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Cook It, Spill It, Throw It: The Not-So-Real Housewives Parody Cookbook
Celebrity chef Stuart O'Keeffe and comedian Amy Phillips razz the Real Housewives in this gorgeous cookbook filled with recipes inspired by iconic moments in the franchise’s rich history. With a foreword by Andy Cohen.
“Cook It, Spill It, Throw It is an immersive, one-of-a-kind experience in a world we can’t escape (but let’s face it, we don’t want to!).” —from the foreword by Andy Cohen
Trends come and go, but watching rich women drink and catfight is forever. Which is why after more than a decade of airing, the Real Housewives phenomenon continues to reign supreme in the pop culture stratosphere. Week after week, season after season, loyal fans watch the thrilling drama—the backstabbing, the gossiping, the screaming, the table flipping, the wine tossing—unfold.
Cook It, Spill It, Throw It is a cookbook created specifically for Housewives fans. Chef Stuart O’Keeffe and comedian Amy Phillips—long-time devotees themselves—have dreamed up an inviting menu served with a side of delicious snark.
Inspired by the series and its stars, the dishes and drinks evoke familiar moments of chaos from the franchise. Whether you’re looking to make Ponytail Pulled Pork, or you want to comfort a friend in the Caicos with Eggs a Lu’Francais, there’s a meal for you—and there are definitely plenty of drinks (including Henny-thing Can Happen and the classic Singer Stinger Sipper).
Featuring gorgeous original photography and equally gorgeous recipes, Cook It, Spill It, Throw It is the must-have cookbook and companion for every Housewives addict.
“Cook It, Spill It, Throw It is an immersive, one-of-a-kind experience in a world we can’t escape (but let’s face it, we don’t want to!).” —from the foreword by Andy Cohen
Trends come and go, but watching rich women drink and catfight is forever. Which is why after more than a decade of airing, the Real Housewives phenomenon continues to reign supreme in the pop culture stratosphere. Week after week, season after season, loyal fans watch the thrilling drama—the backstabbing, the gossiping, the screaming, the table flipping, the wine tossing—unfold.
Cook It, Spill It, Throw It is a cookbook created specifically for Housewives fans. Chef Stuart O’Keeffe and comedian Amy Phillips—long-time devotees themselves—have dreamed up an inviting menu served with a side of delicious snark.
Inspired by the series and its stars, the dishes and drinks evoke familiar moments of chaos from the franchise. Whether you’re looking to make Ponytail Pulled Pork, or you want to comfort a friend in the Caicos with Eggs a Lu’Francais, there’s a meal for you—and there are definitely plenty of drinks (including Henny-thing Can Happen and the classic Singer Stinger Sipper).
Featuring gorgeous original photography and equally gorgeous recipes, Cook It, Spill It, Throw It is the must-have cookbook and companion for every Housewives addict.
- GenresCookbooksNonfiction
272 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 17, 2020
5 people are currently reading
36 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 4, 2022
This book was very funny. If you're a fan of the housewives, you'll get each piece of humor. The photographs were really beautiful too. Although I didn't make any of the recipes, that's not why I read it. I read it because I'm a Housewives fan; and if this is your reason for picking up the book, you won't be disappointed. It's a quirky, conversation, coffee table book for any Housewives fan -- or, a unique gift! 10/10 would recommend!
June 1, 2023
I love the housewives so I was interested to see what this was like. I rated it 3 stars because many of these recipes just seemed to complicated. I loved the ideas and the back stories they were based on. The recipes though just seemed a little too much work to make. If you are a more expert chef this might be right up your ally.
February 9, 2022
This book was so fun and I LOL a good bit throughout.
If your a bravo fan you'll get a good laugh from this book and maybe even a few recipes you'll use for your gatherings.
If your a bravo fan you'll get a good laugh from this book and maybe even a few recipes you'll use for your gatherings.
January 9, 2026
Certain cookbooks enter our kitchens like manuals; others enter like invitations to a long, mildly chaotic dinner party that will, despite its imperfections, become a cherished memory.
Keeffe’s Cook It, Spill It, Throw It belongs firmly in the second category. It is less a catalogue of recipes than a social document—an ode to conviviality, to mess, to appetite, and to the kind of generosity that cooking requires long before the first ingredient touches the pan.
I first encountered the book through a friend who swears by its cocktails and insists that recipes should make noise—“You should hear them sizzling,” she told me while thumbing through the pages. I was skeptical at first. Celebrity-adjacent cookbooks can be glossy but shallow, visually seductive yet culinarily timid.
O’Keeffe pleasantly subverts those expectations, not by aspiring to haute cuisine, but by leaning into the truth that food, at its best, is performative. It is meant to be shared, photographed, spilled, laughed over, and occasionally sworn at.
The text has a breezy narrative confidence. O’Keeffe writes as someone who understands that the modern kitchen is as much theatre as station. His voice carries a certain Irish warmth—equal parts self-deprecation and flirtation—with a sensibility that suggests the reader should stop overthinking dinner and pour a drink.
There is no puritanism here, no admonitions about guilt, macros, or productivity. Instead, the pages ask a simpler, more radical question: Who are you feeding, and what pleasure do you intend for them?
What distinguishes the book from more orthodox culinary volumes is its emphasis on affect. The recipes are vehicles, yes, but the real plot unfolds around the table—friends leaning in, hands reaching, someone knocking over a glass, a story being told for the third time because it improves with repetition.
It is a cookbook that recognizes the rituals of hosting, especially among people who came of age in small apartments with questionable seating, mismatched plates, and a desire for community that hunger alone cannot explain.
Stylistically, the book is visually exuberant. Photographs burst with saturated color; typography borders on playful mischief; margins suggest winks rather than instructions. This aesthetic signals that the reader is not being inducted into a discipline but welcomed into a scene. In a world where lifestyle branding often crushes spontaneity, O’Keeffe insists on the value of imperfection. If something spills, that’s part of the story. If something burns, order pizza. Somewhere Julia Child is nodding approvingly.
My own engagement with the book has been shaped less by strict adherence to recipes and more by the mood it evokes. It is the rare cookbook that makes one want to cook for people not to impress them, but to gather them. In my apartment, the most successful dishes from the book were made on evenings when friends arrived unannounced.
The food was secondary; the humour was primary. That ethos—food as pretext for communion—feels particularly resonant in a post-pandemic landscape where many have relearnt the art of proximity.
Yet for all its charm, it would be unfair to classify the book as pure whimsy. There is culinary intelligence at work, even if packaged with mischief. The recipes balance accessibility with flair, using ingredients that are neither prohibitively expensive nor aggressively niche.
The techniques avoid intimidation, relying on methods that reward attentiveness rather than mastery. O’Keeffe is not interested in equipping the reader to win competitions; he is interested in equipping them to feed people generously and with minimal anxiety.
Critically, the book’s social dimension may also be its most compelling cultural artefact. It documents a shift in contemporary food media away from austerity and toward exuberance, away from quiet domesticity and toward performance. Food is not merely sustenance here; it is a form of social choreography, a mechanism for friendship, flirtation, and storytelling. Recipes become scripts, kitchens become stages, and the cook becomes both protagonist and impresario.
One could argue that the book occasionally indulges in lifestyle maximalism—the suggestion that every dinner should become an event. But to treat that as a flaw is to misread its purpose. The text is aspirational, not in a bourgeois sense but in a communal one; it dares the reader to make memories that exceed the utilitarian demands of weeknight meals. And if such aspirations feel excessive, they also feel tender. Excess, after all, has always been one of the languages of hospitality.
When I reflect on my time with the book, what lingers is not a particular dish but a particular atmosphere. The feeling of people speaking over each other, of music playing too loudly, of sleeves rolled up and counters cluttered with evidence of delight.
In that sense, Cook It, Spill It, Throw It is not merely a cookbook; it is an artefact of conviviality.
It amplifies the truth that food is not meant to be perfected but participated in.
And for readers who approach cooking as a form of social generosity, this book becomes less a manual than a declaration: Come over, there will be chaos, and it will be lovely.
Recommended.
Keeffe’s Cook It, Spill It, Throw It belongs firmly in the second category. It is less a catalogue of recipes than a social document—an ode to conviviality, to mess, to appetite, and to the kind of generosity that cooking requires long before the first ingredient touches the pan.
I first encountered the book through a friend who swears by its cocktails and insists that recipes should make noise—“You should hear them sizzling,” she told me while thumbing through the pages. I was skeptical at first. Celebrity-adjacent cookbooks can be glossy but shallow, visually seductive yet culinarily timid.
O’Keeffe pleasantly subverts those expectations, not by aspiring to haute cuisine, but by leaning into the truth that food, at its best, is performative. It is meant to be shared, photographed, spilled, laughed over, and occasionally sworn at.
The text has a breezy narrative confidence. O’Keeffe writes as someone who understands that the modern kitchen is as much theatre as station. His voice carries a certain Irish warmth—equal parts self-deprecation and flirtation—with a sensibility that suggests the reader should stop overthinking dinner and pour a drink.
There is no puritanism here, no admonitions about guilt, macros, or productivity. Instead, the pages ask a simpler, more radical question: Who are you feeding, and what pleasure do you intend for them?
What distinguishes the book from more orthodox culinary volumes is its emphasis on affect. The recipes are vehicles, yes, but the real plot unfolds around the table—friends leaning in, hands reaching, someone knocking over a glass, a story being told for the third time because it improves with repetition.
It is a cookbook that recognizes the rituals of hosting, especially among people who came of age in small apartments with questionable seating, mismatched plates, and a desire for community that hunger alone cannot explain.
Stylistically, the book is visually exuberant. Photographs burst with saturated color; typography borders on playful mischief; margins suggest winks rather than instructions. This aesthetic signals that the reader is not being inducted into a discipline but welcomed into a scene. In a world where lifestyle branding often crushes spontaneity, O’Keeffe insists on the value of imperfection. If something spills, that’s part of the story. If something burns, order pizza. Somewhere Julia Child is nodding approvingly.
My own engagement with the book has been shaped less by strict adherence to recipes and more by the mood it evokes. It is the rare cookbook that makes one want to cook for people not to impress them, but to gather them. In my apartment, the most successful dishes from the book were made on evenings when friends arrived unannounced.
The food was secondary; the humour was primary. That ethos—food as pretext for communion—feels particularly resonant in a post-pandemic landscape where many have relearnt the art of proximity.
Yet for all its charm, it would be unfair to classify the book as pure whimsy. There is culinary intelligence at work, even if packaged with mischief. The recipes balance accessibility with flair, using ingredients that are neither prohibitively expensive nor aggressively niche.
The techniques avoid intimidation, relying on methods that reward attentiveness rather than mastery. O’Keeffe is not interested in equipping the reader to win competitions; he is interested in equipping them to feed people generously and with minimal anxiety.
Critically, the book’s social dimension may also be its most compelling cultural artefact. It documents a shift in contemporary food media away from austerity and toward exuberance, away from quiet domesticity and toward performance. Food is not merely sustenance here; it is a form of social choreography, a mechanism for friendship, flirtation, and storytelling. Recipes become scripts, kitchens become stages, and the cook becomes both protagonist and impresario.
One could argue that the book occasionally indulges in lifestyle maximalism—the suggestion that every dinner should become an event. But to treat that as a flaw is to misread its purpose. The text is aspirational, not in a bourgeois sense but in a communal one; it dares the reader to make memories that exceed the utilitarian demands of weeknight meals. And if such aspirations feel excessive, they also feel tender. Excess, after all, has always been one of the languages of hospitality.
When I reflect on my time with the book, what lingers is not a particular dish but a particular atmosphere. The feeling of people speaking over each other, of music playing too loudly, of sleeves rolled up and counters cluttered with evidence of delight.
In that sense, Cook It, Spill It, Throw It is not merely a cookbook; it is an artefact of conviviality.
It amplifies the truth that food is not meant to be perfected but participated in.
And for readers who approach cooking as a form of social generosity, this book becomes less a manual than a declaration: Come over, there will be chaos, and it will be lovely.
Recommended.
December 3, 2021
I gave this a five because it was all it advertised itself to be; a witty food based commentary on all things Housewives.
November 24, 2021
If you're a Bravo fan, you are also an Amy Phillips fan and THIS COOKBOOK IS A MUST! It is hilarious, gorgeous, the recipes are a hoot - each and every one - and it will make you smile and smile. Plus did I mention delicious recipes? A great Thanksgiving or Christmas gift for the Bravo Housewives fan in your life!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews