I recently picked up this vegan cookbook, free from the office: Please Don’t Feed the Bears by Asbjorn Intonsus (Microcosm, $9). Once I got it home and presented it to my vegetarian boyfriend, we opened it and found out that it’s a metal-themed vegan cookbook. Each recipe has a suggested metal album that you should listen to while cooking, and many of the recipes have cute metal names: Green Hell Sauce (recommended listening: Celtic Frost’s To Mega Therion), Extreme Noise Teriyaki Kabobs (Abruptum’s Obscuritatem Advoco Amplectere Me), and Dehumanization Roast (Necro Schizma’s Erupted Evil). Extreme Noise Teriyaki Kabobs—that’s hilarious! (According to AK Press’s website, this cookbook is similar to Soy, Not “Oi!”—a punk-rock vegan cookbook.)

This is a well-rounded cookbook, with appetizers, entrées, desserts, side dishes, drinks (including homemade soy milk and teas), breads, and miscellaneous items, like power(violence) bars, cheeses, dog biscuits, cough syrup, teeth whitener, wheat paste, a homemade tattoo gun.

There’s also an impossible metal crossword puzzle. Some sample questions:

“Pisen Pro Satana” from Root has essentially the same guitar line as the guitar line from what Bathory song?

The drummer on Death’s Scream Bloody Gore LP later went on to form what band?

What was the full, longer name that Slayer initially considered using?

Uh… what? I obviously don’t know the intricacies of metal. But, I was able to correctly answer one question:

What does NWOBHM stand for?
New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, motherfucker!

I thought I knew the answer to “What was the demo version of Metallica’s ‘Four Horsemen’ called?”—but I looked it up later, and I was wrong. (It’s “The Mechanix.”)

So far we’ve only tried two recipes: Don’t Tread on Me Tofu Loaf (we did not listen to Militia’s Regiment of Death) and Burned Up, Bled Dry Bacon (we did not listen to Flames of Hell’s Fire and Steel).

The tofu loaf was pretty good, but not stellar. My boyfriend added some veggie broth to it, fearing it would be too dry, but that ended up making it a bit too moist. The finished product had the consistency and taste of stuffing, which I detest. I cooked up a vegan gravy I’d found a recipe for last Thanksgiving; pouring that all over the tofu loaf made it better.

The bacon, also made with tofu, was tasty. We’ve made this twice: once for BLTs, and once with waffles and a tofu scramble. It’s somewhat similar in taste to store-bought veggie bacon, and the key ingredient is liquid smoke. The recipe calls for nutritional yeast as well, but we didn’t have any of that; it might’ve made it even better.

There’s an “interview” with Carcass at the end, which is actually just questions and answers compiled from other Carcass interviews, and there are lots of little stories and philosophical blurbs. Very zinelike.

We’re looking forward to making a chocolate tofu pie.