Elvira on Her Cookbook from Hell, Goth Weddings, and Making Music with Jack White: Podcast

Cassandra Peterson—better known to the world as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark—sat down with Kyle Meredith to talk about her newest creation, Elvira’s Cookbook from Hell. The book, she insists, isn’t just another seasonal cash-in, but a legit lifestyle manifesto: goth entertaining 365 days a year. “I’m like the Martha Stewart of the macabre,” she laughs, explaining how long she’d fought publishers to get the concept in print. Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts.

The conversation rolls through her own bizarre culinary origin story — cans of Campbell’s soup and potato chips standing in for actual meals — before an Italian detour where a Neapolitan mama forced her to finally learn the art of cooking. “She made me do it. She wrote down those recipes, she watched me, she made me do it. I didn’t even know how to boil water,” Peterson says, grateful now that she can whip up dinner for eight and fold a three-tier goth wedding cake (even if she admits she’d rather eat it than bake it).

The book is packed with those kinds of warped personal tales — meatloaf oozing ketchup “blood” for her daughter’s October birthday, “Trick or Trash” snack mix that floored a house full of billionaires, and a recipes resurrected from the 1988 Mistress of the Dark movie. And because this is Elvira, she slipped in one more tease: she and Jack White have been talking about making an album. “We’ve been thinking on it,” she says, before describing how Pee-wee Herman was responsible for introducing her and White.

Listen to Cassandra Peterson talk about Elvira’s Cookbook from Hell, goth weddings, Jack White, and more in the new episode above or by watching the video below. Keep up on all the latest episodes by following Kyle Meredith With… on your favorite podcast platform; plus, check out all the series on the Consequence Podcast Network.