This Disney Children's Cookbook is Exactly the Right Level for My Kitchen Skills

The Disney Villains Cookbook by Walt Disney Company
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am 49 years old, with what is apparently the cooking skill of someone at least 40 years younger, because this children's cookbook was EXACTLY my speed.

And I didn't even know that it was a cookbook for children when I checked it out of the library. What that says about me, I do not care to explore. But although I am mostly disinterested in cooking (if someone ever invents a middle-aged human chow with all the vitamins and nutrients needed by a perimenopausal woman, sold in 50-pound bags with instructions on the side about what size scoop you should dish out per meal, I will be incandescently happy and my life will immediately become 1000% easier), I DO love myself some thematically-appropriate novelty foods, and I thought this book might snooker me into actually, you know, using my stove this week.

Especially with the excuse to eat my dinner in front of a movie!

Alas for that last part, because this book's only flaw for me is that the recipes are VERY loosely associated with the Disney villain each claims to represent. I'll give it a point for the Spotted Scones to represent Cruella de Vil, because okay, chocolate chips are a cute idea for dalmatian spots and the book/movie IS set in England... but they don't actually represent Cruella, just the concept of the film. An actual Cruella recipe would be something like a black and white cookie. And the Black and White Bean Salad that comes later in the book and is also supposed to represent Cruella doesn't work, either, because black beans aren't really black.

The two recipes that my partner and I tried have even looser connections to their Disney villains. You're supposed to cut the Baguette Breakfast Beaks into triangles to represent Maleficent's raven familiar, but other than the fact that it's kind of gross to make an egg dish to symbolize a bird, cutting it into triangles is literally the only connection. And a baguette cut into triangles doesn't look like beaks? Captain Hook's Stuffed Shells is even worse, because even though the description notes that "Captain Hook and his crew would no doubt appreciate a warm plate of this ocean-themed dish," the absolute only ocean-themed part of it is the jumbo pasta shells. No nori, no seafood, no ocean colors, no crumbly textures to represent sand... just baked pasta with jumbo pasta shells.

Y'all, my grown-up autistic ass can barely accept this as even remotely on-theme. There's no way you're going to get a kid with any kind of neurological pathways to buy into it.

HOWEVER... the two recipes that my partner and I tried were DELICIOUS. And SIMPLE. And infinitely repeatable in a menu rotation. And super easy to riff on with whatever ingredients you have on hand.

The best part, though, is that the recipes are so clear and intuitive that you just have to make them while looking at the recipe exactly once, and then you can make them forever. The baguette bake is just beaten eggs, whatever veggies sound good, and a bunch of cheese baked in a hollowed-out baguette. I threw in some diced peppers and onion and chopped spinach and halved cherry tomatoes, my partner added bacon because otherwise he wouldn't be able to recognize the meal as food, and he and I killed an entire baguette's worth between the two of us. The stuffed shells is just a carton of ricotta, a beaten egg, whatever veggies and herbs sound good, and a bunch more mozzarella and parmesan layered casserole-style with cooked pasta and marinara sauce and baked. I threw in a ton of sauteed kale from my garden along with scallions and a shocking amount of fresh parsley, my partner added sausage, and my only regret is not going even harder on the greens because my partner and I FEASTED!

Seriously--if this is what cooking is actually like, then I can actually do it, and I actually enjoy it!

We watched Ted Lasso while we ate our stuffed shells, though, because that recipe is absolutely NOT Peter Pan-themed.

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