Binging with Babish

I started writing this blog, hopelessly, almost four years ago. It has gone through many quiet periods, and for the most part, it remains a somewhat hopeless venture that I do in my freetime to fill the creative void. I often feel like the only people reading this are my parents and my in-laws, and that nothing I do that involves my passions really matters to anyone else but me and the man who gets to eat the fruits of these passions, my husband. I’ve never once received a Google Ads check. I have no patrons on patreon. The only person to ever send me a coffee on Kofi was my mother-in-law.

But this is not a blog post for me to bemoan the state of my hobby. I mention these things because there are people like me out in the world who DID make it work, and this cookbook is from one of those people: Andrew Rea. January 2020 opens with the cookbook of the month, Binging with Babish. You may recall that I mentioned this youtube channel during my food media series a few years ago, and while his success was already cemented then, he’s got a new book out.

I’ve admired Andrew Rea for a long time. He shows up every week with two videos about things that he loves, and the people have responded to it. He goes out of his way to improve the lives of his friends and family in his somewhat newer series ‘Being with Babish’. He uses every ounce of his good fortunes and hard work to the benefit of others, admirable in every way. I was leaving the Delmarva area when he went through Philly for his book tour, and I wish I had been able to meet him.

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I watch his videos every week. I remember the Traeger Turkey Burger that starts out his new book as his first recipe. I remember his video with Jon Favreau, who writes the forward for the book. Since the announcement of his cookbook with the title of his youtube channel, I waited with baited breath. Circumstances kept me from picking it up until this month, where we will be using it to help fortify our COOK90 attempts.

I have always wanted to recreate his recipes, but having this tome of 100 such recipes in front of me in print will make it much easier. January 2020 is the start of a new and better year full of light, hope, and good food. We’ll talk through the process of one of these recipes each week, either on their own or as part of our COOK90 weekly updates. If you want to cook along with us, you can get your copy of Binging with Babish on Amazon today, and if you don’t want to invest in the cookbook, there is always his amazing youtube channel to binge through on a cold Sunday afternoon.

The food of television is often ridiculous, so some of the recipes like the Bubble Bass Krabby Patty will obviously not be making an appearance in my kitchen. These are fun to read after seeing on the channel, but I neither have the money nor the friend pool in the city of Green Bay to kill a burger 24 patties high. We could, however, probably manage the fancy order in the book that’s clearly better for just two people (IE my husband and I).

The book, like the youtube channel, is an exercise in both absurdity and practicality. There appear to be recipes that touch on both principles for the fun of the home cook, and I look forward to cracking into a few for a real dinner and a few for a fun, weird Sunday afternoon at home. Check back at the end of the month to learn how the cookbook treated us during our COOK90 challenge in January.