Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library: Create Some Gross Food With These Cookbooks

Press release from the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library:

June 14, 2021

Halloween may be far away, but that does not mean you can’t have some spooky fun in the kitchen. Some recipes may look intentionally unappealing but taste delicious. Others may seem strange to you but be a favorite of someone else. To go along with the Gross Cooking episode of EVPL READ’s Cooking Show, we have prepared a book list of “gross” and unusual foods for all ages. Check out these titles at EVPL today!

For Children

• The Gross Cookbook: Awesome Recipes for (Deceptively) Disgusting Treats Kids Can Make by Susanna Tee

Do you want to gross out your friends? Do you like making people laugh? This book is for you! Inside you’ll find all the best recipes for foods that LOOK disgusting but are actually DELICIOUS! Kids (and grownups) will love trying and eating all of the disgusting and delicious foods in this cookbook for Halloween or any day of the year!

• Roald Dahl’s Even More Revolting Recipes introduced by Felicity Dahl

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the kitchen – Roald Dahl’s recipes are back! Inspired by his most popular stories, these recipes use the most common ingredients to create the most uncommon treats. There’s no better way to liven up a party than to dine on Lizards’ Tails and enjoy a delicious Liquid Chocolate Mixed by Waterfall.

• Strange Foods by Michael J. Rosen and Ben Kassoy

You might think anchovies and fruitcake are pretty weird foods. But wait until you hear about durian, a huge, spiky fruit that smells like gym socks. Or salmiakki, the licorice with a salty, fishy taste. And don’t forget kopi luwak, the coffee made from…poop! Discover all kinds of unusual foods from around the world!

• Weird but True! Food: 300 Bite-Size Facts About Incredible Edibles! by Rebecca Baines

This latest addition to the crazy popular Weird but True series serves up tons more zany fun, focused totally on the subject of food! Step up to the plate to get 100 percent new content, with 300 more of the amazing facts plus photos that kids just can’t get enough of.

For Adults

• Ghoulish Goodies by Sharon Bowers

Eat, drink, and enjoy the creepy yuckiness of Monster Eyeballs, Chocolate Spider Clusters, Buried Alive Cupcakes, and Screaming Red Punch. In her colorful collection of frightful foods, Sharon Bowers shares the fun of baking, decorating, and indulging in delicious treats. These frightful treats are not just for October, though. These are recipes that parents and kids can have fun making together anytime.

• A Zombie Ate My Cupcake!: 25 Deliciously Weird Cupcake Recipes by Lily Vanilli

Lily Vanilli shows you how to work with natural ingredients and cake-decorating tools to create amazing edible decorations such as a cupcake graveyard with gingerbread tombstones. Why not give guests a shock with the revoltingly realistic Marzipan Beetles, or add a crunch to your desserts with the Morbid Meringue Bones, dipped in raspberry blood sauce?

• Harvest: Unexpected Projects Using 47 Extraordinary Garden Plants by Stefani Bittner & Alethea Harampolis

A guide to growing, harvesting, and utilizing 47 unexpected garden plants to make organic pantry staples, fragrances, floral arrangements, beverages, cocktails, beauty products, bridal gifts, and more. Every garden–not just vegetable plots–can produce a bountiful harvest! With the remarkable, multi-purpose plants in Harvest, there is always something for gardeners to harvest from one growing season to the next.

• Edible: An Adventure Into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet by Daniella Martin

Insects. They’re what’s for dinner. In this rollicking excursion into the world of edible insects, Martin takes us to the front lines of the next big trend in the global food movement and shows us how insects just might be the key to solving world hunger. Whether you love or hate bugs, Edible will radically change the way you think about the global food crisis and perhaps persuade you that insects are much more than a common pest.

• Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China by Fuchsia Dunlop

After fifteen years spent exploring China and its food, Fuchsia Dunlop finds herself in an English kitchen, deciding whether to eat a caterpillar she has accidentally cooked in some home-grown vegetables. How can something she has eaten readily in China seem grotesque in England? The question lingers over this “autobiographical food-and-travel classic” (Publishers Weekly).

• A Moveable Feast: Life-Changing Food Adventures Around the World edited by Don George

From bat on the island of Fais to chicken on a Russian train to barbecue in the American heartland, from mutton in Mongolia to couscous in Morocco to tacos in Tijuana – on the road, food nourishes us not only physically, but intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually too. It can be a gift that enables a traveler to survive, a doorway into the heart of a tribe, or a thread that weaves an indelible tie. Celebrate the riches and revelations of food with this 38-course feast of true tales set around the world.

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All images and descriptions are from goodreads.com and amazon.com.

This press release was produced by the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library. The views expressed here are the author’s own.