My two favorite things: books and food
I can’t even remember where now, or why I ran across it, but yesterday I ended up looking at a picture of Melissa Gilbert’s new plastic surgery. And so, like I always do whenever I run across a mention of Melissa Gilbert, I thought: headcheese.
I can’t help it. Despite years and years of watching Little House on the Prairie, the one thing that sticks in my mind — the strongest association that I have to Laura Ingalls Wilder — is the food that she ate or made in the books. Headcheese made out of the meat from a bear’s head, the drizzle of maple onto snow … or later, the sugar that brings out the taste of the tea and the salt that brings out the taste of the potato.
I actually don’t remember a lot of details about plot in those books, but the food? Oh yes.
Or Trixie Belden, who always had the most amazing-sounding grub (also, I think Trixie and Jim were the first couple that I ‘shipped.) Moms always had something waiting, as did the other characters. I still want to try game hens baked with sour cream, and I have no idea what the heck that recipe even is. Something Norwegian, I think, because of the character who made it. (And this isn’t the right cover for this book — there’s no game hens slathered with sour cream in this one, just a cooler that a bigfoot rummages through. I do remember the plots for these, but the food sticks just as hard.)
And Ramona? My strongest memory from all of these books is after her mom and dad had a fight, her mom makes pancakes (and waits for the griddle to get hot enough that the drops of water will dance) and Beezus making a carrot salad, “as if a carrot salad would smooth things over.” I don’t even know if Ramona the Pest is the right book … but I remember Ramona watching Beezus, making sure that Beezus didn’t grate her fingers into that carrot salad.
So I’m curious — is there one consistent thing that you remember about the things you read, even if you don’t remember anything else about the books? The clothes they wear, scents, where you got the book or where you were when you read it?
And what are you all having for lunch and dinner?
Being a hopeless romantic, the big thing I always remember and cherish when reading is the small little details between characters. Does he always touch her cheek, does she always check him out when he turns around? Little things like that. I just eat it up!!
PS: Hubby is making carribean chicken for dinner. num num num
Plots. and to a slightly lesser degree, characters. ‘well, duh’ you’re thinking, but it has come in quite handy. I’ve passed college history courses on the weight of having read encyclopedic volumes of historical fiction and classics as a young adult, and I still dip into that info for inspiration (and occasionally research). Textbook facts are so difficult to recall, but put a plot to it and it’s mine forever.
For lunch, I don’t know. For breakfast I finished off the snow crab legs I splurged and picked up on special at the grocery store, yesterday. It’s not dungeness…but real crab for breakfast? How decadent is that?
=a
Dinner? Cordon bleu and white risotto.
I always remember images. If a describtion is so vivid that it brings up a clear image in my head, it will stick, even if I don’t remember where it came from.
I had this image of a character tying his or her boot. I didn’t remember anything else, and it took me four days to identify it as Kaylin, a character of Michelle Sagara.
Also, if you give me a random fact that has something to do with diseases, poison or death, I will remember it. Don’t ask me why, but from all my courses and every fact ever read in a book, that’s what sticks longest in my head.
Catchphrases and good lines. All I remember from “Just William” these days is “I’ll thream and thream and thream until I’m thick!” but it’s enough for me to know I loved those books once.
There is one book that every time I pick it up I remember a song that I was listening to the first time I read it. And it’s weird cause that is the only book that I’ll do that on. Mostly I tend to remember battles, or preparing for battles. A few weeks ago, I suddenly had a flash of memory from a book that I had read, something involving a sword, and I could see the part so clearly in my head, that I then spend approximately 4 days searching for the book that went with the memory flash cause literally all I remembered was that little flash.
is there one consistent thing that you remember about the things you read, even if you don’t remember anything else about the books?
Yep, mainly the way I felt while reading them…ie, the fact I could get totally lost in the story, lose track of time and stuff going on around me. And I’m so glad that’s still true for me as an adult.
I don’t remember the individual books (from childhood)so much as the thrill of getting to go to the library. I have such fond memories of my grade school library. The old hardwood floors and the shelves that stretched to the ceiling. Sadly, the building has been torn down, but my son gets to go to a spanking new building with a beautiful carpeted library–which he loves.
I was one of those little girls who loved horses. (No idea why. We didn’t own any and I was never around them.) So I was thrilled to discover Walter Farley’s Black Stallion series when I was in the sixth grade. It was the first time I experenced that heart-pounding, can’t put it down sensation while reading. I’ve been an avid reader ever since.
As for supper…I’m thinking about making a big pot of chili.
Oh boy, I remember Ramona. OMG. lol. Such a long time ago! I also read the babysitters club, sweet valley twins/high, the saddle club, silver blades.
*shakes head* Not very highbrow reading, but they made babysitting, horse back riding and figure skating sound very awesome to my young mind. And through reading those books, I had a yen to do those things or try it once so I could say I did it. That’s something that I notice even now, if the characters have a job or hobby that’s intriguing and so I do more in depth research or find out the requirements of said job/hobby.
Lunch comes before dinner. I have leftover birthday cake. And cookies. As for dinner, eh, dunno yet. Probably something that comes from a box or leftovers in the fridge. Yummy.
i usually rememder something the character had said and cracked me up or an interesting word. i can usually locete the phrase/word, to show my friends that i am not compleatly psychotic, fairly easily.
Oddly enough, I do remember most of the food type stuff from the Little House books. Other books? Not food so much.
Characters. I remember the characters.
And I haven’t even had breakfast much less thought about lunch and dinner… :OP
There’s no consistency to what I remember about books. I remember “My landlady was a voluble man,” from Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, for the pure oddity of the phrase. I remember food from Mary Stewart’s books: the feast in Marseille in Madam, Will You Talk and the sausages in the kitchen in Brittany in The Crystal Cave.
In the Little House books, I remember Laura’s doll and Ma slapping the bear, thinking it was a cow (in Little House in the Big Woods); the leeches in On the Banks of Plum Creek); the crazy farm wife and the hat that brought out the blue of Laura’s eyes in These Happy Golden Years.
I think I’m having scrambled eggs for supper. Everything else takes too much work.
little house.
i remember mary having a bandage over her eye from an exploding potatoe and the girls sharing laura’s.
and how one preferred sage and the other liked onion in the stuffing.
I had chocolate for dinner.
The main things I remember about the Redwall series by Brian somethingorother was…THE FOOD. He literally wrote several pages in a row just describing their feasts. Plus they were all animals, all the rabbits had funny accents and were hilarious, and badgers had blood rages.
Oh, fun post. Headcheese reminds me of when I worked in a Deli, and I couldn’t believe people came in and ordered it!
But I love when food is lovingly and lavishly described, and when characters eat it, and that is described. An author can never go on too long about eating, however, I don’t tend to remember that.
Usually it’s dispositions that last for me – the loneliness of this character, or the bitterness of another. I can forget a lot about a character, but I never forget how they feel. I loved the book “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” as a girl, and I remember only the vaguest factual details, but the complex mix of vulnerability and determination of that main character is burned into my mind!
Headcheese is from the pig they butchered every year, to the best of my recollection.
Harriet the Spy and her tomato sandwiches.
I don’t remember the food from Trixie Belden, but Nancy Drew could throw down from the food their housekeeper used to make.
Lunch was popcorn, dinner was babyback ribs and green beans and baked potato.
I actually remember the food from the Little House books, too! Well, at least the one in the big woods. I wanted more than anything to try a pig’s tail (I also remember the maple in the snow, but knew I had a better chance of trying the pig’s tail in socal). The Blue Sword began with scowling at a glass of orange juice (which was how I felt about the juice at the time). Sometimes I remember lines, even if I don’t write them down…like the last line of The Book Thief or a line mentioned by a secondary character that grabbed my heart in When He Was Wicked by Julia Quinn. I guess there are different things for different books.
Dinner: My sister is making chicken with avacado, green beans and carrots, and mayhap brown rice.