For the lucky few of you who have never been exposed to Chicken Soup books, they are compilations of “heartwarming” real-life stories meant to inspire readers to do good in the world, believe in themselves, embrace friends and family, etc., etc. Chicken Soup has over 200 different titles, separated out by demographics such as “Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover’s Soul” or “Chicken Soup for Grandma’s Soul.” It’s easy to spot a Chicken Soup book. Just look for the mottled, colorful backgrounds, glaringly cheery photo stock pictures, and carbon-copy WordArt fonts that generally decorate the cover.

Chicken Soup’s website offers this rather drastic self-description:

Welcome to Chicken Soup for the Soul, a world leader in life improvement. We have been helping real people share real stories for fifteen years, bringing hope, courage, inspiration and love to hundreds of millions of people around the world. We hope our books and products touch your life in a similar way.

Hmmm…“a world leader in life improvement”? May want to be careful with that one. Anyway…

A caveat to readers: I am predisposed to hate Chicken Soup. My introduction to the series occurred during the first five sleep-ridden minutes of every junior high school day, where a lack of friends and alternate reading material on my homeroom teacher’s bookshelves lead me to crack open that initial book—a move I have since regretted. Blearily slogging my way through “heartfelt” story after “heartfelt” story in an effort to appear too cool to talk to people may have given my perception of the compilations a negative slant. Nevertheless, here are my top three reasons (there are many more, I assure you) for hating Chicken Soup for the Soul:

1.      The stories are depressing.

Nary can you find a Chicken Soup story does not include a death, illness, or some other tragic accident. Maybe I’m missing something here, but when one of your books is titled “Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Cancer Book,” I don’t exactly expect to find a wealth of good feeling there. There is a fine line between poignancy and blatant catastrophe, and Chicken Soup has crossed it. My heart feels anything but “warmed” after having to read about your 70-year-old grandma with cancer, your dog that got hit by a car, your brother who lost seven toes to frostbite in a tragic skiing accident, and your uncle who fell down a well and successfully called for help, only to tragically have his eye poked out with a garden rake by the rescue team.

2.      Jack Canfield has a dopey smile.

And he looks like he self-tans.

3.      The shameless self-promotion.

As you may have been able to tell from their self-description, the Chicken Soup team has a pretty high opinion of themselves. Granted, they are a franchise. It’s understood that the bottom line is to make a profit from you, not to enhance your soul. But they could be a little more subtle about it. Four pages of critical acclaim, a gold banner across the cover boasting their 8 million copies sold, and repeated proclamations of their (outdated) #1 status on the New York Times Bestseller List make my would-be “rekindled” soul is feelin’ a little exploited.

Not to mention that reading Chicken Soup makes me want to eat real chicken soup. Except by the time I’m done reading, I’m too depressed to eat anything. There must be something out there for me…aha! Here we have it: “Chicken Soup for the Grieving Soul.”

What about you guys? Do you read the book series (or know that it had a holiday)? If so, do you like it or hate it? If you have a loving history with the books, feel free to avenge them below.

So what is it? Well she calls it:

A time-traveling year in the American kitchen. It’s a quest for our edible beginnings and our drinkable histories. It’s a tour of food that fuels, comforts, seduces, and impresses – and then goes the way of the sparkling gelatin salad.

The goal? Over the course of a year, make all the recipes in the book American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classic Recipes, by Molly O’Neill. It’s a great blog, I hope you all take the time to check it out!

The authors of this new book were just on the Today Show on Tuesday. The premise seems to be just eat a tiny bit of what you like, and lots of spinach.

‘How to Eat Like a Hot Chick’

Hat tip to Jezebel.

“Edmund McIlhenny began bottling and selling E. McIlhenny Tabasco Pepper Sauce in the late 1860s. Some of the first bottles he sold were bought by Union soldiers still billeted in the South and enamored of the sauce that lent a dash of spice to bland Army rations.”

While I can see how Tabasco could tremendously improve the flavor of MRE’s in the 1860′s, I’m only a lukewarm fan of Tabasco, despite being a hot sauce fanatic. However, Robichaux’s article makes an interesting and valid point about why Tabasco sauce has prospered:

“The primary reason that Tabasco has dominated the hot-sauce category is the consistency of its flavor and spiciness. When I talked with Louisiana’s celebrated chef Paul Prudhomme for an article I wrote about McIlhenny Co. in this newspaper several years ago, he told me that other sauces could be unpredictably too hot–or too tart or too salty. ‘I may use 10 drops of Tabasco, but I can trust that 10 drops,’ Mr. Prudhomme said.”

This is logic I cannot argue with, as I have found Tabasco to be incredibly consistent, always tasting the same from batch to batch, which cannot be said about a lot of hot sauces. Robichaux goes on to note the sauce is still made the same way it was in the 1800′s:

“Though the company now offers several flavors of Tabasco, including a Sweet & Spicy variety, not much has changed about making the classic sauce over the past 138 years: hand-picked peppers a particular shade of red, mixed with salt and vinegar, and aged three years in wooden barrels that formerly held Jack Daniels whiskey.”

Yum.