Life is hard. Some days are at the absolute limit of what we can manage. Some days are worse than that. Eating—picking a meal, making it, putting it into your facehole—can feel like an insurmountable challenge. We wrote this cookbook to share our coping strategies. It has recipes to make when you’ve worked a 16-hour day, when you can’t stop crying and you don’t know why, when you accidentally woke up an Eldritch abomination at the bottom of the ocean. But most of all, this cookbook exists to help Sad Bastards like us feel a little less alone at mealtimes.

The Sad Bastard Cookbook is funny, realistic, and kind. It’s vegetarian/vegan. It’s a community-built project. And the e-book is free. It’s hard to survive late capitalism and we want to help.

Want an e-copy? Newsletter subscribers get the PDF copy so sign up and enjoy! Plus, the newsletter has monthly pictures of our cats. Sometimes our dogs and our fish. But mostly cats.

Want an e-copy and hate newsletters? After months of effort and many tears, Rysz Merey, certified genius, found a way. Two ways, actually! First, you can get a copy on the indie site Itch.io. He offered to host our e-book on his press’ s Itch site, so we can get the sweet, sweet algorithmic boost when people download a copy. The algorithim puts it in front of more people’s eyes, more people eat food and don’t die, good is achieved in this world.

Want a print copy? Unfortunately, the pervasive nature of capitalism means we’re selling print copies for money. We live in a society.

Want a print copy and or capitalism? We’re not the biggest fans either. Subscribe to the newsletter, download the free pdf, and print it. We’re cool with that. We made it legal with Creative Commons (4.0 attribution non-commercial), but if you get a thrill from breaking the law, you can pretend it’s not.

Want to help us make The Sad Bastard Cookbook a success? Work with us to game the book-recommendation algorithms so more people see the cookbook in their suggested “To Read” books. Leave us a review Goodreads or Storygraph (or anywhere else). The algorithms rate reviews higher than anything else, so saying what you honestly thought of the book is incredibly valuable to us—and to other readers. It’s one of the best things you can do to promote our work.

Want an amazing editor for your own project? Victoria Rose (she/her) is an editor, writer, avid reader, self-described geek, and fan of all things creative. You can find her at FlickeringWords.com. Lindsay Hobbs (she/her) is a book lover, fiction editor, occasional writer, and cat mom. You can find her at topazliterary.com. We had a truly wonderful experience working with both of them. Their eye for detail was incredible, and they knew how to change our words without changing our meaning. Most of all, they believed in the project and they treated our work with love. If you need an editor for your writing project, you should see if either of them have an opening.

Want to hear us get sappy? The Sad Bastard Cookbook was the work of the community coming together. From professional editors volunteering their time, to complete strangers suggesting recipes, it was truly a wonderful experience to create something meaningful with so many of you. We hope it help you find food you can eat, and helps you know that you are loved. Please, take care of yourself.

Content notes for The Sad Bastard Cookbook: Mental and physical illness, disordered eating, and dark humour throughout, as well as occasional mentions of alcohol, swearing, and political references. If you have specific food triggers, some recipes may be unpalatable to you.