Book Cooking 2012

I have an idea.

A wonderful, terrible idea.

And I need your help.

That's right, YOU! Now pay attention.

For some bizarre reason that I'm not even going to begin to try making sense of, I love to bake in the summer. When the weather is 90 degrees and up, and the only air conditioning in my house is the overhead fan and a breeze through the open porch door, I love to crank up the oven and bake delicious sugary treats and taunt my friends with. And this year, I already know which recipes I want to experiment with.


For my birthday, I got a copy of The Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook. It looks fantastic and I've been squealing over recipes for Annie and Finnick's wedding cake and Katniss' chesse biscuits for weeks now. In my haze of culinary nerdiness I got to thinking; why don't I bake things from a bunch of different fandoms?

I mean, why not? I could make lembas bread from Lord of the Rings or pretty much anything from Harry Potter (except fire whiskey because I think I need a magical still for that). There are Cult Smoothies from Going Bovine. Brian Jacques' Redwall series regularly made my mouth water as a preteen and I fondly remember goofing off with Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes in grade school. Plus, I just took a quick look around Goodreads and discovered a plethora of fiction-inspired cookbooks.

My wonderful, terrible, and fattening idea has book-accomplices.

This summer, I want to start a blogging series where myself and (hopefully!) others will bake/cook/assemble recipes inspired by some of our favorite books. I need help, though, hence the hope for other participants. While I'd love nothing more than to spend my summer baking, I really doubt my boss is going to give me paid leave to indulge my inner geek, even if I offered to share the fruits of my labor with her. Plus, I need that paycheck to get ingredients with. A catch-22, that is.

The tentative plan is to get people signed-up to bake something and help them schedule when their post is due to go up. Ideally, this would be a weekly feature, traveling around a whole slew of blogs, but if only 2 or 3 people join my madness, well, we'll improvise something else.

Rules More Like Guidelines

• I don't care if people cook things from the same book or series, but I would like to get as much diversity in sources as possible. Diversity is the spice of life, you know, and spices are delicious.
• Give credit to the source so readers can look at what else they have to offer.
• If you don't want to post the full recipe, please give readers an outline of what was involved in the process and what the difficulty was in your opinion.
• Pictures or it didn't happen! ;)

 Please comment below or email me if you want to participate or have any questions. Spread the word! Summer 2012 shall be the summer of book cooking!

October Horrorscopes

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

You’ve been diagnosed with a terminal illness. We recommend moving to Libya. They seem to treat the dying very well.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Your significant other is really a werewolf. Haven’t you noticed how much they like that new Shakira song?

Aries (March 20 – April 19)

The stars advise you to share that sandwich with me. Seriously.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Someday, the world will realize your genius and bestow upon you all the fame and adoration which you deserve. That day is not today. Tomorrow doesn’t look too good either.

Gemini (May 21 – June 21)

Your quest for a meaningful relationship will once again be thwarted by your early onset balding. The stars advise you to start investing in Rogaine.

Cancer (June 22 – July 22)

Dropping out of school and quitting your job to become a professional, full-time World of Warcraft player will not bring you the accolades and glory you seek. However, it WILL bring you a lifetime of Meals on Wheels donations and a listing on dontdatehimgirl.com.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

The cosmos demands you bring it a shrubbery!

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)

HA! Your Twilight addiction has gotten the best of you. Instead of writing that essay question about Aristotle and his ‘forms,’ you wrote about the vampire wars of the south. The stars guarantee that your professor will not be amused.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

DON’T EAT THE MUFFINS!

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

The stars say you do NOT want to go to that Halloween party down the street. But if you do go, you should NOT tell those guys from one of the UMCP fraternities that your sign is Scorpio not matter how often they ask or how cute they are. But if you do, you should NOT drink the punch. But if you do, you should NOT go with your friends to that tattoo parlor behind the Krispy Kreme. But if you do, do NOT get in the chair. But if you do, you should avoid wearing a thong ever again, because if anyone ever sees that tattoo on your left butt cheek of the scorpion playing a banjo with Mickey Mouse ears on, you will never, EVER live it down.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Your charming personality and dazzling wit will win the respect and friendship of many. Your constant mooching and free-loading at lunch will lose them.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

You had the opportunity to take over the world this month, but you got distracted by Mafia Wars on Facebook.