Customer Reviews

The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook: They Came, They Cooked, They Left (But We Ended Up with Some Great Recipes)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I heard the authors being interviewed on NPR and knew I had to get this book! They share stories from all stages of their lives, add great recipes and always make you wonder if a woman really had to endure these males. During the interview, they came clean that not all the stories came from them, but some happened to a 'freind-of-a-friend'. The fun part is trying to figure out which is which.

Knowing that the two most powerful things in most of our lives are food and love, this is a clever twist on short stories. Each story has a complimentary recipe associated with it. All I have to say is you are bound to met interesting men while working at farms. (You'll have to read the stories) Who would have thought it could be such a pick-up place?!?!?

I highly recommend this crafty culinary romp for the recipes and the stories. They will make you laugh, cringe, shake your head in belief (yes, not disbelief)and hungry!

OK, so I've read the other reviews and I'm a little confused, I was under the impression that this was a cookbook with a twist.
That's the premise under which I purchased and have used this book. I don't think the authors intended this to be a great read, just a collection of good recipes with ancedotes about the boys or men that provided the recipes.
Now, about the recipes... I have made several dishes and all have been fantastic. The recipes are divided into six categories:Sweet, Fluffy Things, Savory, Spicy, Slippery and Substantial Things. The recipes I've tried (and loved) are:
Liam's Refrigerator Cookies
Arthur's Easy Apple Dessert
Wesley's Cottage Cheese Pancakes(delicious!)
Josh's Spinach-Strawberry Salad (great for potlucks)
Will's Wonderful Wings
Sullivan's Cold Rice Salad(goes great with the wings)
Brady's Pepper cheese dip(awesome)- this recipe alone is worth the price of the book.
Ezra's Sticky Chicken -- My Favorite Recipe

If traditional cookbooks are your thing, this is not the book for you. But if you want some unique, easy and pretty darn good recipes, you won't be disappointed.

This book is not only humorous, it is smart. The authors have managed to put forth a work of post-feminism that puts the men in the kitchen. The short stories that accompany the recipes allow the authors the chance to muse on loves that have left their lives, but in no way have left them bitter or helpless. Instead, they have taken what was left and made it sweet--or in some cases savory! The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook is on my reading list for the Women's Lit course I teach in fall.

NO, this is not a manual on how to cook an ex. This is a collection of recipes taken from the ex-boyfriends of these two women; they had an attraction to chefs, fry cooks, and others. Since these writers are collage aficionados as well, each recipe is printed atop a collage of pics and drawings. The recipes are separated into Sweet Things; Sort of fluffy things; Savory things; Spicy things, Slippery things; and Substantial things. Honestly, most of the time, I found the stories much more interesting than the recipes. I was also astonished by the number of men these two women "dated."

The book opens with Cream Cheese Brownies, a recipe from the mother of a prom date. The mother was more into the author than her son, and was more crushed when they broke up. But what do you expect when the author made out with a waiter after her prom instead of her date? For a recipe for refrigerator cookies, she traded a pencil sharpener with her ex. While Proust may have remembered things past due to a pastry, the author recalls an English toffee recipe when the "new" girlfriend of her ex-bf moves into the apartment next door to her and she can hear them communicating through the thin walls. From Sam, a ditch digger and a Bud drinker who went to prison, one of the authors got an apple crisp recipe. From David Goldberg, a guy who once owned a ferret and liked to make out in fast food restaurant toilets, she got a Passover chocolate torte recipe. And from a neighbor she never dated, but who rarely failed to satisfy his dates, she got a "morning after" coitus coffee cake recipe.

Henry, who planned to lose his virginity in high school with one of the authors, made some nice buckwheat pancakes in the morning; from a young Iowa dental student who she met picking apples, well at least attempting to pick ones (who proposed marriage after 3 weeks), an author got a cottage cheese pancakes recipe; from Ralph, she got popcorn cake, made of popped corn and gumdrops and peanuts and M&M's; and from some masked man at a Halloween Party, she got a banana choco chip cake recipe (they threw a banana focused party in their banana yellow house one October, and he gave her this recipe the next morning). Lemon Lush is a lemon pudding, cool whip and cream cheese mixture atop a flour crust that she got from a guy who kissed her passionately in the bathroom at a drunken wedding. They later corresponded but when they met again, she realized that reality, weddings, memories, and literary letters do not always converge. Eli, for whom she had to buy $20 worth of extra large condoms, gave her his tossed spicy vegetables recipe

Although most of the recipes are for snacks, soups, dips, drinks, salads and simple items, there are a few larger dishes. They include Thai Tom Yum Goong from a fellow Peace Corps volunteer, and Ezra's Sticky Chicken, marinated in vinegar, sugar, and soy sauce, with whom she got splinters on a decaying dock in a pond one day.

The book feeds your stomach as well as your desire to be a voyeur

I came across this book in my daughter's kitchen while visiting her in Oregon. I found myself reading the whole thing during the course of our one-week visit, but it was after I had copied out the third recipe (these are two unusual acts for me, reading whole cookbooks and copying recipes) that I realized another copy of the book deserved to be bought. For good recipes covering a wide terrain, and for short, honest perspectives on a lot of different relationships, it's an excellent book. And I'll admit: I'm far from a saint, but it is nice to be able to read about other guys and occasionally think "well, gee, at least I never did THAT!"

Thisbe Nissen and Erin Ergenbright have really come upon a great idea for a book! The premise is great, their stories are fun, the recipes look great and the collage-illustrations add to the charm of this book. I have not yet tried these recipes, but they appeal to me, as a mother of two young children, because they seem relatively straight forward and only ask for a limited number of ingredients. I also appreciated the running commentary in the recipes, both for its entertainment value and because they seem to warn readers about potential issues that may arise when cooking these recipes. The authors' writing style is casual and humorous, making it a thoroughly enjoyable read. I definitely recommend this book both for its recipes and because it really is a great idea! I look forward to future books by this duo!

I've read the reviews, and I think some of you completely missed the point of the book. It is not supposed to be a deep novel of some sort. Nor is it supposed to be a gormet cookbook. It is a cute, fun book that combines the two biggest passions of women: men and food. It's just meant to make you smile.

Thisbe Nissen graduated from the writer's workshop at the University of Iowa. For those of you who don't know, this workshop is higly respected and highly competitive. Writers such as Kurt Vonnegut taught there. So, Thisbe Nissen is no stranger to critiques and if she were a terrible writer there is no way she would have been admitted to such an elite program. To those of you who haven't read the book and are just reading the reviews, don't be fooled by what some people have posted. Thisbe Nissen and Erin Ergenbright are beautiful writiers. If you are looking for a book to make you crack a smile or even make you laugh a little, give it a shot. At the very least you'll end up with some simple, tasty treats.

The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook: They Came, They Cooked, They Left (But We Ended Up with Some Great Recipes)Men and boys and women and girls and lovers of every stripe come and go, often leaving nothing but memories. In "The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook" the authors strike a blow for a more tangible kind of remembering: flavor. The taste of tarragon will always remind me of Michael, and I'm certain you have gustatory correlations of your own. The ex-boyfriend recipes result in delicious food, true, but they also provide a delicious frisson of naughty identification as we find ourselves and our pasts in the pages. We've all known one of these guys, and we've all loved a cookie or a burrito or a soup made late at night, post-love and pre-break-up. I laughed at my own memories as I read the authors', and then I made the food and found it good. The boys are lost but not forgotten, living on in the recipes that proved more enduring than the relationship, and you will benefit -- spiritually and physically -- from the food they left behind them.

The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook is a delightful read. Funny, smart and well written. The book combines great stories with tasty recipes. I'm glad I came across it and I'll be giving it as a gift this year.

I had fun skimming through the stories and making some of the recipes. It was not intended to be great literature or a novel in any way. Just recipes with anecdotes and nothing more. Some of the stories are fun...and some are just plain weird. But the recipes are nice, I've made a few and they were tasty. Even if you don't derive any pleasure from the passages accompanying each recipe, you can enjoy trying a new dish. I don't know why everyone else seems to take such umbrage with it...there's nothing more to be read into it then what is presented.