Taste of Home Vol. 2
Zine, Various, 32 pgs, Chamomile Press, @chamomilepress, $20
Fair warning: don’t read this zine before a meal unless you have all the ingredients — and skills — to make one of these delicious recipes (I made this mistake!). Taste of Home combines colourful illustrations with a series of recipes from the cuisines native to the various cultural upbringings of the artists. Each recipe is rated out of five stars for its difficulty, with an average difficulty of 2.5/5 stars per recipe.
The zine contains 15 recipes divided into three categories: appetizer, main and dessert, followed by bios and contact info for each artist. If my attempts at pretzels look anything like Dory Xu’s lovely illustration when I use the accompanying recipe, I’m positive they will be delicious. I also can’t wait to make Monique Germain’s Butterscotch Biscuits. Brown sugar and margarine are like zines and pals: some things are just perfect together.
However, effective navigation of a cookbook requires page numbers. While Taste of Home has a glossary of recipes, no page numbers are included! While this is a very minor detail for a collection of 15 recipes, the existence of Taste of Home #2 implies the possibility of a third edition, which might even imply the possibility of a Complete Taste of Home (we can hope). I hope the fine folks at Chamomile Press will keep enumeration in mind if they consider expanded editions of this zine.
For now, I hope this zine enjoys its new home in my kitchen, where I can pull it out anytime I want to make a show-stopping meal.