Lickel to the Patchwork Quilt blog! Lisa has a recipe and a new romantic suspense for us. Read on.

Lisa says: While Lily and Cam in UnderStory and UnderCut are busy professionals raising Lily’s ten-year-old nephew and don’t take as much time as they’d like for cooking, Cam’s sister Georgia is a great cook. Here is her Avocado Taco Boats.

Avocado Taco Boats

Makes 10 halves

Ingredients

5 ripened avocados, halved, pitted

1 can, 15-0z black beans or mixed cilantro lime black beans

1 can 15-0z corn or mixed red pepper mixed white and yellow corn

Small can of green chilis, or one small fresh, chopped finely

1 small onion, chopped

1/3 cup or more chopped fresh cilantro, divided

1 and 1/2 cup shredded smoked turkey

1 and 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese, divided

4 T taco seasoning

*Fresh tomato salsa or 1 c. of your favorite brand

To make fresh salsa, the simplest recipe is chop one tomato, add 1T each, according to taste, finely chopped onion, finely chopped pepper, chopped cilantro, lime juice. Add a pinch of salt if desired.

Directions

Prepare a 9 by 12 baking dish, grease bottom or spread foil; preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Partially scoop the avocado halves; place halves face up in baking dish, mash scooped pulp and set aside in a medium bowl. In a large pan, sauté onion (add oil if not using a nonstick pan) until wilted, add beans, corn, and about 2/3 of the green chilis. Add the turkey and seasoning, stir until well combined and warm through. Remove from heat.

Mix remaining mashed avocado, remaining chilis, salsa and 1 cup of cheese.

Divide the meat filling among the avocado shells and top with avocado-salsa-cheese mixture.

Bake uncovered 25 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle with remaining cheese and return to oven until the cheese is melted.

Serve with sour cream, chips, and more salsa if desired.

About the Book

Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. Psalm 139:16 (ESV)

When you are loved, you have everything to lose . . .

Lily Masters was born with a deformity that shaped her life. When she, white and rural-raised, and Cam Taylor, a biracial army medic and literary professor who left his work under a cloud of suspicion, meet, fall in love, and get engaged, Lily decides it’s time to take control of her body in order to feel whole. She schedules plastic reconstructive surgery in Texas and leaves Cam and her nephew Kenny, also of mixed heritage, who they’re planning to adopt, back home in Wisconsin to wait.

The nightmare begins when Cam can’t get a response about Lily’s condition from the hospital and both his friend Matt the newspaper editor and his sister Georgia send him a horrifying news story about murder and mayhem at the Southern Shore Medical Center in Houston where Lily is supposedly under the knife.

But whose knife? A terrifying ring of human organ black marketers harvest organs from unwilling victims to meet the demand for transplants as the procedures become less risky and the race to create engineered organs fails.

In Lily’s case, she’s not only the victim of black marketers, she’s a target for revenge. The international terrorist family, the Limms, want payback for the loss of a favored son when Lily helped expose their international sex-trafficking operation. She undergoes reconstructive surgery but wakes without kidneys.

“You’ll never see the face of your lover again,” Old Man Limm promises. “And your body will slowly rot in its own poison.” As their friends and family gather around them, Cam and Lily wonder about their future together and whether being whole is a solitary or communal endeavor.

About the Author

Lisa Lickel is a Wisconsin author of inspiring fiction who loves books, collects dragons, and travels. She writes novels, short stories, feature articles, and radio theater, and loves to encourage authors through mentoring, coaching, and leading workshops. Lisa is a member of the Wisconsin Writers Association, the Chicago Writers Association, and instructor for Novel-In-Progress Bookcamp and Writing Retreat, Inc. She is an avid book reviewer and blogger, and a freelance editor. Find more at www.LisaLickel.com.

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