Cookbook For Guys - Excerpt

Ok, gang, I'm back hard on the case of finishing up the Cookbook for Guys.

Here's an excerpt... How To Use This Book:


Well, there’s a lot of ways that one can use this book.  You can squish a spider that is annoying your better half by whacking it a good one with the book, for instance.  Or, it makes a fairly good read on the john, though your better half might start up about bringing germs into the kitchen if you carry your cookbook into the crapper and then back out to your kitchen.  Ignore her if she protests.  There are germs everywhere.  Don’t let it bother you one bit.

It’s not quite thick enough for youngsters to sit on at your Thanksgiving meal.  But you might wedge it under a table leg to level it out.  However, that would be a pity as then you wouldn’t have it handy to use in the kitchen.  And having it handy in the kitchen is, after all, it’s intended use, Bucko.

So, assuming you actually are going to use this book in the kitchen, there are some things you need to know.  Well, you probably don’t need to know them, you’re not even reading this part.  You’ve jumped ahead to things like making Ribs and the Wisconsin Friday Night Fish Fry, because you’re a Guy.  Only girls read the damned instructions.  But on the odd chance that the lady in your life has happened to pick up the book and look at it while you’re making an enormous mess in the kitchen, I’m putting this information here on the chance that when you get stuck and are going, “What the &#*(@?”, she can help you out by first steering you in the right direction and then telling you to read the *&@$%! instructions.

IMPORTANT - Stuff that’s actually important, or at least that I, in my infinite wisdom, feel are important will be in bold, as in this example.

How This Book Is Arranged - I’ve labored a lot over this point.  I spent a couple of months in a barroom brawl with myself on how to arrange this book...do I do it by ingredients, such as Meats, Fish, etc.?  Do I do it by ethnicity as in Mexican, Chinese, etc?  Do I do it alphabetically?  Do I throw it all together in one big hodgepodge and include a blindfold for you, the reader, to put on and flip thru blindly and point at a page?

In the end, once again my wife Carol stepped in as the Voice of Reason (VOR).  She said, ‘Why don’t you just stick them in alphabetically in the second half of the book, and write the first half of the book more on technique, equipment and entertaining scenarios like “Tailgating”, “Date Night”, “Guys Weekend”, “Deer Camp”, etc. and then cross reference all the recipes?   Brilliant.  That’s why I married you, my dear.  Well, that’s *one* of the reasons I married you.

For the most part, I’ve also left out desserts.  Most cookbooks are full of bars, cookies and cakes because...let’s face it...most cookbooks are written by chocolate-gobbling broads.  Since this book is not titled “The Cookbook for Chocolate-Gobbling Broads”, the omission should go more or less unnoticed.

Measures - All measures will be in standard U.S. units based on the 8 oz. Cup.  There’ll be none of that subversive, Un-American Metric Crapola around here, Mister!  If you insist on cooking using those obviously communist-inspired terrorist measurements, there are plenty of good conversion calculators on the Internet.  Find one.    Ok, I really don’t believe that the Metric system is all that, but it’s a nice way of justifying in my own mind why I don’t need to learn it to support the crux of the matter...which is that I’m too damned lazy to bother.  End of story.

Serving Size - I live in Wisconsin, a state settled around the middle half of the 19th Century by mostly Krauts and Polacks, with a few Norskis and Swedes here and there.  Big, Nordic people.  The kind of people that laugh heartily when they read the body mass indexes for height and target weight that are created by tiny little East Coast doctors and insurance actuaries.  We have big appetites to match our broad shoulders, towering heights and impressive beer guts - some with their own postal code.   So if you live on the East or West Coast. you’re probably going to want to read “Serves 12” when I say “Serves 8”.   You’ll get the hang of it next time you cook up a storm for your local Lollipop Guild, little person.

Ok, that’s enough for this part of the book which Guys won’t read anyway.  The rest of the stuff is in the important parts that you might actually skim over while taking a dump.