Wonderful food images in children's literature

[heyjude]

All of the references make my mouth and eyes water. Stellabella, mamster is named for Matthew Cuthbert as I knew from the age of nine that my firstborn would be a boy. There are hundreds of food tales in the Anne books from Marilla's kitchen to Miss Lavendar's tea parties to Susan's soul soothers. Food is important to animal characters,too. My favorite story to read over and over to my boys was (is) Tear-Water Tea from Arnold Lobel's Owl at Home.

[Priscilla]

And the cake that Rilla threw in the creek was, I think, called a gold and silver cake (or silver and gold?).  I wonder what that was.  The early 1900s must have been the height of popularity for layer cakes.  Book characters are always eating them.  The Lady Baltimore cake, which was discussed in the New York Times Magazine a couple of weeks ago, was a favorite in the Betsy-Tacy books.

LaurieA-B, silver-and-gold or gold-and-silver, right.  My memory was corrupted by a recent piece on black-and-white cookies in my local Newspaper of Record.  Thank you for citing the NYT Lady Baltimore discussion, looking forward to looking it up; that's what newlywed Betsy set out to make that sent her back to Anna the cook for advice, isn't it?  Seems to me from past research Joy of Cooking may have a Lady Baltimore entry, also a Lord Baltimore as well, but I am not certain without checking.

There is a book of which you may already be aware, a cookbook which is really a reminiscence, (like many of the best cookbooks), called Victorian Cakes, by Caroline B. King.  Victorian family culture in a non-fiction mode, gratifyingly similar to the stories of Betsy and Anne, gratifying to me, anyway, since Betsy and Anne are more real to me than many real things.

Priscilla

[AdamLawrence]

I love Rat and Mole's picnic on the river in The Wind in the Willows. But then The Wind in the Willows is my favourite book in the world, I have five different editions, and I must have read it over a hundred times. So I may be slightly biased.

Adam

[Toby]

The goat cheese sandwiches Heidi's grandfather made for her.

[Degustation]

The short story, "The Doughnuts"  featured a boy named Homer Price. His uncle, who was a compulsive inventor, built a doughnut machine that suddenly went awry and kept on spitting out hundreds of doughnuts.

I remember the pictures of towering piles and piles of dougnuts, left and right, but that machine just went on going, and going, and going.

But suddenly catastrophe...a woman realized that she must have lost her bracelet in the doughnut machine! Well, that meant only one thing -- they would have to bite into every doughnut to find that bracelet!! And they did --- and to this day I still love doughnuts.

[Suzanne F]

Robert Ruark, who was not known for children's books -- I think he wrote Uhuru and a bunch of adventures -- wrote a memoir of his childhood that I remember reading many, many years ago.  It was called something like The Old Man and the Boy and had the most wonderful descriptions of holiday meals on a farm.

[bushey]

Strega Nona, by Tommie de Paola. It's a retelling of the classic "magic pot" story, but instead of the pot boiling over with porridge, in this Italian town in Calabria the pot boils over with pasta. It's a wonderful book with colorful characters: Strega Nona, the local witch, Bambolona her assistant, and bumbling Big Anthony who always manages to mess things up.

[JSD]

I too loved Homer Price - all of the stories including the doughnuts.

One of my favorite Mrs. Piggle Wiggle stories was about the kid who wouldn't bathe so the parents are instructed to plant seeds right on the child, and pretty soon radishes sprout. That's a pretty dirty child, I imagine. And the child who eats slowly and small amounts and pretty soon is using tiny tiny dishes that hold only one grain of rice and cups that hold only one drop of milk.

[Jon Tseng]

ooooh, Brain Jacques Redwall books are full of stories of creams, cakes, pies, pastries, buttercream, honey and manner of teatime goodies.

man cannot live on patisserie alone, but Jacques has a pretty good go at it...

there's also a wonderfully evocative passage in Mary Stewards "Ludo and the Star Horse" (olde kiddy book) where after a long trek the hero Ludo comes across a boy frying the most wonderful pan of fat, sizzling, succulent sausages.

yum

j.

[Jaymes]

Do you know the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man.

Do you know the muffin man who lives on Drury Lane?

And hot cross buns?

Also, I guess I was a sweets fanatic even in childhood. I simply could not get beyond the candy cottage of the witch in Hansel & Gretel. If I close my eyes, I can see it still.

And I'll bet you can, too.