Food zine, Sarah E. Hofman, vol. 1, [email protected]
Vegan MoFo (Vegan Month of Food) is the month-long vegan cooking and food-writing binge undertaken by bloggers near and far each October. Taking cues from the Post Punk Kitchen site (which launched the whole idea) participants dive right in to all things vegan, writing about it from any angle they choose. One of the predominant takes on Vegan MoFo, however, is the recipe review: take a recipe, try it out, and then share it (or your variation of it) with a little story about how the whole experience went down. Sarah Hofman has taken the Vegan MoFo plunge two years in a row on her Winged Snail blog, but for 2012, she also whipped up a zine assembling several recipes she put to the test during the 2011 MoFo, plus two short essays. I’m not a vegan, but Sarah’s recipes made me hungry. They range from very basic (mashed plantains) to bold (whisky tofu tacos), creating a good introduction to the options available for someone just trying out veganism. Her recipes and instructions are formatted clearly and are easy to follow, which is nice for the foodies, but her reviews are sometimes too short, just a few sentences long. That’s long enough for some nice, practical advice, but not enough for much personality to shine through. Plus, for some recipes, she includes extended quotes from other peoples’ blogs. These make for good additional info, but distract from Sarah’s own MoFo experience, which is what I was really interested in. This is why my favorite entry was her Ukrainian cabbage roll recipe, simply because it leads of with her discovery of a Ukrainian cookbook at a thrift store. A little personal context goes a long way. (Joshua Barton)