Cooking with Poo!

This book is called Cooking With Poo. Yes, "Poo" is Thai for "crab" and it's also author Saiyuud Diwong's nickname. But this book is called Cooking With Poo. Heh heh. Heh. It's on the shortlist for The Bookseller's Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year. Here are the others:

A Century of Sand Dredging in the Bristol Channel: Volume Two by Peter Gosson (Amberley). A book that documents the sand trade from its inception in 1912 to the present day, focusing on the Welsh coast.

Estonian Sock Patterns All Around the World by Aino Praakli (Kirjastus Elmatar). Covers styles of socks and stockings found in Estonian knitting.

The Great Singapore Penis Panic: And the Future of American Mass Hysteria by Scott D Mendelson (Createspace). An analysis of the “Koro” psychiatric epidemic that hit the island of Singapore in 1967.

Mr Andoh's Pennine Diary: Memoirs of a Japanese Chicken Sexer in 1935 Hebden Bridge by Stephen Curry and Takayoshi Andoh (Royd Press). The story of Koichi Andoh, who travelled from Japan to Yorkshire in the 1930s to train workers at a hatchery business the art of determining the sex of one-day-old chicks.

A Taxonomy of Office Chairs by Jonathan Olivares (Phaidon). Exhaustive overview of the evolution of the modern office chair. The Mushroom in Christian Art by John A Rush (North Atlantic Books). In which the author reveals that Jesus is a personification of the Holy Mushroom, Amanita Muscaria.

"Diagram Prize shortlist revealed"

• [Bronwen Culhane]

  She’s not the first!
  http://www.amazon.com/Cooking-Pooh-Cookie-Cutters-Adventures/dp/1570822611

• [niktemadur]

  It must be said and posted, Kids In The Hall, “The Poo Guy”:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhSEXNqAw-8

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  This week, on a very special episode of Iron Chef…

• [lectroid]

   A Century of Sand Dredging in the Bristol Channel: Volume Two — This time, it’s personal.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    I would have gone with :Hydraulic Boogaloo.

• [RJ]

  Imagine Thai crab cooked with exotic, Ghanan pepper sauce. I bet it would taste pretty good, but nobody would ever ask for it by name.

  • [Paul Renault]

    This guy might:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Trailer_Park_Boys_characters#.22Shitty.22_Bill

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Don’t forget to wash it down with a steaming plateful cupful of civet coffee.

• [Tweeting Technology]

  But will it ever beat cooking with semen? 
  http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/natural-harvest—a-collection-of-semen-based-recipes/5198959

• [Kim alexander]

  Holy cats! I have this book and I took Poo’s excellent cooking class in Bangkok in January! She’s working hard to improve her life and the lives of her fellow slum dwellers and is a lovely person. For those who want some easy to follow delicous recipes, all the ingredients can be found in your local Asian grocery store. I cooked with Poo and I liked it!

• [intergalacticSpartacus]

  The proper pronunciation is more like “bpoo”. B and P together.  Too bad. Thai food rules.  

  • [แอ็ะปปี้]

    That’s one of the more common romanizations. The Thai word is ปู, the ป is an unaspirated and unvoiced alvealor stop- ie a “p” without the air puff. (the p in “spin” is the typical example.)

    Spoken, it really sounds nothing like english “poo”. (Google translate now reads Thai out- try it!)

• [Ek1m]

  It’s pronounced P-HOO.

• [schmaltastic]

  OMG, Koro! What kinds of culture-bound syndromes are we subject to without even knowing how bat-shit-crazy they are to other cultures? The mind reels.

• [Mariana Hubbard]

  The knitting book doesn’t seem so strange to me (being a knitter). Is it weird because it says ‘Estonian’ AND ‘around the world’ in the same sentence? >_>

  • [lolarusa]

     I, too, wondered why that was on the list. The books about penis panic and office chairs also just sound like informative books. Surely there are stranger titles than these to be found?

• [Mike Fine]

  I live in Bangkok and have taken her class. She is a delightful lady who has used her ingenuity to create a charity to help her neighbors and the children of Bangkok. The recipes are excellent and if you purchase it, a portion goes to her “Helping Hands” charity. Just so everyone is aware, Thai does not translate directly into English. They use a different alphabet which is phonetic. Thus, “Poo” is simply one way to spell it. It could easily be spelled “pu” or “Phu.”  Poo, herself, recognizes the humor in her name and how we “Farang” interpret it and has capitalized on it. You can purchase aprons from her stating that “I cooked with Poo and I liked it.”

• [John Maher]

  http://www.cookingwithpoo.com

  Khun Poo is thrilled to have recently launched her first cookbook ‘Cooking with Poo’ which includes over 100 pages of her delicious recipes, glossy pictures and also wonderful stories about her neighbours and the Klong Toey community.

  By purchasing this book you will be assisting the Helping Hands team support and fight against the cycle of poverty faced by so many men, women and children living in Klong Toey.