Two Cookbooks To Make Your Food More Dramatic
I have no idea if these books were approved by the musicians in question, but this is too good to ignore. Microcosm Publishing has published two cookbooks, ‘Comfort Eating With Nick Cave: Vegan Recipes To Get Deep Inside of You’ and ‘Defensive Eating With Morrissey: Vegan Recipes From The One You Left Behind’ by Joshua Ploeg and Automne Zingg… and the titles are already telling a whole story.
‘Poor Morrissey. He’s just so… so… hungry,’ wrote the authors as a preface for the Morrissey book. ‘And meat is murder, so that narrows his options by a lot. Until now, at least! With the arrival of the Defensive Eating with Morrissey cookbook, our dear Moz no longer needs to suffer such terrible hunger, such ruthless indecision, or the emotional impact of a major blood sugar crash at the worst possible moment. These 50+ recipes, each accompanied by a portrait of himself eating, make enough unbelievably delicious, poetic food for him to eat his fill and have plenty left over for later. Sweetness, he’s even saved enough for you.’
As for the Nick Cave book, the introduction is equally tasty: ‘Poor Nick Cave. Life is hard for him and there are many hurdles to deal with every day. And like all of us, Nick is human. In these pages, Mr. Cave finds healthy ways to feed his sorrows, with gusto, whether he’s eating a giant bowl of mashed potatoes, a tofu dog, peanut butter from the jar, spicy potato chips, or licking the frosting bowl. “Get inside of me,” he passionately tells a slice of pizza. And when you are ready to enter his psyche, there’s Nick’s favorite Rice Krispies Treats recipe to get inside of you, including, of course, “twelve tears for flavor.” No matter what he’s chowing down on, it’s comforting to witness Nick and his comforts. We all know someone who needs the comforts of Nick Cave as much as they need Comfort Eating with Nick Cave. So the next time they are sobbing to Dumb and Dumber or Scream 2 with a container of chocolate chip cookie dough soy ice cream in their lap, hand them a copy of this cookbook and we’ll all shed a tear together.’
The recipes are by Joshua Ploeg, a vegan personal chef/caterer, writer and punk musician, and the illustrations by Automne Zingg, a writer, illustrator, musician, and video artist based in Brooklyn, NY.
I haven’t had the chance to look at the books, but from what I could read on the internet, both of them feature 50 portraits of the artists soothing themselves with delicious, comforting meals, and each recipe is written with wit and accompanied by a humorous illustration. The whole thing is also infused with lyrics… The Morrissey cookies? ‘Cool on a wire rack before eating and don’t loose faith (you know it’s gonna happen someday)’
And of course all the recipes are vegan… Is Nick Cave vegan? I have never heard of this, but the authors understand that food and music can have the same function, these two things can be very comforting and that’s why Zingg began imagining these two bigger-than-life artists eating stuff ‘drawing these two sophisticated men doing something as intimate as eating was an extension of my interest in making mundane things seem dramatic’ she said in an interview
Music and food, two of the most reliable things when nobody loves you and your world is falling apart, this is why you need to get these recipes while listening to ‘Meat is Murder’ and ‘Abattoir Blues’.
