COOKING WITH DOROTHEA PUENTE

Limited 2026 Cover Edition

A real cookbook from one of America’s strangest kitchens.

Cooking with Dorothea Puente collects the recipes of Dorothea Puente—the Sacramento boarding-house operator whose name would eventually become inseparable from the house, the garden, the rent checks, and the people who disappeared around her.

But this is, first and foremost, a cookbook.

These are recipes meant to be cooked: casseroles, soups, sauces, desserts and the kind of practical, hearty food made in an American kitchen where people were expected to sit down, eat, and clean their plates.

That ordinary domestic quality is what makes the book so peculiar.

No fake blood. No horror-movie treatment. No attempt to make Dorothea into something she wasn't. Just the unsettling collision of hospitality, home cooking and history—served without much explanation.

This new edition appears under the title Cooking with Dorothea Puente, with a newly created cover designed specifically for the current Dorothea Puente Boarding House & Kitchen project.

THIS COVER DISAPPEARS JANUARY 1, 2027

This particular edition is temporary.

At midnight on January 1, 2027, this cover will be retired and this edition will no longer be offered for sale.

Every copy sold before then will be hand numbered and marked on the title page with a special embossed stamp identifying it as an official copy of this limited edition.

Once this version is gone, it is gone.

No artificial “limited edition” of 10,000 copies. No warehouse discovery later. This is simply a small edition being made during a particular moment in the life of the book, then retired.

For collectors of unusual cookbooks, crime history, underground publishing, American ephemera—or anyone who appreciates an object with a story attached to it—this is the version to have.

And, yes:

You can actually cook from it.

LIMITED 2026 EDITION

• New Cooking with Dorothea Puente cover

• Hand numbered

• Official embossed edition stamp on title page

• Available only through December 31, 2026

• Cover permanently retired January 1, 2027

Dinner is served.