THE OFFICIAL ARMALITE COOKBOOK
Mike McKee is not a whiny vegan who pays X amount of dollars for overpriced faux-meat dishes. The office administrator at the First Unitarian Church, who also sings and plays guitar for punk band Armalite, knows how to cook. And his new all-vegan collection, The Official Armalite Cookbook, is not written in the wheedling style of culinary tomes you know and loathe, with complicated processes and five million rare ingredients. It comes at you instead as if you were McKee's preferred comrade. The 15-year vegetarian (vegan for the past five) picked up his cooking skills from former housemate Stefan Grudza, for whom the book was originally written. It was then released prematurely on an Internet message board, where demand inspired McKee to whip up polished official copies. (He sold 100 copies at Armalite's last show at $1 a pop.) With the current crop of sanctimonious vegan titles on sale at Barnes & Noble, the low-key humor of the cookbook sets it apart. Each recipe follows a theme and features "Mythfacts," tidbits that McKee throws in to lighten things up (e.g. a recipe for seitan-portobello stroganoff insists that the sauce helped Vikings enter "berserker mode, ensuring quick victory"). Has he thought about publishing it for real? "I'd like to expand it with recipes submitted from friends and circulate it amongst underground animal-rights groups," says McKee, who adds that distributing the book at the Wooden Shoe is a possibility. It makes sense — the intro reminds us that "punks stir counterclockwise." —Kelly White

------
If you're interested in getting your very own copy of the Official Armalite Cookbook, drop us a line to:
ARMALITE@CHEAP-ART.COM

  ...up your veggies!!!!