Curious Cookbooks

April 12, 2010 7:52 PM

Curious Cookbooks
Reviving a previous Web site idea of mine: quirky and unusual recipes and obscure food ideas from vintage and not-so-vintage church and community cookbooks. Not your usual foodie blog. Bear mincemeat and kosher faux oysters, anyone?
posted by weederman (4 comments total)

Neat!! More posts per page would be nice, also a widget or something obvious on the main page to submit recipes/sources (I did see your post on that). Also it would be great if clicking the main banner would lead back to the main page. At the risk of this turning from helpful to annoying, you could also try modifying the blog's tagline to explain that you haven't tried to make any of the recipes, which will surely encourage the crazy i'll-eat-anything folks to try it and post pictures.

I used to have some really out there cook books but gave them away. They were pastel colored, probably from the 80's, and pretty much had unicorns on the cover. I took a couple of glances at the recipes and resigned to wait until I felt like unintentionally getting high (because the recipes just screamed fairies in the meadow).
posted by cashman at 8:07 PM on April 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'll vote for it, but I really think you should be cooking a lot of these an take pictures - at least the ones with obtainable ingredients. I don't know where one finds FDA certified woodchuck these days, but good luck.
posted by Think_Long at 8:00 AM on April 13, 2010

Some pictures of the cookbooks themselves would be interesting. I love looking at old photographs of strange dishes of cookbooks. Also a comments section would be great so that people could post similar findings/photos/tasting experiences.

For example, your potato chip cookies recipe. I've seen several recipes for these cookies, usually in cookbooks for children. I made them myself when I was a child. They aren't that strange as you can't taste the chips (they are added mainly for the salt and add a little bit of texture).

But Carrot Pudding? I would die to see a photo of that!
posted by miss-lapin at 8:00 AM on April 20, 2010

Thanks all for the great advice!

Commenting is available on the posts, but I realize it's not terribly clear. I definitely want readers to post their own experiences with these recipes as well as photos. We'll be looking for a way to make the commenting function more prominent.

Also, we're looking to post a recipe demo -- with pictures! -- at least once a week. (Carrot pudding is definitely on the list.) And we're looking to get photographs of the cookbooks and scans of some of the weirder artwork they have up on the site as well.

This is totally a work in progress. Count on seeing these changes, and hopefully more, over the next few weeks.
posted by weederman at 5:32 PM on April 20, 2010