Synopsis:
Discover tantalizing recipes, spine-tingling stories, and historic photos from the most notoriously haunted locations across America in this fun and fascinating cookbook. Paranormal investigator and Kindred Spirits co-host Amy Bruni leads you through eerie hotels, haunted homes, hellish hospitals, and spooky ghost towns, giving you stories and a recipe from each place. Whether you’re in the mood for Lizzie Borden’s meatloaf or want to serve up spooky prison stories along with sugar cookies from Alcatraz, Food to Die For is your guide to ghoulish gastronomy. One of America’s favorite ghost hunters, Amy Bruni takes you to mysterious hotels, eerie ghost towns, and possessed pubs in this delightfully sinister collection of stories and recipes. History buffs, thrill-seekers, and foodies will all get shivers seeing the past come to life with every enchanted recipe and delicious tale from Food to Die For.
Other Cookbooks I’ve Reviewed
My Edition:
E-ARC provided by Net Galley
My Thoughts:
Conceptually, I think that Food to Die For is a neat idea. Historical recipes are interesting, and I really like that each recipe comes from a different haunted place and has a little bit of background information on the reason for the haunting.
Unfortunately, I found the recipes to be overall disappointing. Not because the dishes are bad – I tried a handful, and they were quite good. I found them disappointing because I had to do more legwork than I think I should have. Although the author pointed out that in certain recipes they had added/edited whatever for clarity, this didn’t always seem to include things like cook time and/or temperature. It was more like the conversion rate for soda crackers to Saltines, which…I don’t care so much about. I found myself particularly frustrated by this while attempting the recipe for Lizzie Borden’s meatloaf which says something to the effect of “bake in the oven until done.” I found it really frustrating that I had to stop what I was doing and go find another meatloaf recipe to find an approximate temperature and time frame for cooking.
In addition, although I knew going in that I was going to have to make substitutions to some recipes because I can’t do dairy products, I didn’t anticipate also having to make substitutions because so many basic items are now wholly unaffordable (this one is not the fault of the cookbook or author – this is all on the garbage economy, I think. But still worth mentioning because you might find it frustrating, for example, that to make the Conjuring House pot roast, you’re going to need to set aside about $50 USD for ingredients. Or if you want to do the Gadsby’s Tavern Sea Bass with Country Hash, same deal. I was even going to swap the sea bass with walleye on account of living in a place where you can’t look at the water without getting slapped in the face by a walleye, but NO. Even that was $18/POUND.
Basically, although the book was mildly entertaining (and the cover is fabulous), I found it essentially useless in all of the important ways a cookbook is to be used. There is seriously nothing more frustrated than having to pause mid-recipe to look up basic information that probably should have been included in the cookbook in the first place – especially when, as I mentioned, the author went to the trouble of mentioning that they had added some useful information here and there.
Rating:
Food to Die For: Recipes and Stories from America's Most Legendary Haunted Places
By Amy Bruni
Harper Celebrate
Publishes: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781400245598
Hardcover, E-book
288 Pages
