Resources from Presenters:
Read the Cook Zine!
Contribute to the Cook Zine!

Resources from Chat:
Washington COVID zine diary

Session Notes:

As a social activity, the social arm of the IZLD/ZLUC organizing arm has been gathering submissions for a cook/recipe zine. Travel and food can be an experience that opens our minds.  Right now, travels isn’t possible, but many of us have been home, and cooking for ourselves a lot, so a cookzine seemed like a great way to share something with each other. This zine is still looking for more submissions, and is accepting them though August 1st, 2020. There is a form for submissions, and you don’t need to format it yourself if you don’t have the tools, someone will do that for you if you just submit the text.

Ella shared the pages that she had contributed to the IZLD cookzine, and explained that she has two different food traditions: one from her family in New Orleans and and the other from family in the midwest, and when trying to come up with just one recipe, began thinking about their food traditions. While some of these traditions are tongue in cheek, and not practical for someone not cooking for 15, these are the lessons that reflect how they were taught in each tradition. While there are many differences between them, there is also some crossover which was nice to find. This was a great exercise, and documenting folkways of your family can be a good idea for anyone to do. Food traditions can often be ways of passing down good advice through oral traditions.

Kelly shared her recipe for Strong and easy salad. It was made as a meld of different tastes and and has changed over time. It started as a white bean salad, but things kept getting added. The smoked tofu in it will change any container it is in. A lot of the usual ingredients are very local, smoked tofu from the farmer’s market, olives from a local. It mutates every time, using up whatever is in the fridge. Be careful though, it will stain your breath.

Kelsy Smith, shared a number of zine from their private collection, including Easy Alcoholic Beverages (Summer 2014), a large one page style cocktail zine, Food Geek #2, by Carrie McInch, Elliot Junkyard’s I Love You So Matcha, Pepperidge Farm Remembers, by Eli Tripoli and Andy Gill, Why plant a fava bean, Zoe Mendez’s A Couple of Things You Can Cook!, and In Defense of Blackberries from Pelican Press.

Also shared was a zine made in collaboration with Olympia Food Co-op for a pie contest at Kelsy Smith’s home library. One of the best recipes in it is for Shaker Lemon Pie: slice up a bunch of Meyer lemons and leave in sugar overnight, add eggs and bake! Super simple. And Rumpy Pumpy by Milo, from which was read a quote about “chilling out while reading the wikipedia list of hotdog variations”.

Korea students at Mica put together zines for grocery store that were easier to access and had korean groceries.

Kelly shared An erotic cookbook, which recipes like Ahh-spargus, naughty noodles, and pepronipple pizza. Amy shared some zines from her collection, including The Tomato Lover, and some issues of Barefoot in the Kitchen.

Some discussion followed, covering topics like marginalia in cookbooks and cookzines, and that cookzines that circulate more often gain coffee rings than get greasy like library cookbooks.

Milo talked about making cookzines, having made 2 mayo zines, 2 cook zines, and most recently during quarantine they made a kombucha qaranzine. They talked about how their zucchini pancakes originated because QZAP has no money and can’t pay interns, but in exchange for help they have a community dinner about once a week. Trying to make a savory waffle that was kinda healthy, and it became a staples. And the cheese was added because you’re in Wisconsin so you have to add cheese. Zukes practically grow wild in the midwest too so there are always plenty around.