RogerBW's Blog

2014 non-fiction. Hannah Hart, youtuber, shares recipes and her philosophy of life.

This is not a cookery book. Which shouldn't surprise you if you've watched My Drunk Kitchen on YouTube, since that's not really a cookery show: it's a combination of cooking advice, comedy, and philosophising, and that's what the book is too.

While there are some recipes here, many of them end up as the other things – for example, for Olive-Stuffed Brie ("Forgot you had relatives coming over and promised that you would host? Do this in a pinch so that your visiting family will stop having to pay for everything"):

Step 1: Don't forget that your grandmother (and matriarch of the family) hates olives.

Step 2: Backpedal.

Step 3: Order Chinese.

Even the recipes that are actually intended to be made mostly take the form of trying easy alternatives to standard ingredients and procedures, and not worrying too much about any of it. (Take another drink.) This is fine when it's one video per week, but at book length, even a fairly short book like this one, can become wearing.

To my mind some of the best comedy is the deadpan:

WARNING: Cooking in an oven, on a stove top, or on any heated surface (including city sidewalks in summertime) should only be attempted while accompanied by an adult. And by "adult" I mean someone who isn't drunk. It can be your kid sister too. She seems pretty responsible for a sixteen-year-old. I mean, she's always reading those YA books, so she must have learned a thing or two about life.

The life advice, well, Hart was in her twenties when she wrote this, and mostly it consists of "don't give too much weight to other people's expectations of you" and "life goes on". It's not bad advice, and I'm sure there are people who will benefit from it because it's the first time they've come across it (or because it's delivered in an entirely non-preachy tone), but nor is it anything terribly revolutionary.

Overall the book is fun, but definitely not worth the money. Borrow a copy.