Readers Digest

In my column today I talk about food in books. Don't know about you, but some of my favourite passages  in children's books describe food and eating.

I've copied some of them here ...

In Over Sea, Under Stone, the first in Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence, Simon, Jane and Barney are on holiday in Cornwall. One gloomy, wet morning, they decide to explore the old house where they are staying. Barney insists that they need provisions, like real explorers, and so they ask the housekeeper, Mrs Palk, for some ...

Mrs Palk, in the kitchen, laughed all over her red face and said, "What will 'ee think of next, I wonder?" But she gave them, neatly wrapped, a stack of freshly-baked scones cut in half, thickly buttered and put them together again; a packet of squashed-fly biscuits, three apples and a great slab of dark yellow-orange cake, thick and crumbling with fruit.

"And something to drink," said Simon commandingly, already captain of the expedition. So Mrs Palk good-humouredly added a big bottle of home-made lemonade "to finish 'n off".

In Five Go on a Hike Together by Enid Blyton, when Timmy hurts his leg, the Five decide to split up for a bit, Julian, George and Timmy heading for the vet's, while Dick and Anne go in search of the farm where they are supposed to spend the night. However, Dick and Anne lose their way and end up in a strange little house, where something decidedly dodgy seems to be happening. After a nasty, worrying night spent apart, the Famous Five are reunited at a village inn the next morning and where they sit down to a hearty breakfast ...

A wonderful smell came creeping into the little dining-room, followed by the inn-woman carrying a large tray. On it was a steaming tureen of porridge, a bowl of golden syrup, a jug of very thick cream, and a dish of bacon and eggs, all piled high on crisp brown toast. Little mushrooms were on the same dish.

"It's like magic!" Anne said, staring. "Just the very things I longed for."

"Toast, marmalade and butter to come, and the coffee and hot milk," said the woman, busily setting everything out. "And if you want any more bacon and eggs, just ring the bell."

There is a scene in John Masefield's The Box of Delights that always surprises me when I re-read it because I always expect a lot more food and eating than is actually described in the passage. I think this is simply a very evocative scene that conjures up visions and tastes of delicious things. Kay, the hero of the story, has "Robber Tea" with his friends ...

Robber Tea was one of Kay's delights. It was a game only played in winter evenings, in the dark old study that had shelves full of old books, and old guns on the walls above the shelves.

At the beginning of the game, the window curtain were drawn, so as to make a darkness. Then, the fire was bulit up with the wood and coal, so as to make a hot toasting fire. Then, the table was pulled to one side of the room against the bookshelves, and some dark curtains were brought down and spread aover the table and adjoining chairs, so as to make an inner cave. When the cave had been rigged, it was lit with some lanterns that had coloured glass slides. When all this was ready, a water-proof sheet was spread on the hearthrug with a supply of toasting forks, sausages, bread, butter, dripping and strawberry jam. Then, the robbers lay in the glow of the fire toasting breadand sausages, and afterwards eating them in the inner cave.

I wish someone would prepare me a meal tray like the ones Chunky is served in Leila Berg's The Adventures of Chunky ...

Now, whenever Chunky's mother had to leave him to have dinner by himself she always left him a tray that looked interesting. This time there were four parcels on it. One was wrapped in blue paper and stuck down with red, sticky paper. It had a big No. 1 on it, so he opened that first, and found it was three cheese sandwiches made out of cream cheese and his mother made herself. He ate them up and looked for the parcel marked No. 2. This was wrapped in pink tissue paper tied around with golden cord. He opened it, and found a big slice of apple-tart with raisns inside and sugar sprinkled on top.

He ate that up and looked for parcel No. 3. This was a box that was fastened with three blobs of green sealing-wax, and inside there were three large purple plums. He ate those and looked for parcel No. 4. This was wrapped in silver paper with blue circles on it, and stuck down with a sticky gold label that said "Greetings", and inside was one bar of milk chocolate and four short-cake biscuits.

The Little House books are full of decriptions of food - cooking it, storing it, and eating it. Here are two passages from Little House in the Big Woods, my favourite of Laura Ingalls Wilder's series.

The first describes Butchering Time:

Ma scraped and cleaned the head carefully, and then she boiled it till all the meat fell off the bones. She chopped the meat fine with her chopping knife in the wooden bowl, she seasoned it with pepper and salt and spces. The she mixed the pot-liquor with it, and set it away in a pan to cool. When it was cool it would cut in slices, and that was headcheese.

The little pieces of meat, lean and fat, that had been cut off the large piecesm Ma chopped and chooped until it was all chopped fine. She seasoned it with salt and pepper and with dried sage leaves from the garden. Them, with her hands she tossed and turned it until it was well mixed, and she moulded it into balls. She put the balls in a pan out in the shed, where they would freeze and be good to eat all winter. That was the sausage.

When Butchering Time was over, there was the sausages and the headcheese, the big jars of lard  and the keg of white salt-pork out in the shed, and in the attic hung the smoked hams and shoulders.

This one is about Christmastime in the Ingalls household ...

Ma was busy all day long, cooking good things for Christmas. She baked salt-rising bread and rye 'n' Injun bread, and Swedish crackers, and a huge pan of baked beans, with salt pork and molasses. She baked vinegar pies and dried-apple pies, and filled a big jar with cookies, and let Laura and Mary lick the cake spoon.

One morning she boiled molasses and sugar together until they made thick syrup, and Pa brought in two pans of clean, white snow from outdoors. Laura and Mary each had a pan, and Pa and Ma showed them how to pour the  dark syrup in little streams on the snow.

They made circles, and curlicues, and squiggledy things, and these hardened at once and were candy. Laura and Mary might eat one piece each, but the rest was saved for Christmas Day.

Yummmm ...

And here's my column from today's Star Mag (9 April 2006):

Food, glorious food

LAST night I did something really silly. See, I was so busy that I skipped dinner and by the time I got home I decided it was too late to eat. However, instead of just going straight to bed, I decided to read and stupidly chose The Perfect Egg and Other Stories by Aldo Buzzi. The book is a collection of recipes, essays and anecdotes about food and it was really dumb of me to read it whilst nursing a rumbling tummy. OK, so I’ve never claimed to be totally sensible!

After a couple of chapters I put the book aside, turned out the light and went to sleep. Or rather, I tried to sleep, but being so hungry, I couldn’t stop thinking about food, food and more food! I also started thinking about all my favourite descriptions of food in books. I like reading these passages when I’m feeling down, but it was a mistake to recall mouth-watering descriptions of food when I couldn’t sleep for hunger!

In The Perfect Egg, in the chapter called Olla podrida (mixed stew), Buzzi writes, “The writer who never talks about eating, about appetite, hunger, food, about cooks and meals, arouses my suspicion, as though some vital element were missing in him.”

Well, certainly, detailed accounts of meals add a certain special something to any story. For someone like me, who loves food (and which Malaysian doesn’t?), it’s often one of the highlights of a book. 

Leila Berg’s The Adventures of Chunky is one of the books currently on my bedside table and although it’s been at least 30 years since I last read it, I find I remember clearly the descriptions of the hero’s lunches and suppers: Orange-coloured milk; strawberry junket; apple-and-condensed-milk sandwiches; tomato soup with mini dumplings, and so on. Chunky’s mother always wraps the food up in interesting parcels, wrapped in coloured paper, tied with gold string, tagged and labelled, sometimes with rhymes and riddles attached. It makes each meal an adventure. We should all be so inventive (and have so much spare time).

I thoroughly approve of the way Enid Blyton’s young adventurers manage their time: No matter how busy they are solving mysteries, dodging crooks and cranks, and sniffing out clues, they never, never miss meals. Thanks to the Famous Five series, I grew up craving food I’d never tasted – potted meat sandwiches, anyone? How disappointed I was when I finally tasted English cooking. No wonder Kiki the Parrot made such a fuss over tinned pineapple!

However, remember those exploding honey sweets in the Faraway Tree books? They don’t really exist, but bullseyes, humbugs, peppermint rock and licorice do. At least English sweets more than surpassed my expectations.

I would love to sample the food described in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books: “Stewed jack rabbit with white flour dumplings and gravy”; “steaming-hot cornbread flavoured with bacon fat”; “buckwheat pancakes with maple syrup”; “sourdough biscuits”; “blackbird pie”. Blackbird pie! That was when the birds attacked the corn crop, Pa had to fight them off with his gun and Ma decided not to waste perfectly good game!

The recipes for all the meals mentioned in Wilder’s series are available in The Little House Cookbook: Frontier Foods from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Classic Stories. Someday I’ll get this book and see what I can rustle up. (Blackbirds might have to be replaced by plain old chicken though.)

People comfort-eat, but I derive more satisfaction, consolation and satisfaction by reading about food than actually eating it, probably because meals in books are mostly scenes of celebration, repose and fellowship – happy, relaxing scenes – and the camaraderie depicted is something very attractive and compelling.

My nine-year-old also loves reading about food and this invariably results in an attack of the munchies. His current favourite is Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen, which sees a little boy having a big adventure involving swimming in milk, getting mixed-up in batter and almost getting baked! And at the end of the story, Elesh always asks, “Why can’t we have cake in the morning?” Yeah, why ever not? Butter cake for me, chocolate-banana for him! Whatever next? I know – blackbird pie!

For some scrumptious descriptions of food check out my blog. Happy reading and happy eating!

Comments

[daphne]

haay,
i just wanted to say my name is also Daphne
hiih
bayebye

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[Julianne]

Ahhh... I love reading Enid Blyton and see how she described all the English food! I've never tasted traditional English food before but Enid Blyton made them all seem so damn delicious! Oh, there's one story book by Enid Blyton about a bunch of kids getting marooned on an island during a trip out on their boat... I don't remember the title but I remember reading a lot about food!!

[=]]

Oh, you've made me long for scones and homemade lemonade and everything Enid Blyton described her young heroes having for breakfast, lunch and supper. I remember demanding my mom to make me scones with strawberry jam for tea when I was young(er) =]