A Recipe for Success



Prominently displayed in the children’s section of the Houston Downtown Public Library, among several others of the same title, My First Cookbook appears as a run-of-the-mill children’s cookbook, complete with large print, simple instructions, colorful, friendly illustrations and a somewhat disproportionate dessert section.

In fact, the only major deviation from this theme is an article near the end of the book entitled "A Recipe for Success”.

This is a complex, macabre ritual involving human sacrifice, self-mutilation and sacrilege, as well as more curious and innocuous practices, such as walking down a staircase with a prime number of stairs taking them two at a time and then up it taking them three at a time.

It’s written in the same cheerfully simple prose as the rest of the book and accompanied by the same helpful, pastel drawings.