Please Feed Me: A Punk Vegan Cookbook

by Niall McGuirk

Overview

A punk rock vegan cookbook featuring anecdotes from the bands that performed at the Hope Collective, a legendary venue in Dublin that became the blue print and inspiration for punk and DIY spaces across Ireland and the UK.

Featuring contributions from more than 120 people who donated their vegan recipes and thoughts on the importance of the punk rock community and culture, including stories from seminal punk banks such as Fugazi, Bikini Kill, and Chumbawamba, Please Feed Me uniquely illustrates the connections between community, art, activism and health. The thunderous subtext of the book is the vital underground community and network created and maintained by a collective of organizers and hundreds of musicians at a time when most punk bands were signing to major labels for the highest dollar amount. The book documents pieces of the stories of many popular US and international punk bands that continue to have a major influence on youth subcultures today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781932360097
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	11/04/2004
Edition description:	Uncut ed.
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Niall McGuirk is the author of Please Feed Me: A Punk Vegan Cookbook, a cookbook-cum-memoir. McGuirk is one of the founders of the Hope Collective, a popular punk venue in Dublin the author helped maintain for over a decade.

Editorial Reviews

Two vibrant countercultures collide to fizzling effect in this memoir/cookbook. McGuirk was one of the founders of the Hope Collective, a long-running Dublin community that promoted punk bands in the 1980s and '90s. The evolution of the Hope Collective and McGuirk's decision to go vegan seem born from the same activist impulse, and the author tries, through his recollections here, to focus a lens on a time in his life that was both revolutionary and spiritually nourishing. Yet for all the book's name-dropping (Fugazi, Bikini Kill and Chumbawamba were among the bands involved) the punk scene just doesn't come alive on the pages of this remembrance: there are few interesting anecdotes and a decided lack of a gritty, revolutionary spirit. It's a stretch to call this a cookbook, since the recipes take up less space than the photos and blow-by-blows of various shows. The dishes McGuirk shares, however, are simple, international comfort foods like Mixed Veg Noodles, Root Vegetable Soup with Greens, Vegan Tapenade, and Maple Sweet Potato Pudding. They aren't bad, considering that they were written by rockers instead of chefs, but foodies won't find anything truly inspired. In the end, only die-hard vegan punk-fans will be entertained-and that may be all the author intended. (Mar.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly