ecosophia: (Default)
John Michael Greer ([personal profile] ecosophia) wrote2021-07-20 01:43 pm

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back To The Kitchen...

cookbookSince before the final volumes of The Weird of Hali saw print, I've had people asking me about the recipes for some of the dishes that are cooked and served by characters in the novels. (No, nobody's asked about Owen Merrill's cheap college meal of dollar store ramen, frozen vegetables, and a sliced hot dog, but that one's pretty self-explanatory.) One of the basic rules of the writing trade is that you pay attention to what your readers want to hear about, and so once the novels themselves were done, I considered the possibility of a cookbook. 

Fortunately I had help. Characters are a novelist's imaginary friends -- well, at least mine are -- and so it was the easiest thing in the world to hand over the project to Brecken Kendall, the protagonist of The Shoggoth Concerto and The Nyogtha Variations, who loves to cook when she's not pursuing her career as a composer of neo-Baroque music. She duly dictated a cookbook which contains most of the dishes featured in my tentacle novels, from cheese polenta all the way to exotica such as authentic pirate salmagundi (she got the recipe for that from Toby Gilman, of course). 

I should probably mention that all the recipes in this book are real, and none calls for ingredients you can't get this side of the plateau of Leng. Since Brecken and I share the conviction that food should be cheap, tasty, filling, and not especially complicated to make, this is also not the kind of cookbook that's meant to permit members of the overprivileged classes to show off how much money and leisure they have by wasting a lot of both turning out desperately precious yuppie chow. It's geared toward people (like Brecken, and in my younger days, me) who don't have a lot of money or a lot of time to spare, and still want to eat well. 

So if you're wondering what to feed the shoggoth who's unexpectedly shown up in your kitchenette, or simply want to have plenty of tasty meals to serve and eat while you're waiting for Great Cthulhu to rise from the sea, here you go.  The current release date is August 18, and you can order your copy in advance here
snaegl: (Default)

[personal profile] snaegl 2021-07-20 06:31 pm (UTC)(link)
I have a great weakness for fictional cookbooks...looking forward to this one! (Any chance octopus makes an appearance? Or would that be frowned upon given that the tentacled ones are the good guys?)

(Anonymous) 2021-07-20 07:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Great stuff! I was asking myself what pirate salmagundi might be since I read A Voyage to Hyperborea. Really looking forward to this one 🙂

Greetings,
Nachtgurke
ritaer: rare photo of me (Default)

Lovecraft

[personal profile] ritaer 2021-07-20 08:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Are you familiar with British writer Angela Carter's review of Lovecraft, "The Hidden Child"? It was originally published in _New Society_ in 1975 and reprinted in _Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings_ Penguin, 1977. She comments that in horror fiction of this type: "Evil _is_ . . . It is not what men _do_. Evil is an abstraction, something like mathematics. It may be studied in arcane law. It can concretize and become objective, like a theorem; then an unfortunate can accidently stumble on it." And, "Some of the consolatory quality of the tale of supernatural terror lies in this; that it removes evil from the realm of human practice and gives it the status of a visitation from another realm of being. It is an affliction It is a possession." She is also rather amusing on the resemblance between the squamous products of evil in Lovecraftian mythos and the products of male sexual excitement, referring to the old Dutch family in "The Lurking Fear" as having "reverted to their own seminal fluid in three generations." On the lack of truly erotic elements she remarks on the lack of nubile women and remarks: "Fond as he [Lovecraft] was of tentacles, he never--being a fine, old-fashioned, New England gentleman--allowed them to sully the flesh of a white woman."

Just happened across this and thought you and other readers might enjoy.

Rita

(Anonymous) 2021-07-21 12:24 am (UTC)(link)
This is hilarious!

-Dylan
claire_58: (Default)

What fun!

[personal profile] claire_58 2021-07-21 02:38 am (UTC)(link)
Please tell me it will be spiral bound!

(Anonymous) 2021-07-21 03:17 am (UTC)(link)
Does it contain any discussion of de-industrial cooking methods like woodfire or rocket stoves, hayboxes, and solar cookers?

(Anonymous) 2021-07-21 03:27 am (UTC)(link)
And the authorial credits on the cover are great :D

"Brecken Kendall... edited by John Michael Greer"

- Cicada Grove

(Anonymous) 2021-07-21 08:07 pm (UTC)(link)
That's a fantastic cover.

Jon

Owens Recipe

(Anonymous) 2021-07-22 10:46 am (UTC)(link)
Actually, every time I come across Owens ramen I remember that I should by decent soy-sauce again, having misplaced mine during a move.
I really hope it's got the sauces that the Innsmouth fishdishes are dipped in, these made me curious.
Btw: I really enjoyed how you tried to describe the insulting coffee in the barque with every time a new phrase!
Another btw: I'm hoping that the salmagundi has ginger, because the one and only time I went in a live roleplaying sailingtrip (lots of pirates and other half-squids) they had a curry with ginger as first meal because it's supposed to help with sea-sickness, which for me it did.

Emily07

[personal profile] lucywaters 2021-07-22 04:45 pm (UTC)(link)
So excited for this! I've been re-reading the series and just finished Nyoghtha Variations

(Anonymous) 2021-07-24 10:46 pm (UTC)(link)
Getting this for the cheese polenta alone! 😋

(Anonymous) 2021-08-22 09:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Hi JMG,

Any update on when this will ship?

Thanks for everything!