Honey Invites You to Dinner

Here's what's cooking in her kitchen and on the menu

Jun 27, 2024

[Good lord, let’s pray it is not a heatstroke kind of Sunday for your local Gay Pride Parade! If it is, be sure to bring lots of water, wear your best shade hat, and carry a fancy umbrella to keep you safe and strutting in style! I give you, today, the magnificent Honey van Campe to lead your way!]

I have spoken before about my deep admiration for Honey van Campe and the sadness I feel that I have not been able to meet her in person. Her book, The Drag Queen’s Cookbook & Guide to Sensible Living (Winter Books/Pontalba Press, 1996), was published to admiring reviews and won the very competitive 1997 Small Press Book Award. After that, mention of her faded away. She and her faithful dog, Hannah Gruen, had split their time performing and living in New York and New Orleans, both cities where it seems she stole the show. She was especially esteemed for her annual New Orleans’ Handbag Drives. Pontalba Press is no more. Winter Books may have changed owners. It now has a deep list of Christian authors. I’ve spent some time scanning other likely sources of information, including newspapers and various archives. Honey was no where to be found.

Photop credit: Walter Thomson for Pontalba Press.

Now the best way to be with Honey is to find her book. It’s a collectible but worth the price. Once you have it in your lucky hands, you will understand why awhy she is great company. She is a shrewd observer of the world’s pitfalls and blessings, urging her readers to embrace their spectacular drag queen-ness, whether or not they are actual drag queens.

Any women’s book I found, especially those which were written in the years B.C. (Before Chanel), was often outdated and containing little relevance for the Transvestite of our age. They ramble on about a woman’s place being near the hearth….Well, today, Drag Queen or otherwise, can tell you that the only satisfaction derived from being close to the hearth involves a chilled glass of wine and a hot date.—Honey van Campe

So let’s start with a few of her life lessons:

For all awkward people who are better at being on stage rather than in personal encounters, practice a few memorable conversational topics as often as possible, whether you’re alone or at the occasional Tupperware party.
Being social also requires an intimacy with etiquette, which simply means being sensitive to the situations you almost always find yourself. Weather it’s the few occasions where you find yourself alone among strangers or, God forbid, your extended family, you can’t go wrong by being polite while standing as straight and posed as your 6’2” glorious body allows.
Do not keep a messy, cluttered house! There’s a fine line between eclectic/artistic and rodent-nesting grounds. Cross that line and you’ll find yourself vulnerable to providing your friends with evidence of a deranged mind.

Hands and eyes are the first impressions you make. Several times a week slather your hands with vitamin E and aloe and slip them into a pair of rubber gloves while you go about dusting your abode. Adjust your eye shadow to the occasion at hand which means ricocheting between modest wife and flagrant superstar.
Maintain a firm hold on your dinner guests or they’ll tear your house and reputation apart. Plan ahead to move seamlessly from cocktails to dessert to liqueurs and then out the door with a “to hell with them” aplomb is a good working formula.

Photo credit: Kerri McCaffety for Pontalba Press

Honey has pages upon pages of more valuable lessons to impart and all are worth remembering. Let’s face it, drag queens know much more about the world than most of us because the world throws more obstacles in their way.

And this, dear readers, is why anyone who had the privilege to be invited to one of Honey’s dinner parties probably blabbed all over town how lucky they were and spent a considerable amount of time kicking up their heels while putting together their most delicious dress. Dinner at her house must have been a ludicrous hoot revolving around digs and one-liners, all good-naturedly relished because they were shouted by caring, sympathetic, catty flozzies around the safety of a hospitable table. This is underscored by the folksy recipes she gathered from her many friends and the accompanying photographs of their cavorting. For the current undertaking, I’ve chosen ones that your guests will adore`.

The nutritional-minded gal should refer back to the Drag Queen’s Basic Four Food Groups—Hors d’oeuvres, Drinks, Stuff You Eat, and Fish. Recipes for each of these categories are provided, except for Fish, which has been left out for reasons well-known to any card-carrying Drag Gal.—Honey van Campe