Product DescriptionCub reporter Emerald Malloy is assigned to gather “church food” recipes from the owner of Hot Dish Heaven, a café in a small town in the Red River Valley. Upon her arrival, she learns of a local unsolved murder. Confident that solving the case will catapult her from newspaper “gopher” to investigative reporter, she questions the locals while attending a benefit dinner-dance at the VFW. By the end of the night, she’s consumed lots of hot dish and bars while talking to everyone from the Irish-Catholic priest who lives among these Scandinavian Lutheran farmers to the café owner’s eccentric aunts. She also meets a hunky deputy sheriff and learns some tough lessons about herself. But the question remains, will she live long enough for any of it to matter?

Reporter Emerald Malloy returns to Minnesota's Red River Valley to gather more recipes for an encore feature the Minneapolis newspaper plans to run on rural cooking. This time around, Margie Johnson, the owner of Hot Dish Heaven, the local cafe, surprises her with unusual recipes, including Sauerkraut Hot Dish, explaining that man cannot live on Tuna Noodle Hot Dish alone. While intrigued by Margie's efforts to expand her "culinary horizons," Emerald has no interest in looking into the murder of a farmhand whose body is found at a local sugar beet piler. Instead, her plans focus on getting more "intimately" acquainted with Randy Ryden, the deputy she met when last in town. Those plans change, however, when someone close to Margie is arrested for the crime, and Emerald and friends must investigate their way through a blizzard, a fish fry, and a whole lot more to discover the real killer.