Quirky Cookbooks

This episode is extremely late, I know. The first part was recorded about 2 months ago when the sun was still, in fact, in Leo (just barely), but the second part not until the sun was almost out of Virgo. So, whoops. But it was time for the annual rites of summer, i.e. moving to a new house, so that kind of threw things off schedule.

Anyway, it's a really good salad. Not quite as good as the salad I created by misremembering and mashing up two recipes, but still good. I ate it for breakfast.

This is a recipe for escargots cooked in red wine that was chosen by my son - I asked him to pick a recipe for this episode since he's a Cancer and I was going to make this for his birthday, but I'm actually a day late. In case you are wondering where to get escargots, I have no idea where to get fresh ones (unless you want to go out in the garden and pick them off your tomato plants, but I have no garden and anyway I'm not that brave), but the best price on canned ones by far is at Walmart. They actually sell them in the stores, too, though you'd better check the stock first. If you're wishing to purchase them at the New Berlin, WI Walmart you'll be out of luck unless they've got in a new shipment since last week, but since they maybe only sell a few cans a year, it's possible they haven't since I bought the last two. Who knows, though, it was right before Bastille Day, so maybe everyone was making them to celebrate. But then again, it's New Berlin, not New Paris or even New Alsace-Lorraine, so I kind of doubt it. 

No, Bing's last name isn't Crosby, and he's no crooner. He's just some kibbitzing dead son of a butcher who thinks he knows how everyone else should cook steak. He's a bit heavy-handed with the salt, is what I think. Perhaps that's what killed him. 

The Gemini chapter of Cooking With Astrology turned out to be full of all kinds of weirdness. The recipe I ultimately ended up choosing wasn't too exciting, but it was...okay. A ringing endorsement for the Gemini menus. Sorry, Geminis, you deserved better at the hands of long-ago celeb chef Mike Roy.

This is chapter (and episode) two of the WWF cookbook Can You Take the Heat? I meant to air this in time for Money in the Bank, but I'm a week late and a Million Dollar Man short. Not that this book actually has any recipes from Ted DiBiase, since I guess if you've got the money, money, money, money, money you pay somebody else to cook.

Anyway, in this episode we make J.R.'s Spicy Pork Stew which isn't all that spicy but it is really good. And I forgot to record the final bit of the preparation process where I add the beans, but in case anyone's in suspense, I added them, all was well, and the stew tasted even better the next day. And the day after. It lasted maybe 3 days in all, with 2.5 lbs. of meat and 2 cans of beans.

Today, on a very special episode of Quirky Cookbooks, we celebrate a very obscure holiday indeed, currently being observed by one person and two dogs in a tiny enclave in primitive Milwaukee, Wisconsin...my birthday! Yes, I'm a Taurus, and in this month's episode of Cooking With Astrology I make myself a (sort of) birthday cake. A deconstructed one. Very futuristic for a 60's cookbook, but it was simple, easy, and delicious - and butt ugly. Luckily this is audio, not video. 

This recipe is another one that's from something that's not exactly a cookbook, but it is from a comic book (okay, graphic novel if you prefer, but I do not prefer, since I love non-superhero comic books but have always found the term "graphic novel" to be a bit pretentious) that is fully 1/3 recipes. The book is called Tiki Surf Witches Want Blood and this is NOT an affiliate link, I don't get a dime if you click on it and buy the ebook. I did, though, since it was totally worth $2 for the recipes alone, but the story was fun, too. And the drink was amazing. I kept making it again and again until I ran out of ingredients.

And now for something completely different: Parsley Does Thyme is the third book in a series by author Linda Olle (originally from Racine, WI, but long a resident of NYC's Upper East Side). The books on this series are novel/cookbook hybrids about a woman who is, or was, a food writer (as am I! just not the kind who can afford even 1/10th of UES rent), and in this book she goes to prison and spends her entire 5-month stretch collecting recipes from her fellow inmates. Hardly any of the recipes are ones that could be cooked in an actual prison, especially not the one I cook (well, assemble, since no actual cooking is involved) in this episode. But if you want some more plausible prison recipes, I write about those here: https://www.mashed.com/197721/prison-food-that-youll-actually-want-to-try/

What I do not mention in the above article (since the websites I write for do not do first person) is that I did spend a year working in a prison, a private, federally-contracted men's prison in New Mexico, so I do have a good idea of just what is (and isn't) available in the commissary or can be smuggled out of the chow hall. (You don't even want to know how they get around pat-downs - I didn't have to do these as a case manager, but I did have to shake down cells pretty frequently, and for some reason, I was always the one to discover the, er, altered undergarments used for smuggling purposes. Adds a more literal meaning to the term "banana hammock," let's just say.)

The other books in the Upper East Side Cookbook series are not available through Kindle Unlimited (as this one was), and I do not feel like buying them, so this is probably a one-shot, but it was definitely quirky and more or less a cookbook, so I wanted to share it in a mini-episode featuring about 30 seconds of actual food prep.

This is another special episode, in honor of Wrestlemania 36, the only sports event of spring 2020. It's kind of weird with no audience, although this audience-free format did allow for that OTT Boneyard Match, which was basically like the fight scene from a martial arts movie only with wrestling instead of karate, also it was a horror movie. But that battle of the generations thing where the old guy wins - yes, that's sure to appeal to those of us in the same cohort - Deadman as GenX hero (though AJ Styles is actually GenX as well, he's a bit too old to be a millennial, he's just acting the young brat).

Anyway, this cookbook is actually pre-WWE, it was published in 2000 is subtitled The WWF is Cooking! And yes, in later chapters we may well be able to smell (virtually, at least) what The Rock is cooking - or not, since if his recipes are gross, I'm not making them. In this episode, I start off with the Opening Match/Appetizers chapter, since I want TV food for this night's Wrestlemania Part II where I am hoping to see Drew McIntyre take out Brock Lesnar and Bray Wyatt surprise John Cena.

In this episode, I finally get around to cooking a recipe for Aries - Shrimp Maison, which is shrimp sauteed in butter, wine and cream. I finally get to use a shallot I've had lying around for a month or so (not really sure why I bought it in the first place), and I face nothing more dangerous than a shortage of butter. Although, seriously, all the stores are sold out of butter. (In the Dairy State, no less! A travesty, I tell you.) I guess this is a silly thing to get annoyed over under current circumstances, but still. Getting annoyed (and parenthetical asides) is (are) what I'm best at. (Cooking, not always so much, but I do try. And the shrimp came out really, really good. Although they could have used a touch more butter.)