radiant fracture

Have you got a favorite in the genre of Literary Cookbooks?

Or -- though this is a separate genre and a bit out of fashion now -- Those Novels with Recipes in Them? (See Like Water for Chocolate.)

I have a cherished book produced two decades ago through the print-on-demand place, called Regional Cooking from Middle-Earth: Recipes of the Third Age.

The cookbook is divided regionally -- Shire, Bree, Regions of Rohan, etc., and also has an Index by Season. I think all the recipes are given both in English and in the local languages. It is the very exemplar of a labour of love.

I am almost certain I have never cooked anything from this book, but I feel happier knowing I could. There are three kinds of lembas. The recipes are simple and practical. There is a rabbit stew. Tarcoron, "high mound" is better know in this age as Yorkshire Pudding.

Why the question

I was thinking of trying to make batch cooking feel more appealing by making it literary-flavoured. I did once make a pretty passable Boeuf en Daube for a party.

(So the Surrealist Cookbook would be unhelpful in this instance. I want to make real food for my real body to eat. I just want to eat some ideas at the same time.)

--any edible and palatable crossover would do, really. Cheers!

(For example, I count New England Spider Cake as literary because I learnt it from a post by sovay .)

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On Sunday, I made spider cake after sovay and was not disappointed. I made it with goat's milk yogurt instead of cow milk and cream, and the bread was wonderfully tart and fluffy, with the thick custardy "spider" running through it. That, with maple syrup? Damn.

I'm in the middle of tonight's second batch of ordinary cornbread, because I am out of goat yogurt but not out of the stone soup I make every Sunday during my family calls. That I have a great deal of, frozen, and the cornbread will go nicely with it.

(Though I guess solo stone soup would be... just a stone in hot water. So it's more like whatchagot stew.)

I got three prompts into the Faebruary art challenge, and then I got bogged down on "fairy dance" because the dancers I chose as a reference were wearing masks and no matter what I did I got the faces All Wrong. The bodies had more flow than the last drawing, but the heads, augh.

(Pauses, listens closely) I think there's a... goose.. in the yard. Hang on.

...No goose. Must have flown off.  Early this morning there was something on the roof with a strange pattern of movement and a peculiar yowl and I'm a bit skittish today. I don't think that was a goose.

Anyway, tonight I sat down and painted for another prompt, #faeriesfestivalfrock in order to catch up a little bit and feel more like a competent painter. The reference photo is a Jean Paul Gaultier dress I have had saved for ages because it was so lovely. (I didn't paint the designs in on the wrap, but now I think maybe I should.) So this fairy seems to be off to a festival that involves catwalks and photo shoots. Must be urban fantasy.




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