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How to Savor and Celebrate the Year: A Cookbook
From the publisher:
New York Times bestselling author and Food Network star Hannah Hart is back with her biggest book ever: a humorous holiday cookbook celebrating year-round festivities with food, drink, and friends.
In a world where everyone is looking for some good news and something to celebrate, Hannah Hart is there with almost fifty ideas, arranged into twelve months of themes and recipes for how to celebrate with family and friends.
A collection of recipes, activities, and suggestions about hilarious and joyous ways to celebrate with family, friends, pets, and your entire community, My Drunk Kitchen Holidays! will commemorate holidays from Valentine’s Day to Graduation, Pride Month and International Left-Handers’ Day (really!). The book will culminate with the fall holidays that get much deserved attention: recipes for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and a celebration of Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Christmas that is festive, inclusive, and incredibly hilarious.
As soon as I saw that Hart had a new book coming out, I requested it from the publisher. If you are not familiar, she has a cooking/comedy YouTube channel at MyHarto that my daughter had told me about several years ago. Sort of like Drunk History, but with cooking. She also has a Facebook page. Well, she’s all over social media. The woman is smart and funny and she knows how to cook. Forbes did a profile of her, How Do You Describe Hannah Hart’s Career? It’s Complicated and said this:
How do you sum up someone who’s a YouTuber, podcaster, author, television personality, LGBT rights advocate, “influencer,” the fiancé of one of 2019’s 30 Under 30, and all-around person-on-the-internet…Whatever Hannah Hart makes, regardless of what form it takes, is always kind, comedic, conscious and occasionally culinary. So keep watching, because perfection is pointless, and the best conversations happen in the kitchen – with or without alcohol.
So this is her latest creation, a cookbook that covers holidays throughout the year, and the table of contents goes month by month. So January has New Year’s Day, Trivia Day (1/4,) Play God Day (1/9,) and Vision Board Day: Second Saturday of the Month. Some holidays you know, and many you may never have heard of. And some missing holidays as well – no Ides of March, and probably the biggest surprise, no Christmas. Although Cookie Day (12/4,) includes a recipe for Christmas cookies, so no worries. But December has Hanukkah (!), Winter Solstice (12/21,) and Champagne Day (12/31,) which I believe most of us call New Year’s Eve. There are holidays for everyone, like Walking Day (first Wednesday of April,) Be A Millionaire Day (5/20,) Lipstick Day (7/29,) and Cheese Pizza Day (9/5.)
November is taken up by Thanksgiving, which includes recipes for “Garlic-Ass Mashed Potatoes,” “A Great Gravy,” “Black Olive Stuffing,” and what I thought would be the ubiquitous “Green Bean Casserole,” but instead, was green bean casserole made from scratch. You know, fresh green beans, cremini mushrooms, heavy cream, etc. The thing is that the recipes are real, and the directions easy to follow and usually funny. For instance, in the green bean casserole, step 4:
Next sauté your cremini mushrooms in olive oil. If you’re feeling ambitious and want to play with texture, you can cook the mushrooms on one side and then the other. This is a marvelously ambitious task and no one will notice, but I noticed, and now I am praising your for it–WELL DONE!
There are also lots of stories scattered throughout the book that usually tie into the holidays, and are always fun reading. So this is not a cookbook for serious cooks, but if you know a serious cook who you think should lighten up a bit, then this is the book to buy for them. It is a conversation starter for sure, so a good, albeit not too big, coffee table book. Finally, this book is all about pride, from the rainbow sweater Hart wears on the cover to the rainbow border on the back cover to the stories inside. Great pictures, too, always a plus. Bottom line: this is a terrific gift book and a fun cookbook.
10/19 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
MY DRUNK KITCHEN HOLIDAYS! by Hannah Hart. Plume (October 22, 2019). ISBN 978-0525541431. 224p.
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