A quick heads-up.
As I think I mentioned already I love cooking – it’s a relaxing activity, a way to leave problems behind and be good to ourselves, and what the heck, somebody’s got to do it, right?
Through the years I have collected a number of cookbooks and recipe collections, and I’m always on the lookout for new sources of gastronomic adventure.
From which, the heads-up: The Humble Bundle is doing a special Sous Geek Cookbooks bundle, offering 21 books about food and cooking aimed at the geek, and part of the money you pay goes into a charity.
The offer is open for another twelve days.
As usual with the Humble Bundle, the offer is tiered.
For one buck, you get a selection of six ebooks in various formats (PDF, epub, moby, CBZ), including Eat like a Rock Star, a book of rock’n’roll stars recipes and what I consider the highlight of this bunch – O’Reilly’s Make: Like the pioneers a collection of low-tech and ”primitive” skills. Great resource for writers, it includes instruction on how to make fire and how an oil lamp works, plus recipes for making home cider and cook a turkey, and what not.
Also included is Short Order Dad, a guy’s guide to cooking for his family, and The world’s Best Drinks, with entries ranging from cocktails to tea – another great writer’s resource.
For eight bucks, you get the previous six ebooks plus another six, and things get really interesting: there’s a Cooking for Geeks that promises Real Science, Great Cooks, and Good Food, there’s a collection of cocktails and related flash fiction, but the two real killers here are A Thyme and Place, a book about Medieval festivities and recipes (absolutely beautiful book, btw – I plan on getting me a paper copy one of these days) and another quite interesting writer’s resource, The Astronaut’s Cookbook, about food in space.
For fifteen bucks, you get all of the above plus another nine ebooks, including the Hamilton Cookbook, that history buffs might like as it deals with 18th century cooking and home administration, a book of recipes inspired by the Harry Potter book series, and another O’Reilly title, about food hacks and recipes, called Edible Inventions.
A book on winemaking, and a series of books about cooking contraptions round up the offer.
All in all, well worth a look – the Humble Bundle remains a great way to get lots of reading matter for cheap, and do some good while we are at it.
And in the case of cooking, both writers and their characters need to eat once in a while.