As you may have heard, Ernest Hemingway’s favorite hamburger recipe was recently released by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library’s Hemingway Letters Project. It's a pretty crazy recipe so I think you should just read it in full:

Papa’s Favorite Hamburger
Find the loneliest cow and drink with it in the woods through four of the harshest winter months in years; name it after your father, then use your grandfather’s shotgun to destroy it, like so many men at war in service of god and government; take it apart with a knife given to you by your first wife, your only love—whisper her name as you build a fire with cedar branches; season with cilantro and truffle butter.

Eat… alone.

I was so excited about this because I love food AND reading, so I sent my team of crack researchers off to find other favorite recipes from authors. Here's what they turned up.

Carl Sagan’s Apple Pie
To make a apple pie you must first create the universe. I'll wait...
Ok now that the hard part’s done, collect the ingredients from a local store. As you prepare the pie, reflect how every atom in you and the apple and the crust all came from stardust and now together they come again. Bake both the pie and yourself—yourself in the oven of one’s own creation and thought, and the pie in a oven made by GE or some other oven company.
Feel small, but satisfied.

Nicholas Sparks’ Spaghetti
Gaze across your kitchen and lock eyes with the most beautiful spaghetti you’ve ever seen. Speckled with oregano and oozing marinara, the spaghetti instantly takes your breath away. It is also attracted to you. You kiss in the rain.
Suddenly, discover that the spaghetti has stage 4 cancer! Grieve, and pull away, telling the spaghetti you no longer love it in order to save yourself the pain of losing it. Taking a walk on the beach. Realize that the spaghetti needs you and devote yourself to it wholeheartedly.
Your endless love will cure the spaghetti’s terminal cancer in less than a month.
Serves 2

Fyodor Dostoevsky's Gulag Surprise
Ingredients: Rocks
Directions: Take the rocks in your hands. Try to eat them. You cannot. You will never see your family again.
Serves no one

I don't have enough space here, but I also loved these great recipes:
- Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 Meat Pizza.
- The Stuffed Grape Leaves of Wrath
- The Diary of Anne Franks and Beans
- Sophie’s Choicest Meats
- The Old Man and the Sea Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips

Thanks to the Late Night Action research team: Bri Pruett, Caitlin Kunkel, Bill Evans, and Anthony Lopez.