Not your mother's cookbook - John Bear

There are 200 recipes in this book, one to a page. Each recipe begins with a charming fun-to-read introduction, then the ingredients, and then the clear and accurate method of preparation. There are four categories of "unusual" covered in the book:

Unusual ingredients or uses of ingredients (such as eggplant bread, cheddar cheese fudge, or simple peach soup with roses. Remember when we all thought carrot cake was unusual!).

Unusual combinations (such as the salmon-chocolate casserole we invented, and green chili maple brittle, and tomato soup with bananas).

Unusual preparation (such as the cake you cook from the inside out by drizzling it onto a rotisserie spit, the brownies you make in a waffle iron, or the chicken you cook by wrapping in foil, wiring it to the exhaust manifold of your car, and driving 100 miles).

Unusual stories (such as the m'jeddrah which is believed to be the actual "mess of pottage" for which Esau sold his birthright, and the woman who specialized in "Funeral Jell-O" -- an interesting and unusual dark Jell-O she regularly delivered to funerals all over the South).