I was totally disappointed by this so-called “vegan cookbook” that everyone raves about. For one thing, it’s full of typos—they couldn’t even get the title right! My copy says Necronomicon instead of Veganomicon. I guess I can thank translator John Dee for that (who I’m guessing translated it from American English to British English?). It also came as a bundle of unbound, brittle, yellowing pages that smelled of mouldering tombs. Hardly the Like New condition I ordered.
Worst of all, most of the “recipes” in this book aren’t even vegan! For example, I tried the recipe for resurrecting the dead on a local vegan baker (killed when her cake shop collapsed in the middle). The recipe called for a quarter cup of the deceased’s ashes to make “essential saltes.” I substituted toasted coconut and the result was mixed. On the one hand, the baker arose as a gibbering, shambling horror that maimed three people before I could de-animate her, but on the other hand, she smelled fantastic.
Telepathy was one of the few actually-vegan recipes, but was basically useless. I read the mind of every vegan baker I knew of one night, and they were all either binge-watching TV, in the bathroom, or binge-watching TV in the bathroom. (I’d forgotten how good the last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation was.)
I found the recipe to incarnate Yog-Sothoth (also called the Beyond One, grandfather of Cthulhu) overly complicated, and Google didn’t help: “No results found for ‘vegan substitute for human sacrifice.’” Well, I once made a vegan turducken, so I felt up to the challenge.
Several failed attempts later, I once again found myself in a circle of obsidian stones on a hilltop at midnight. I hoped that switching my soy milk to unsweetened was enough of a sacrifice (it sure felt like it for this human).
I faced west and spoke an unlikely jumble of consonants into the wind. The light of the houses and stars winked out, and the sound of frogs and wind cut short. A cluster of undulating orbs appeared, crawling with blasphemous, unfamiliar colors. This was Yog-Sothoth, and his hatred for humanity enveloped me like an angry bubble bath.
“I have projected here, called by you from the unnameable space beyond the Dark. Why?”
I tasted blood and realized some of my teeth were loose. “I was wondering if you knew any good vegan cupcake recipes.”
Time stood still, and my sanity stretched as thin as spun sugar as Yog-Sothoth took me beyond the stars, showed me infinite alternate universes, and explained the importance of knowing my oven.
So, while I now know the best vegan cupcake recipe on this or any other possible planet, the process could have been more straightforward.
Overall: Two out of five stars.
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