Guest post – Pork Chopped to Death – Jodi Rath

Surf’s Up, Dude! Hoisin and Boyzin!

One of the things I love most about The Cast Iron Skillet Mystery Series is that I get to write many diverse characters into the village of Leavensport. I was a high school English teacher for over twenty-four years, and over that period of time, I’ve worked with students from all walks of life.

As a teacher—or I should say a good or great teacher—there is no such thing as class lines, racism, gender bias, or being concerned about a religion your students do or don’t believe. A great teacher is solely an advocate for every single one of their students—it’s our job to educate everyone equally.

It’s necessary for me to explain that first to allow me to say that I’m incredibly fortunate that most of my previous students from the districts are now my friends and readers of this series. It’s because of them that I want as many cultures, races, and class levels represented in the series as possible.

With the Pandemic, one thing that really bothered me was all the anti-Asian hate speech and bullying that blew up. For that reason, and thinking about some of my Asian students over the last two decades, I wanted to include a new character in Leavensport.

Pork Chopped to Death introduces a new character to Leavensport, Ohio. Ryder Chen is from Beijing, and he is definitely a character. A bit suspicious at first, but throughout the book, Jolie, as well as the reader, will find out a bit more about him.

It was fun creating the character of Ryder as it allowed me to do a deep dive into some topics like where he’s from, Beijing, China. I got to do some research on surfing—seeing that Ryder is a surfer and uses the lingo regularly.

One of my Asian students gave me a recipe about a decade ago for Hoisin pork that I’ve taken to making regularly. She was the inspiration for Ryder’s Hoisin pork dish and the main recipe I’ll share in the book! Trust me when I tell you this dish is delicious and doing the meat in a cast-iron skillet takes the dish to a whole new level—I know that to be true as my previous student, Patch, was tickled to death to hear I remembered and had been using this recipe she gave me for so long and now I tried it in cast iron. Patch is the one who said the cast iron makes the pork three times better! Woo-HOO!

Look for more Ryder Chen appearances as the series continues!

Welcome to Leavensport, Ohio, where DEATH takes a DELICIOUS turn!

Learn more about Jodi Rath and Pork Chopped to Death at www.jodirath.com/. Want more author news? If so, click here to read more Behind the Story interviews from your favorite authors.

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