I'm Writing A Cookbook!!!

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Y’all!  As you know from my TABLE OF CONTENTS, one of the proposed section of the book is HOORAY FOR HI PIES!  A HI PIE is basically a hand pie, but they’re very friendly and say “hi”.

LISTEN – I guess Hi Pies are already a thing.  I’m not sure what the legal ramifications are yet of using HI PIE in my book.  I guess I need a dang lawyer now!  Maybe they’ll become Yo Pies.  I HAVEN’T GOTTEN THAT FAR!

Anyway – my dingus cousin LEIGH is getting married to a double-dingus named VINCENT and they’re so adorable that I’m drowning in brain barf from all the cuteness.  Just look at these two kids!  ADORABLE!

Quick side note – they’re wedding hashtag is the best.  #DoYouBeLeighVinLove . Get it????  Ugh – so good.

So, they’re getting married on Saturday and they asked if I could make their wedding favors.  I was like “I do!”

We talked about a bunch of different ideas and they liked one originally that was way too complicated and then we settled on these peanut butter & white choco hi pies!  Y’all – I made 140 of these shits over the last few days.  ONE HUNDRED FORTY!  It took so long!  Gah – I’m exhausted!

Well, team – they’re mostly easy to make, although I don’t have a formal recipe.

First, get some thawed out pie crust from Trader Joe’s and roll it out super thin.  Cut mini-rectangles.  Like 2″ x 3″.  I gotta be honest, I was just eyeballing the cuts and so there are some lil guys and some bigger guys….  OOPS MAGOOPS!  Oh!  And it was the first time I used my special tool, which was very much inspired by MOLLY YEH, who is my hero!  (Shero?)  (Hi, Molly!)

Now then, melt about 3/4 a bag of white choco chips.  Stir in about an equal amount of peanut butter.  Then blop small blops of the mix onto your bottom layer of pie dough rectangles.  OK!  Now, find another pie dough rectangle and put it on top of the bottom rectangle.  Find a fork.  Use the fork to crimp up all the sides of your double-rectangle and then poke air holes in every mini pie situation.  (these are now mini pie situations).  Right – now, beat an egg so that it’s like scrambled and do an egg wash on top.  Fire up the oven to 350 and bake these shits for 16 dang minutes.

OK – when these come out the oven, they’re going to be hot, so cool those shits down and make your choco glaze.  The glaze is just 1/4 cup cocoa powder + 1 cup powdered sugar + 3 or 4 tbsp milk + a big pinch of salt.  Mix until wet and not lumpy.  Blip a blop of glaze on your cooled down mini pies and pop on a cookie or a sprinkle or whatever the fuck you want on top!  It’s your fucking life, bro.

And that’s all there is to it, homies!  I’m so excited for this wedding because I get to see my whole dang family (dad’s side anyway) and I think I ordered the fish and I’m going to have at least THREE CHARDONNAYS.

BYE!!!!

Hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi!

Hey!

So, when I first started the heavy-thinking of writing a cookbook, I was like – “it’ll be a celebration of all my favorite things” and to be fun and cheeky, I started with this title:

Cookies & Cheeses & Champagne & Coffee & Cathedrals & Cactuses & Centaurs

I love this book title so much and would very much like to write that book.  It strikes me as an incredibly difficult book to write though as I would’ve liked to have deeply explored each of those topics.  Listen up, team – I aint got the time to go to France for a year to become an expert champagne maker and drinker.  I just aint got the dang time!

(NOTE – maybe I just import some Champange region grapes to Ohio and ferment that shit here and make my own champs label….  I may still do this….  How hard could it be????)

So, I went back to SQUARE ONE and rethought the whole idea.  NOTE 2 – do y’all remember Square One the PBS show????  Ugh – it was so good and I loved it, especially Mathnet, which was a police procedural that was very much about numbers and square rooting stuff….  I once came up with what I still believe to be a unique math property around squared numbers.  Did you know that the distance between two sequentials squares is sequential odd numbers????  So, if the sequence of squares is 0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100…, the distance between them is 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19….  I’m pretty sure no one ever figured that out before me….

OK!  I can’t promise there won’t be math facts in the book.  I love a good math fact.

So – here for posterity’s sake is the TABLE OF CONTENTS of the ***NEW*** as-of-yet untitled Jack Volpi cookbook:

SECTION 1: Basic Bitches!

• The JV choco chip, a pretty ok brownie, my cut-out recipe, etc.

SECTION 2: Holiday Whatevers!

• Krispie Krampuses, Red Velvet Costanzas, Nutter Butter Lamb Cake, just a handful of Reece’s Pieces, etc.

SECTION 3: Sexy Sandwiches!

• Chicken & Waffle Macarons, Tighty Whitey Ice Cream Sandwiches, Snickerdoodle Sammies, etc.

• QUESTION – should this be JUST ice cream sandwiches????  Who doesn’t love a good ICS?  Email me immediately with your thoughts on this, dear readers!

SECTION 4: Hooray for Hi Pies!

• Chorizo & cheese-o, peanut butter & white choco, fig & pig, etc.

SECTION 5: Savory Somethings!

• Harissa thumbprints, pimiento hamantaschen, hot junk, etc.

• “Hot junk” is a placeholder name for something that I haven’t completely thought through yet.  I really like that name though!  HOT JUNK!

I absolutely reserve the right to change my mind about any of this as things start to come together, but wanted to at least give myself a dang framework.  My target is about 10 – 12 recipes per section, with about 60-70% of these deals being new new new new!  Readers – that’s between 50 – 60 total recipes!  Real real exciting, right???

RIGHT!

Anyway – since I didn’t include a post about them in the 100cookies blog, here for the first time on the dang internet is the Tighty Whitey ICS.  It’s a jortbread shortbread situation (actually just cut-out cookies, not real shortbread, but you’re absolutely welcome to shortbread it up).  I added belt loops and a back pocket on these, for 10% more cuteness.  And the ice cream on the inside is vanilla for the TWs and coffee for the legs.  AND!  The leg hair is shaved chocolate!  Yeah!!!!

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Y’all! I’m easing myself back into this blog! Writing cookbooks is the worst! You need to have all these ideas and most of them are terrible and then you have to figure out a recipe for the thing and that’s hard work…. the whole business is pretty exhausting.

Well – here goes. My first cookbook recipe idea is this chicken & waffle macaron. Waffle macarons are nothing new. Just google it! You’ll see!!! But none of those dummies put a chicken nugget in that shit and drizzed franks red hot and honey on it. (Did they??? I honestly don’t think so but who the fuck knows… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).

And guess what! THEY’RE DELICIOUS! EVERYONE SAYS SO! (That’s a dang lie – I’m the only one who’s eaten these…. sorry!)

So last night, I went over to Rita and Eric’s to watch the Hereditary movie. Listen up, team. I won’t be sticking my head out of any more car windows any time soon.

What else? What else???

Jimmys fine. We’ve officially been together now THREE DANG YEARS! Woof! Happy anniversary, babe! My gift to you: I will most definitely use this photo in the acknowledgments section of the book! I WUV YOU!!!

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After dicking around for about a year, I’m restarting this blog.  While I though I was ready to start this blog and start a cookbook, but I just wasn’t, OK???  I was afraid – but I’m NOT AFRAID ANYMORE!

I’M NOT AFRAID!!!!!!  *sobbing*

So I junked all of the previous blog posts from my first time working through this blog.  Trust and believe – they were NOT GREAT.  But, the whole idea of the blog is the same – you’re coming on a dang journey with me, dear readers.  You’re going to see me sort through the creation of a cookbook. This includes the following bits:

• Concept development & refinement
• Recipe creation
• Do I need an agent? Who’s going to publish this shit?
• What are other cookbooks all about?  (How the fuck did Zac Posen write a cookbook???)
• Starting a feud with Zac Posen
• MYSTERY – who will I acknowledge in the acknowledgements?  NOT ZAC POSEN.
• Critical praise for the finished product, awards, love letters from my fans, etc.

How does this sound?  Are you all excited about this???  I fucking hope so!