apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

For fans of Russian food and literature, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov contains multiple descriptions of Russian delicacies, including a spread of fish, sausages, and of course vodka at the local artists' and writers' hangout, Griboyedov. The walking, talking cat craves a snack of pickles and icy vodka. Then the female lead character later turns into a witch, flying nude over the city on a broomstick, to serve as hostess at the devil's midnight ball. It's an awesome book.

Of course, the madeleine scene for Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. And several have mentioned all the scene from Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. I liked the scenes from Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden where Mary and Colin are slowly fattened and nurtured by some cottage food--nothing fancy, but it sounded so delicious whenever I read the book as a child. Then, to mention my favorite Dickens' novel, A Tale of Two Cities, the streets in France just flowed with red wine!

Vivid, you say? Well, here's the first one that popped into my head, from Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. One character, Dr. Juvenal Urbino

"enjoyed the immediate pleasure of smelling a secret garden in his urine that had been purified by lukewarm asparagus."

His wife, Fermina Daza had her own opinions:

"If anything vexed her, it was the perpetual chain of daily meals. For they not only had to be served on time: they had to be perfect, and they had to be just what he wanted to eat, without his having to be asked...Even when it was not the season for asparagus, it had to be found regardless of cost, so that he could take pleasure in the vapors of his own fragrant urine. She did not blame him: she blamed life. But he was an implacable protagonist in that life. At the mere hint of a doubt, he would push aside his plate and say: “This meal has been prepared without love.” In that sphere he would achieve moments of fantastic inspiration. Once he tasted some chamomile tea and sent it back, saying only: “This stuff tastes of window.” Both she and the servants were surprised because they had never heard of anyone who had drunk boiled window, but when they tried the tea in an effort to understand, they understood: it did taste of window."

Diana Wynne Jones does a fantastic description of the cheap English boarding school dinner in Witch Week. The character Nan, gets bitten by an irresistable urge to describe all the food when she's seated at high tables. This includes such memorable comparisons as maggots to rice pudding.

The same author also describes an imaginary food in A Tale of Time City called a butter-pie with an icy cold buttery-creamy outside and a syrupy hot "goluptuous" inside all somehow eaten off a stick. I've always wanted to try one.

Magic for Marigold by L.M. Montgomery has some fun sounding confections like hop-and-go-fetch-its (a kind of cookie with candies and icing for the kids at xmas) and gooseberry and raspberry tarts made for a birthday celebration.

Chapter 2 of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott:

My girls, will you give them your breakfasts a Christmas present?
They were all unusually hungry, having waited nearly an hour, and for a minute no one spoke, only a minute, for Jo exclaimed impetuously, I'm so glad you came before we began!

May I go and help carry the things to the poor little children? asked Beth eagerly.

I shall take the cream and the muffins, added Amy, heroically giving up the article she most liked.

Meg was already covering the buckwheat's, and piling the bread into one big plate.

I thought you'd do it, said Mrs. March, smiling as if satisfied. You shall all go and help me, and when we come back we will have bread and milk for breakfast, and make it up at dinnertime.

And then it ends...

This was a surprise even to the actors, and when they saw the table, they looked at one another in rapturous amazement. It was like Marmee to get up a little treat for them, but anything so fine as this was unheard of since the departed days of plenty. There was ice cream, actually two dishes of it, pink and white, and cake and fruit and distracting French bonbons and, in the middle of the table, four great bouquets of hot house flowers.

Dinner parties always remind me of the story Boule de Suif by Guy de Maupassant. While her traveling party sits downstairs enjoying their dinner, Boule de Suif is upstairs securing their release from the Prussians using only her virtue. Maupassant focuses only on the feast, but the lusciousness of the food and the idle chatter around the table are pregnant with meaning considering what's going on one floor up.

Is Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" - throughout the entire book there are many references as to how food relates to memories (childhood, abandonment, celebration, loss, reconnection...)

....while in the kitchen, Mary Pereira took the time to prepare, for the benefit of their visitors, some of the finest and most delicate mango pickles, lime chutneys and cucumber kasaundies in the world. And now, restored to the status of daughter in her own home, Amina began to feel the emotions of other people's food seeping into her - because Reverand Mother doled out the curries and meatballs of intransigence, dishes imbued with the personality of their creator; Amina ate the fish salans of stubborness and the birianis of determination....

I have a love affair with Dickens' Pickwick Papers - the adventures of Mister Pickwick and his friends always seem to be complete only with a feast. Much hilarity always ensues.. especially with Joe the "fat boy servant" who eats copious amounts of food and seems to pass out no matter the time of day.

French books are great for foodies. Read Colette's Chéri (or The Last of Chéri, I can't remember) for an aging courtesan's account of eating fresh berries with cream while enjoying the company of her younger boyfriend in the countryside. Or Zola's "The Masterpiece" for descriptions of sensuous private dining rooms and salmon "as pink as a young girl's flesh" -- okay maybe not my thing, but definitely a great entree into love, lust, and gastronomy in 19th century Paris. Also check out J.K. Huysmans' A Rebours / Against Nature for some pretty wild descriptions of decedent dinner parties, where all of the food is purple, and an organ that distributes different flavored liqueurs! My other favorite is Italo Calvino's "The Baron in the Trees" -- Cosimo, the young hero, decides to spend his life in the trees after his sister tries to serve snails twisted up in wire to look like small swans, all out of a twisted sense of cruelty.

I know that it is a play and not a novel, but oscar wilde's the importance of being earnest is probably my favorite food work. I am in the middle of teaching it right now and it always makes me hungry. the first two acts both involve elaborate afternoon tea spreads--cucumber sandwiches, muffins, tea cake,...

yesterday, I came home and had to make myself cucumber sandwiches for tea and I think tomorrow I am going to have to bake a cake or scones, I haven't decided.

my students are enjoying the play and the food descriptions so much that I have promised to throw a tea party with all of the food mentioned in the play for anyone who gets an A.

Roasted potatoes cooked and eaten with Dickon in The Secret Garden.

And in the Famous Five books by Enid Blyton the kids always had these wonderful picnics with ginger beer and sandwiches made of thick pink slices of ham on buttered bread.

Not really a classic, but The World of Suzie Wong made me long for Chinese food.

And there's a hilarious scene in Cold Comfort Farm in which a bubbling caldron of porridge mirrors the emotional angst of a scene between a mother and son.

Oh, and you can't leave out the fig eating scene from Women in Love.

the most vivid ones for me are the pink cake in the shape of a woman in Margaret Atwood's Edible Woman, and all the lovely nurturing food in The Secret Garden, especially Mrs. Sowerby's buns and milk

...English children's lit is so full of lovely "nursery food" -- pooh and all the huney, the Wind in the Willows and all their dinners and picnics, Narnia and the turkish delight...

The delightful children's book, "Bread and Jam for Francis."

So much of the Sue Monk Kidd's "Secret Lives of Bees" made me want to eat southern food. Honey cakes, biscuits with honey, oh and probably more things than I can remember.

Less pleasant, I also think of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and the rancid butter that had to be stored in the tank of the toilet.

Classic, but not old, the Weetzie Bat novels by Francesca Lia Block have fabulous descriptions of food in them. Weetzie Bat has a great sushi scene where they get a protein buzz, and Baby Bebop had some memorable sandwich combinations. It was interesting to read the series as the author got older. In the first book, Weetzie was eating Okie Dogs in LA. In the latest one, she was a vegan, and her food sounded much less delightful.

I don't know if it qualifies as a classic novel, but there is a great crab eating scene in Ian Fleming's Goldfinger. With pink champagne too, I think.

Again, not classic, but I loved the popcorn flavors that Lionel Shriver details in The Post Birthday World. And one of the classic food in books is Heartburn, by Nora Ephron.

Hands down, Turkish Delight, from C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe".

To JenPDX: The scene in Little Women, at the table with pink and white ice cream, is exactly and immediately what came to my mind. And hot buttered toast in Wind in the Willows! Yum!