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So fashion! Wow. Such style! Very haute! Amaze.

Here at the Quirk HQ, we love the hilarious, grammatical disaster that is the "doge" meme. And by we, I mean myself, editorial assistant Blair Thornburgh, and frequent Quirk blogger Brian Morrell. True story, Brian's favorite doges in literature post is a treasured piece of writing that is referenced weekly via Gchat. 

This April, Quirk is proud to be publishing Haute Dogs by Russell van Kraayyenburg. Full of fancy and appropriately "haute" hot dog recipes, it's just a great cookbook packed with amazing recipes and beautiful food photography. And we'd like to give you a chance to win a copy, in the silliest way possible.

We'd like you to Photoshop your own Haute Doge, and send it over to us here at Quirk! Take the wonderful doge we all know and love, and make that puppy look as fashionable and hip as possible. You can email us your hilarious image (to [email protected]) or tweet it to @QuirkBooks. We'll pick our five favorites on March 10th, post them here on the blog, and send you an early copy of Haute Dogs! 

Note: You can grab the original photo over at Know Your Meme. 

Good luck! Be amaze! 

The Super Bowl may be America’s greatest unofficial holiday. An entire day devoted to eating, drinking, and watching TV with friends and family. Could there be a more American day?

Super Bowl Sunday is the largest food consumption event of the year, trailing only Thanksgiving. It’s so treasured that over 130 million Americans will spend over $55 million dollars on food for the Super Bowl. That’s a lotta chips and guacamole, as in over 15,000 tons of chips and 50 millions pounds of avocadoes.

A good Super Bowl party will have chips and guacamole. A great Super Bowl party will have several chips ‘n dips. One of them should be this Spicy Black Bean Dip. Here’s why: It’s simple to make. It’s vegetarian, which means you can eat more of it while still feeling virtuous. And most importantly, it’s chunky, making it supremely scoop-able with chips.

Happy Thanksgiving from your pals at Quirk Books.

Today is World Vegetarian Day. Like many vegetarians (I suppose), I don’t often think about the fact that I’ve given up eating meat. After a while, what was once a life-altering decision becomes second nature…like anything that you do every day, opting out of meat-eating is just one blip in the background noise of your life. So this day is an opportunity for those of us who are vegetarians to revisit that choice, and reconnect with whatever motivations put us on the path to a meat-free lifestyle.

People choose vegetarianism for different reasons, of course. I would guess that ethical concerns are the driving factor in most cases. But extricating oneself from a predator/prey relationship with other living things is not the only possible motivation. For some, a desire—or even a necessity—to protect one’s health can is a powerful reason to eliminate meat from the menu. It’s certainly possible to consume high and unhealthy levels of fat, salt, and calories even while maintaining a vegetarian diet, but combining vegetarian food choices with basic healthy eating habits can be a potent means of lowering one’s risk of many chronic health problems.

And an increasing number of people consider vegetarianism as a critical option for reducing the energy drain, carbon footprint, and waste production that industrial-scale animal husbandry impresses upon our increasingly crowded planet. In terms of efficiency, producing plant-based food is a much more practical use of the resources that a rising, energy-hungry global population demands.

However they come to the decision, many people find that transitioning to a vegetarian diet turns out to be an easier experience than they anticipated. Nevertheless, there are challenges. In my own case, the switch was fraught with particular difficulties. Having been raised as a cannibal, I expect that I struggled with more obstacles than most.

I know how that sounds, but referencing my cannibal upbringing isn’t intended as a brag, or some sort of badge of authenticity. To be honest, the current cannibalism revival that’s cropped up in some hipster circles holds no interest for me (in fact, it strikes me as shallow, trendy posturing not likely to result in widespread acceptance). In my family, cannibalism wasn’t some kind of statement about the anonymity of modern culture, or a means of pushing the boundaries of propriety. It was just the way things were. If, say, Sunday dinner happened to include roast mailman foot, or some breaded elbows, that was no more significant to us than the baked potatoes or string beans. (Though it was also no less significant…even all these years later, the though of my mother’s breaded elbows still makes my mouth water.)

At this point, I feel the need to clear up a few misconceptions about cannibalism. Firstly, and contrary to what you may have read on certain blogs, cooked human flesh is delicious. Many vegetarians downplay the appeal of eating meat, but I think in most cases that’s disingenuous. Just because you choose not to eat meat, that doesn’t mean you can’t acknowledge its gustatory appeal. Steak tastes good, hamburgers taste good. And braised abs of office worker, or a plate of fettuccini with fennel and firefighter fingers…man, those taste really good. Of course, a lot of the flavor is in the preparation. And my mom was an old-school home cook, from the era of liberal use of butter, cream, salt, eyelids… She was raised with the idea that it was a mom’s job to fatten up her kids, mostly by feeding them human fat. I cringe when I think of how many calories and how much cholesterol must have been in mom’s lips-hips-cheese-and-noodles casserole.

So many of our early memories are connected to the foods we ate growing up that becoming a vegetarian can sometimes feel like turning one’s back on one’s own history and traditions. It wasn’t easy for me to reject the turkey dinner that’s so closely tied to our Thanksgiving feasts when all my relatives gathered, enjoying each others’ company as much as the meal. Or the appendix stew that my father always insisted on for his birthday dinner (he was a man of simple pleasures). Food connects us to trivial memories, too. I sometimes wish I could taste again the bland but comforting flavor of the baloney sandwiches my mother made for my grade school lunches, or the greasy take-out chicken we brought with us on summer picnics, or the salty texture of my little brother’s arm as we gnawed on each other to work up an appetite before dinner.

Of course, not all food memories are fond ones. To put another myth to rest, being raised on cannibal cuisine doesn’t mean you enjoy every recipe in the cookbook. I was never a big fan of earlobes, and it didn’t help that my mother would boil them until they sagged limply on the plate like morose jellyfish. Fortunately my older sister loved them, so I could always flip a few her way when mom was back at the stove stirring the sauce. (She would return the favor whenever my mother got ambitious and attempted our Grandma’s recipe for Broiled Radio Announcer Tongue. My sister hated it, but I could never get enough. There’s something about the taste of something that has its own taste buds which I still miss to this day.)

Once, when I was struggling the most with giving up the cookery of my youth, something occurred to me: All of us start out as cannibals. It’s the only truly universal cuisine. Because when you’re in the womb, you pretty much have no choice about it. Afterwards, unless you’re put on formula, you continue the practice for a while longer. Yet even when you move on to mushed squash and peas, you can’t help but suck your own thumb when that craving for human meat kicks in. Or occasionally clamp your jaws around somebody’s finger, even if your baby teeth can’t break the skin. Despites such strong instincts, most people stop eating people at a very young age and don’t look back. And I reasoned that if so many could give up what was, to me, the most delicious food source of all, than so could I.

So if you’re struggling with the decision to give up eating animal meat, consider this. You’ve already given up eating your fellow human beings, and most of them are far more flavorful than any animal could ever be. And in many cases, far more deserving of being eaten.

Hey there Quirk fans! Welcome to the Quirk DIY Book Club!

I’m excited to announce this exciting new feature here on the Quirk Books blog. What are we doing? Well, every month we’re going to select a book from our library of fun DIY titles, from cookbooks to craftbooks, and do two very awesome things with that title.

ONE. It’ll be featured in our new Quirk Perks promotion, which will offer up a monthly eBook for $3.99 across all digital platforms. Grab it for your Kindle, Nook, iPad, whatever!

TWO. We’ll be giving away copies of that book here, and encouraging you to join in various challenges and contests. How can you join the fun? It’s easy.

The first book in the Quirk DIY Book Club is Breakfast for Dinner by Lindsay Landis and Taylor Hackbarth. You can snag one of TEN free copies by entering the Rafflecopter below. Winners will receive a copy of the book, and will be encouraged to send in photos of their recipes, which we will post here on the Quirk blog at the end of September. You’ll also be invited to pin along with us on our Pinterest page.

Our favorite submission in September will win a mini Quirk Books cookbook library. Pick five of our books, they’re yours!

We’re encouraging fun and creativity. Feel free to show us your own take on a recipe in the book, create a Breakfast for Dinner party, or just shoot some beautiful photographs.

Go ahead and enter the Rafflecopter below to enter to win a copy. Winners will be notified via email, and will be sent a copy of the book to join in the fun. Didn’t win the giveaway? You can still pick up Breakfast for Dinner for $3.99, and play along. This includes the amazing enhanced version of the book, which you can grab in the Apple iBookstore.

Be sure to like Quirk DIY on Facebook and follow the community on Twitter (@QuirkDIY). It’s the only way you’ll learn about the cookbook club, and about our awesome new deals!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

We're psyched to announce our new Quirk Perks program!

Starting this month, we're going to be dishing out monthly deals on an array of our books, from science fiction to cookbooks, horror novels to craftbooks, all from our communties Planet Quirk and Quirk DIY.

The plan? Two eBooks a month, one in each community. You'll be able to get these eBooks through the retailer of your choice. Your Kindle, Nook, iPad, whatever! 

You'll be able to find these individual monthly deals via our Quirk Books communities, Quirk DIY and Planet Quirk, so be sure you're following them on Twitter and Facebook. 

Quirk DIY: Twitter + Facebook

Planet Quirk: Twitter + Facebook

So what's on tap for the first batch of Quirk Perks? Check it out! 

BREAKFAST FOR DINNER by Lindsay Landis and Taylor Hackbarth ($3.99): Inside Breakfast for Dinner you’ll find more than 100 classic breakfast recipes made with a twist. Enjoy hearty dishes like Bacon Fried Rice, Breakfast Ravioli, Pizza over Easy, and Cornmeal Pancakes with Beer-Braised Short Ribs—to name just a few.

This cookbook is a breakfast lover’s dream come true. Note, that this promotion also includes the incredible enhanced eBook edition of Breakfast for Dinner, available in the Apple iBookstore. 

AMAZON / BARNES & NOBLE / IBOOKSTORE / INDIEBOUND

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PRIDE & PREJUDICE & ZOMBIES by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen ($3.99): The New York Times bestselling mashup that launched a literary genre, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. 

As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton-and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy.

What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers-and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead.

AMAZON / BARNES & NOBLE / IBOOKSTORE / INDIEBOUND / KOBO