Food is such powerful medicine, even reading about it can be therapeutic. This benefit cookbook to help organizations providing meals for people with AIDS consists of recipes submitted by a host of lesbian and gay celebrities and authors. It's actually less cookbook than collection of often hilarious reminiscences about kitchen disasters, pets with eating disorders (don't miss Mabel Maney's "The trouble with Tippy"), and girlfriend-seducing apple pies. Some contributors don't put out--just the recipes, ma'am--but, thankfully, many write sensitively about the significance of a particular dish (e.g., Surina Kahn's Aoo Ghobi) or about the meaning of cooking in their lives. Dorothy Allison's Sinful Red Velvet Cake is a short story of its own. There are recipes and short writings here by Betty Dodson, RuPaul, Pat Califia, Jewelle Gomez, Kitty Tsui, Carol Queen, Pam Keesey (Lesbian Vampire Garlic Pasta with Fresh Herbs), and more.

Mailed to Nashua, New Hampshire, USA, for the "Boyz Boyz Boyz" BookRelay.

The book arrived safely in today's mail, and looks very entertaining; thanks much!

What a fabulous book! The list of contributors could have come directly from the spines of the books on my shelves - by the time I got to the third recipe I'd seen Paul Russell, Patricia Nell Warren, and Cecilia Tan - and the contents, whether in recipe form or as essays, commentary, or marginal nattering, are mouth-watering indeed... I found that I was tagging so many recipes as "must try this" that I figured I'd need a copy of my own, so I hunted one up via the ABEBooks link. I've already made a couple of these recipes, including a wonderful - and very simple - winter squash soup, recipe from Gavin Geoffrey Dillard (the recipe says "serves six small queens, or two really big and hairy ones" {grin}). And last night I had the pleasure of reading one of Stephen Saylor's "Gordianus the Finder" novels while munching happily on Saylor's recipe for Cranberry-Walnut pie (rather like a pecan pie but with - duh - cranberries and walnuts instead; yum!).

The recipes range far and wide; some, as the submitters admit, are taken directly from other cookbooks, while others are clearly the authors' own work. Most are within the reach of the average cook [says an average cook]; a few lean towards the gourmet, and some are well towards the other side of the scale, like Matthew Rettenmund's "Amazing Coconut Pie" recipe (which features a large helping of Bisquick and is, I believe, taken from the back of the Bisquick box). [Rettenmund says, "Everything tastes better with Bisquick. If they made Bisquick popsicles, I'd probably try them." As one who's been known to stir up some Bisquick biscuit batter and eat it with a spoon, I know what he means. And that coconut pie is really pretty good.]

Even farther from culinary excellence are the "recipes" submitted by Geoff Ryman, one of which requires a dusty old kitchen floor that's just had its linoleum stripped off, as the dish receives its flavor from being dropped onto such a floor and hastily scooped back into the serving dish. "God only knows why, but the taste of really old dust soaked in timber really added something quite unrepeatable to the culinary effect. It was truly delicious, and everyone wanted to know what the secret ingredient was." Well, now they do!

Oh, and here's one for our favorite Catalan playwrite, YagoBCN, contributed by poet Thom Gunn:

This is so easy that you can make it even if you think you are too macho to cook. It is from Catalonia, and would be perfect to attract that Catalan highway patrolman you have been after for so long.
Tomato Bread
Take a slice of French bread (batard not baguette), brush it with olive oil and put it in the oven until it is toasted a bit. Then cut open a ripe tomato, and rub half of it over the slice. Keep the ruined half-tomato for a spaghetti sauce the next day, and serve the Tomato Bread on the toe of one of your boots. Balance with a line of your favorite aphrodisiac on your other boot-toe, and you have Felipe just where you want him.
Sprinkle a bit of salt on the Tomato Bread, if you can manage it.

There's a lot more - this is one of those books where nearly every page has something I want to quote - but I'd better stop before I transcribe the whole thing. Between recipes to try and new books to hunt up [there were a few here that I hadn't heard of!], this book's a great resource, and an entertaining read in its own right. [Side note: the book was published to benefit a group of organizations that provide meals for people with AIDS, with part of the purchase price going to those organizations. Since the book's out of print now, buying used copies - and sharing BookCrossing copies - doesn't directly benefit those groups, so if you enjoy this book I'd encourage you to consider making a little donation to the organization of your choice...]

Thanks for sharing this one, editorgrrl!

I'm sending this out on a bookring. Bookray/ring instructions:

When you receive the book, please journal it, and PM the next person in line for their address so you'll have it ready when you've finished the book.

Note: even if you've sent books to that person before, please PM them before mailing this one, to confirm that the address is correct and that they're able to take on a bookring book at this time.

Try and read the book promptly - ideally, within a month of receiving it. (If you expect to take longer, you can request to be put at the end of the list. If you find you're swamped with other books when the person before you contacts you about the bookring, you can ask to be skipped, and then let me know whether you'd like to be moved down the list or dropped entirely. If you receive the book and find it's taking longer than you'd planned to get through it, I'd appreciate an update in its journal entries or on your profile, just to let me and the other participants know you haven't forgotten it.)

When you're ready to pass the book along, please make another journal entry containing your comments about the book and stating where you've sent it, and set the book's status code to "traveling". [If you find that you're having problems contacting the next person in line, or don't think you can manage to mail the book as originally agreed, please let me know; I'll be glad to try to work something out.]

***

Participants, in mailing order:

Kyrissaean [NH]
therubycanary [TN]
luv2sewtjr [PA]
Wirigerie [Australia]
florafloraflora [DC]
...

...and back to GoryDetails [NH].

Controlled release:

The book's in its way to BCer Kyrissaean in New Hampshire, to kick off the bookring. Hope you enjoy it!

It's here! And a quick flip-through shows that this is one of those cookbooks that's both for for cooking and for reading. I've already got my eyes on several soup recipes--which is perfect given the chilly, gusty, rainy weather of the last few days, with rain that splatters suspiciously like freezing slush instead water!

I just realized I'm coming awfully close to book-hoarding. I'd better get this baby in the mail!

This is a great book! I really hope it made a lot of money for AIDS charities. They did a great job with it, so it should have. A cookbook makes a perfect fundraiser for homebound meal providers--now they're providing meals in order to provide more meals!

Anyway, this was a lot of fun to read, and I loved seeing familiar names too! I found myself just reading straight through this like I would a novel, so when I came upon someone I recognized it was a fun surprise. So obviously I enjoyed the essays! Only after I finished reading did I go back and think more about trying recipes. I tried the squash soup Gorydetails noted in the book (how could I not, having the book for November?), and I'd second her recommendation. I also made Laura Antoniou's tomato sauce sans the optional meat, and it's very good. Surina Kahn's aloo ghobi recipe was a surprising hit at our house--I was guessing I'd like it, but everybody else did too! It's very mildly flavored, by the way, in spite of what you might guess from the spices in the ingredients list. I've copied down the recipe, and next time I make it I'll take her suggestion about increasing the spices a bit. I was a bit worried that the chili powder would be weird in it (or that there was some other kind of chili powder I'd missed, or even worse--that it might be another way of saying cayenne pepper... A whole teaspoon of cayenne pepper in a recipe--yikes!), but the flavors worked really well. But if you decide to try it, be warned that it really does take almost 2 hours on the stove! It's more babysitting the pot than work, but don't start it when you're starving!

I've copied down a few recipes I haven't had a chance to try yet, too, including that cranberry nut pie. I get conned into baking pies every year for a local fundraiser, and not only does that sound really tasty, but I just can't resist the idea of using a recipe from a fundraising book to raise funds for other charities as well!

This book would make a great gift. A little hard to find now that it's out of print, but it's just the sort of book that's always a hoot to look through.

Thanks so much for including me in this ring! I'll get the book off to therubycanary a.s.a.p.!

Heading out to Tennessee this morning!

This looks great! I've been lost without my cookbooks since I've moved and haven't been able to ship my books down yet. Fun, food, and charity all in the same book!

I'm almost finished with this book, and am loving it. I particularly liked Betty Dodsen's comment that "Peole who complain that I smell like garlic are emotional vampires who believe in true love and going steady forever. Garlic mud protects me from them."

I really enjoyed reading the stories that went along with these recipes. Unfotunatly I live in cheap apartment with no kitchen. ( I have an electric skillet and a microwave), so many of these baking or pot roast type things that look great are out of my reach now. I did copy down many of the recipes to try though.

Happy eating!

I just got this and it looks great! Thanks for including me in this ring. I'll read, jot recipes and move along ASAP!

This was a pretty good book. I loved reading the "dish" more than the recipes. :) I am jotting down the Pecan Pie recipe since I'm married to a man who loves it. I'm always looking for a better recipe.

This is heading off to Australia today.

Thanks for starting this ring.

Arrived in the mail this morning.

Looks great. With recipes like Suduction Salad and Anti-Vampire Garlic Pasta I'm not sure which will be more fun... the recipes or the little blurbs about each author.

This was a really fun book.

I loved reading about the "cooks" lives and why they'd chosen that particular recipe.

I also liked the tiny blurb on other things they'd written.

Thanks so much for the chance to read this book. I'd never have had the opportunity if it wasn't for Gory Details and BC.

Posted to FloraFloraFlora this arvo.

This book has just arrived all the way from Australia--thanks, everybody who has contributed to sending it my way. I tore right into the middle of the book and at the rate I'm going I'll have the whole thing read by tomorrow morning.

Highlights so far: Pat Califia's Politically Incorrect Pot Roast, a scrumptious-looking Aloo Gobi, Dorothy Allison's Sinful Red Velvet Cake ("The approved red food coloring has been altered by the FDA to be much less deadly, and equally less effective. For the genuine lurid red dye color, you have to go back to that semi-poisonous old food coloring that only ancient grocery stores or foreign manufacturers will provide."). I've always loved Mabel Maney's Nancy Clue/Cherry Aimless mysteries, and now I also know she is one foxy lady, and that she once had a dog named Tippy. I can't wait to make Steven Saylor's Cranberry-Walnut Pie, and Matthew Rettenmund's Coconut Bisquick Pie looks good too.

I'm FINALLY finished browsing through this book. I've copied all the recipes I can't stand to be without, and I've made a donation to my local organization that provides meals to people with HIV, AIDS, and other illnesses. Thanks once again, GoryDetails, for sharing this book. I'm dropping it in the mail today, complete with a cool postcard from Wirigerie.

Food for Live made it home safely - thanks to everyone who participated in the bookring! [Widgerie's postcard is very cute - an outline of Australia superimposed over the US. The sizes compare very closely, and there are some amusing juxtapositions of cities: Denver is suspiciously close to Ayers Rock, and New Orleans lies between Adelaide and Melbourne...]

RELEASE NOTES:

Paid my first visit to Fire Island with my friend Mike, and after having a very enjoyable lunch with some of his friends at the Island Breeze in Cherry Grove, I left this book propped on the steps outside. Hope the finder enjoys it!