Time to start writing again: books and food

Some of my fans have requested that I return to sharing my thoughts in a blog format. Most of these fans have the first initial M, and their birthday is today, funnily enough.

I realized that this is the perfect time to write about one of my regular thought areas: books + food.

I have a rule that any cookbook from which you get just one recipe that you use regularly has been a good investment. You can imagine that I therefore have quite a large collection. On the other hand, many cookbooks are simply wonderful coffee table books or dream fodder. Both are also categories that I adore. You can imagine that I therefore have quite a large collection of these as well. I also have a bit of depth in the historical food/cooking/recipe zone, from which I do not cook at all, but in a way that is similar to being an English-speaker and loving to feel proto-Indo-European behind English, I enjoy feeling the history behind the simple foods I actually prepare and enjoy best.

Here are a few books that already combine literature and historical food, just to get started:

On the other hand, I have pulled some ideas for eating from books that are definitely not about food. Let's begin with sandwiches, for today.

I have to say that my all-time favourite food from a book is sandwiches à la The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I really loved the series and I have written before (way back in 2009!) that I feel Steig Larsson busted open the Nordic procedural thriller genre with this series, and I believe it is currently one of the dominant genres out there in all culture. I might even say that its omnipresence has pushed it out beyond my ability to enjoy it. In any case, let's talk about the sandwiches. Maybe I'll talk about genre theory in another post, if you want.

Firstly, you should know that I LOVE SANDWICHES. They may be my favourite thing to eat. I have a Pinterest board dedicated to sandwich recipes. Perhaps it would be better to say sandwich ideas rather than than sandwich recipes. The recipe is simply bread + other. 

Mikael Blomkvist eats sandwiches thru-out the Dragon Tattoo series, but always using and combining just these ingredients: liverwurst, cheese and pickles. Total possible number of combos is a factorial of 3, therefore there are 6 possibilities. I use them all.  Well, I might not have tried plain pickles, but now I'm going to. And I ALWAYS remember HIM eating them, with black coffee on the side (a Swedish thing, but not at all my thing), at any hour of the day or night, deluxe or corner store ingredients, no matter.

I have (unoriginally) become a regular bread-baker here in COVID times. I usually use commercial liverwurst with sweet pickles–that has been my most favouritest combo–but I tried my hand at chopped liver using this recipe from Bon Appetit magazine. And I made chopped liver and pickles on homemade bread a few times out of it. Yes! 

photo by Alex Lau from Bon Apetit magazine

Thank-you. Next!

Recently, I made bread especially so that I can try a recipe from another book I love: The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. My little sister had this classic boxed set, and I ended up with them for my kids. I loved the stories and so did they. One of my kids will probably one day have a hedgehog pet, maybe because of Mrs Tiggywinkle. I used to snuggle with one of my kids in a way that I was the box bed and she was Mrs Tittlemouse in it. Those were some good times!

We watched this beautiful series, The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends, over and over. There is a lovely score by Colin Towns. I have an old CD somewhere, and I found a playlist on YouTube to share with you. He has had a long career in scoring and I see he scored the current series Doc Martin, and I have signed up for a trial of Acorn so I can definitely tune in to check out the music, altho it might be an interesting show, too.

And there is also the quite lovely movie Miss Potter, about Beatrix Potter herself, starring Renee Zellwegger. Perhaps not the greatest movie of all time, but inhabiting the same quiet dreamy space as the stories, and with gorgeous music by Colin Westlake. The movie is currently on Prime in Canada but I also found it on YouTube, and you can get the soundtrack on Apple Music or YouTube as well.

Yes, I hear you saying, but where are the sandwiches? Do you remember when Peter gets home wet and torn and exhausted and his mother sends him to bed with no supper? His sisters have a dinner that I have always (and by that I mean for about 80 years or so) longed to try.

Here is the passage and the illustration: I AM sorry to say that Peter was not very well during the evening. His mother put him to bed, and made some camomile tea; and she gave a dose of it to Peter! "One table-spoonful to be taken at bed-time." BUT Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail had bread and milk and blackberries for supper.

We have been getting very good blackberries lately and it came to my mind to give this old idea a try. Here is my bowl:

OK, it is a sandwich only by the loosest definition, bread + other. Or I could say it is a deconstructed sandwich. Or I could just say it was so delicious I will be having it again this morning for breakfast.

I must tell also tell you about one of my favourite Instagram accounts: Eating Their Words. Virginia is actually from Toronto and lives very near to my husband's hometown of Pesaro in Italy, of all things! She makes and serves all kinds of foods out of the books she reads, and posts beautiful pictures of the food and the cover together with the relevant quotation from the book. Check it out @eatingthierwords.

I guess that might be about it for sandwiches. The marigold is wondering nervously if it is still too early for lunch...