A Cookbook for Millennials: And Literally Anyone Else but IDK If the Jokes Will Make Sense Sorry :(

by Caleb Couturie, Benj Zeller (Illustrator)

Look, your parents can’t cook for you forever and you can’t have every meal delivered!

Is avocado toast your primary food group? Do you own a small family of succulents? Do you suck at cooking but thrive at brunch? Well, you might be a millennial who would enjoy this cookbook. You might not even be a millennial! That’s okay. You’ll get more than 30 delicious recipes that anyone can easily conquer. Buy now! Or don’t. No pressure.

Genres: Cookbooks, Nonfiction, Humor

64 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2020

Reviews

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you bought this for the recipes, I'm sorry! This is definitely a coffee table type book for people to thumb through when bored 😂 Relatable and funny for millennials!

[Emily✨ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Picked this up at the library to look through because the subtitle made me laugh. Unfortunately, that's about the only funny part of this ""cookbook"" that's more like a bad joke book. The ""recipes"" are the ultra-simplistic stuff (scrambled eggs, grilled cheese, four ingredient pasta) for only the most kitchen-impaired, but the text is not actually written in such a way to be helpful to that kind of person who honestly struggles. There's a page for pancakes that reads: "Just buy pancake mix."

In conclusion: not a real cookbook. Not even a good farce book. Waste of time and money.

[Cee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I laughed, cried from laughing too hard, and actually learned things?? This may not be surprising because this is technically a cookbook, but sure as hell was since the first recipe in this book is for cereal. Cue more of my laughter.
Also, if more recipes online wrote like this I’d probably read them more haha. And while the instructions are not super involved, I think they are enough for us all to get it.
I loved the jokes, love the images, the recipes made me hungry, and I had a good time reading this. What more do you want from a cookbook??

[Harris · Rating 2 out of 5]

If this slim humor book had been published ten years ago, it would probably have been called The Hipster Cookbook and the jokes would have been identical, aside from a handful of meme references here and there. The author, in spite of sitting on the generational border between millennial and gen z, deals in basically one joke, the perennially popular “young people are immature and impractical and need a little guidance to be functioning adults,” never mind that most “millennials” are in their thirties by this point.

At least, in this case, the joke is mostly inoffensive if not often that funny, and the culinary advice given for affordable and simple fare that all adults should know is not very interesting. The recipes themselves could have been a lot funnier or more topical- in spite of a reference to the always popular avocado toast stereotype, there isn’t even a recipe for it included!* You could joke, that it’s so simple it doesn't even need a recipe, but the book starts out with a jokey recipe for a bowl of cereal. Mostly, the recipes are pretty boring- scrambled eggs, grilled cheese, lasagna, New York strip steak, with only the gonzo “diabetes brownies” standing out. It’s basically what your boomer parents would give you on handwritten notepaper when you get your first apartment along with some mild snark. Possibly helpful for a beginner, but I feel that there are a lot more helpful options for cooking advice.

*here’s my attempt- you’ve flirted with veganism to have less of a carbon footprint and avocados will soon be impossible to come by anyway due to global warming, so go nuts. Evolved to sate the giant ground sloth, the creamy green fruit is a great complement to crunchy bread, gluten free or full gluten. Get the seedy bread from your local artisan bakery (you know the one) and if you go there after six yesterday’s bread is basically free. Slice your avocados up or smash them, you do you. If you’re feeling fancy, sprinkle on some olive oil and/or red pepper flakes. Think about crushing debt and how a mildly luxurious breakfast is the only thing getting you through the day.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, look. As an Elder Millennial (miss me with that “geriatric” shit…where my fellow Xennials aka Oregon Trails at?), I was about to get all territorial about some dude WHO WAS BORN IN 1996 appropriating my generation. Like…he’s so hard on the cusp of nearly being Gen Z, I’m still a bit miffed.

On top of that, there are zero pictures of any of the recipes. Just some drawings. And not even really good drawings. The recipes are simplistic (at best) and I haven’t cooked this way in nearly 15 years (TOLD YOU I’m part of the elder cohort and we be hitting our 40s in case you missed that memo).

However.

This book had me lol’ing in spite of myself. If there’s one thing millennials of any age know, it’s how to laugh thru the pain. And most recent historical event we find ourselves once again being shafted by.

[Sarah Cawlfield · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author thought he was much funnier than he is, and nothing with a diabetes joke in it is ever going to get more than 2 stars for me.

Also, I thought this would be kind of a cute, nostalgic book, but the audience he's talking to would likely be more in their early 20s. Millennials are 40 now.

[Bobbi Galvin · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you need the basics of basics, this is perfect. If you have been in the kitchen, you won't need this at all, though.

[Angela Beltz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious! If you are a parent of a millennial it is a hoot. There is a lot of cursing, just an FYI.

[Shannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was promised millennial jokes and I don't feel like this book really delivered. It would make for a cute graduation gift for a young person in your life, so there's that. Definitely more of a gag gift than anything substantive.

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

So funny! Most recipes are basic but they're all hilarious and I will definitely be excited to make some of them.

[Jacquelyn Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely hilarious. And the recipes weren't bad either lol.

[Abi · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I was looking through digital catalogs, as one does when one must purchase books for a library, and I stumbled across this title and thought, “lol that looks funny. We should get that. Also I should read that.” Because, it is true, you see. I am a millennial. Maybe. I fall right on that line where they start to split millennials from gen z and no sociologist can seem to agree upon where the generational divide is, so sometimes they say I’m a millennial and sometimes I’m gen z. So of course, needing a definitive answer, I turned to a bunch of Buzzfeed quizzes, and at the time they had an even number of “gen z vs millennial” quizzes, and I somehow got an even split down the middle so that I had equal results for each generation, so honestly I have no clue what generation I am, but still... Read the full review here

[LaCreasha · Rating 2 out of 5]

2/2.5
A beginner cookbook with very simple recipes. I did like the layout - colorful, easy-to-read and approachable. It tried too hard to be funny though.

[Addie Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’re not a millennial, don’t have a superior sense of (millennial) humor, or are literally looking for a luxurious fine dining cookbook…then don’t bother picking this book up. You’ll thoroughly be disappointed and give it an undeserved 2 stars all because you couldn’t comprehend how simply great this book is for millennials and below lmao.

Just buying and skimming this book has brought me so much joy, and I’m excited to try cooking the easy meals (SPOILER: except soup :/ ). Shoutsout to Caleb🤝 don’t listen to the boomers’ and Karens’ low ratings!!