So I know that per cannonball rules graphic novels are countable toward the goal, but I’m not counting mine as it feels like a cheat to me; I love comics hard, but I’d make cannonball in a week if I counted em. I was a longtime lurker and was an observer for CB1 even if I only joined at CB9, and remember thinking “well duh” when they were excluded from the inaugural readathon. As I had a half decade vacation from the mothership, I’m not positive when the rules changed, but I’m beholden to my standard; it just feels wrong to count a book that’s not mostly text.
I mention this because this is emphatically a cookbook, but it’s as much about the science of cooking as it is about the recipes. It’s Ruth Reichl by way of Alton Brown. Anyone who knows me knows that’s a recipe for an ideal Hayley book. It’s also close to 1000 pages, so even if 2/3 of its length is devoted to how to cook what’s pictured as well as the photos… well, I’ve read shorter books for cannonball.
Its amazing. If you enjoy Good Eats, and / or America’s Test Kitchen, you’ll like this. It’s as much about why and how things DON’T work as why they do, which makes it that much easier to fine tune the recipes. And, Lopez-Alt injects personality into the book along with pop cultural references, so it’s enjoyable to read as a cookbook or a science text equally.
Oh, and the food has been good too. Details.