One of those cookbooks is called "Eat Tweet"by Maureen Evans. Evans started off at a Twitter user who posted "tiny recipes", listing ingredients, quantities, prep time and directions, all within 140 characters or less. Although she still uses her Twitter as a base to share her recipes with her 224k follower, she compiled a bunch of those recipes (1,020 to be exact) featured on her Twitter account into a shiny blue paperback cookbook. According to the blurb on Amazon.com
There are recipes from around the world, from Kashgar Noodles to Biscotti, as well as homey favorites like Garlic Chicken and Chocolate. In addition, Eat Tweet contains kitchen tips and techniques (also 140 characters max) and a lexicon for translating Twitterese cooking terms like s+p (salt and pepper) and tst (toasted)
It does indeed require some decoding to figure out the meaning of some characters in the recipes. It makes sense in the Twitter sphere where you are in fact reduced to a limited number of characters, but when compiling the book where you have infinite space and no restrictions, why not just write out the ingredients in the full word form, why not give more direction than was provided by the original Tweet? If it was truly a cookbook concerned with offering practical skills to the reader and teaching them a new recipe, I think these words would be written out in full and more instructions would be given. However, this cookbook seems to be more a marker of time, preoccupied with saving the "authenticity" of the online Twitter format than with providing insight and acting as a resource to its audience. It's entertainment. A means for inspiration. Even if I found any one of these recipes intriguing I would be more likely to search the recipe in its full, fleshed-out form than follow the 140 character recipe that could trick me into tasting the coconut instead of toasting it.
From Maureen Evans' Twitter Page (source)
Chocolate Cake: Beat¼c sug/2egg. Sift⅓c flr&cocoa/½t bkgpdr&soda/⅛t cardamom&cinn&salt. Mlt6oz choc/¼c cocontoil&coffee. Fold all. 40m@350F.
Cookbook Glossary fo Terms
-Stacey Ladusch
It's so interesting how modern language changes the feel of cooking.
ReplyDeleteWow! Weird. I was looking up strange cookbooks as well and found Hungry Girl's Cookbook. She has a recipe that doubles the size of one portion of oatmeal without adding calories. Crazy what people have thought up.
ReplyDeleteThe title of this posting is hilarious. I'm a sucker for clever titles/names. On another note, the modern language used in cookbooks scares and appalls me, especially when authors have an "internet" voice.
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