Book review (sort of): Nanny Ogg's Cookbook

Despite having just read The Big Short (and understood maaaaaybe 30% of it), I just can't gear myself up to write about it. There's a movie out, I hear, so maybe go watch that. Or read this review of the movie and the book, get two-for-one, and call it a day. Anyway, the point is: I might get around to writing about it, I might not.

So even though I was a bona-fide adult and read a difficult book about perhaps the realest real-world issue of the modern age, I'm gonna talk about Nanny Ogg and her cookbook.

I love this daffy book so much. It probably helps that I enjoy reading *actual* cookbooks and etiquette books (Miss Manners and her incomparable sass FTW!). Nanny Ogg is a bit much, it's true, but she's a jolly old lady who loves a pun, an innuendo, a snack, and a smashing of the patriarchy. Which really is a character type I think we need more of in modern entertainment.

The Cookbook has much to recommend it, including the aforementioned puns and lots of great one-liners ("Gumbo is one of those dishes, like stew, where it’s ridiculous to have a recipe. You just make it."). It's also an etiquette guide, with perhaps the pro-i-est of LPTs you'll ever encounter. Because if there's one thing Nanny Ogg's good at, it's livin' it up.

What has been specifically on my mind recently though, is her recipe for dried frog pills, which begins, "Carefully take no frogs." This recipe really speaks to me, because I am prone to ignoring large swaths of instructions when cooking. Nanny just takes it a step further and ignores the main ingredient.

So, without further ado, here is an incomplete list of what I read vs. what I do [1]

This is also know as the Hannah Hart Cooking Method, which is amply demonstrated on her show, My Drunk Kitchen.

Whisk ----- use a fork
peel ----- never peel
anything less than 1 tsp ----- guess
sift ----- nobody has time to sift
fresh [herb] ------ used dried, because who has a year-round herb patch?
any measure raisins ----- more raisins
and finally, the frog-inspired one...
saffron ----- do not use saffron

xo,
Devo