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Gay! Cookbooks! (possibly revisited)
Mar. 22nd, 2011 11:34 amI am reading the gayest cookbook ever -- and of course I mean that in the best way. Our Meals is by Jock Soto and Heather Watts, former ballet dancers. He's gay, she's straight, they own a house together along with Watts' boyfriend according to the intro (the book was published in 1998) but they have separate apartments in NYC. There's a whole (small) section that's about friends they had who taught them to cook and who later died from AIDS. I like the fact that Jock is out from just about the first page and doesn't play coy about it at all. The food is very gay, too -- I can't quite articulate the aesthetic ("I know it when I see it"), but "elegant yet simple" is probably a good starting point.
I have no idea how this book ended up in my possession. It's over a decade old, it's by two people in an artistic community I don't have much connection with, it's very New York and I am very West Coast. But I like it. It fits my style, and it's a blast to read their little headnote anecdotes.
I have several very gay cookbooks on my bookshelf; I think I've talked about this before. I'm not even counting Nigel Slater, although it probably explains some of my affinity for him. Or James Beard, a whole 'nother can of worms. I can't find any definitive evidence, for example, that veteran cookbook editor Roy Finamore is gay, but he looks like a leather bear and his book Tasty definitely has that aesthetic I mentioned, simple but elegant, no shortcuts for shortcuts' sake but don't make yourself crazy trying to do everything yourself, honey.
And then of course there's Doomed Rabbit, which I bought off a certain person on my friendslist a zillion years ago and which contains the best banana bread recipe I have so far found. The story I always tell about Doomed Rabbit is that I once got into an argument on Usenet about whether it really existed or I was just putting rec.food.cooking on. It's a collection of recipes from the queer leather community (and friends -- Hillary Clinton's cookies are in here) compiled by Aubrey Hart Sparks to raise funds to fight one of those early 90's state anti-gay initiatives that were all the rage. It's explicitly modeled on those old "church lady" (his words) community cookbooks, right down to the spiral binding.
I have no idea how this book ended up in my possession. It's over a decade old, it's by two people in an artistic community I don't have much connection with, it's very New York and I am very West Coast. But I like it. It fits my style, and it's a blast to read their little headnote anecdotes.
I have several very gay cookbooks on my bookshelf; I think I've talked about this before. I'm not even counting Nigel Slater, although it probably explains some of my affinity for him. Or James Beard, a whole 'nother can of worms. I can't find any definitive evidence, for example, that veteran cookbook editor Roy Finamore is gay, but he looks like a leather bear and his book Tasty definitely has that aesthetic I mentioned, simple but elegant, no shortcuts for shortcuts' sake but don't make yourself crazy trying to do everything yourself, honey.
And then of course there's Doomed Rabbit, which I bought off a certain person on my friendslist a zillion years ago and which contains the best banana bread recipe I have so far found. The story I always tell about Doomed Rabbit is that I once got into an argument on Usenet about whether it really existed or I was just putting rec.food.cooking on. It's a collection of recipes from the queer leather community (and friends -- Hillary Clinton's cookies are in here) compiled by Aubrey Hart Sparks to raise funds to fight one of those early 90's state anti-gay initiatives that were all the rage. It's explicitly modeled on those old "church lady" (his words) community cookbooks, right down to the spiral binding.
