'Magnolia' Cookbook Serves Real Recipes With Imaginary Backstories

Long before blockbuster cookbooks, community recipe collections were go-to references for recipes. These compilations were fundraising tools for church and junior league groups, Girl Scout troops and 4-H clubs. Matthew Terrell is an artist and writer living in Atlanta. His book, The Magnolia Bayou Ladies Auxiliary Country Club Cooking and Entertaining Book , picks up the spiral-bound, D.I.Y Southern tradition, but this time there is a twist. This cookbook is fiction. While the recipes are real, everything else — the stories, the characters, the commentary, the ads — are fake.