Fantasy Cookbooks
How food deepens our engagement with our lands of make-believe
“Um,” I say to my husband, “he’s eaten six popsicles already today. Is it okay to give him another?’
My husband shrugs in the way husbands do—indicating equal parts nonchalance and acquiescence.
“It’s just orange juice, banana, and strawberries,”I say aloud, justifying myself in handing over the seventh popsicle of the day to our three-year-old son. After all, our little guy is super excited about his Strawberry Smoothie Popsicles. He and I made them together a few hours earlier—a recipe from The Official Daniel Tiger Cookbook.
I’ll never forget the unadaulterated joy radiating from my son’s face the day we stumbled accross The Daniel Tiger Cookbook at our library. Its recipes were his bedtime story of choice for three months running. I had to buy it so we could return the library copy!
My son is far more than an armchair cookbook fan. He does enjoy browsing the recipes, but when I hand him the cookbook, he straps on his little rocket apron and pulls a barstool to the counter, prepared to mash bananas and measure coconut flakes. We’ve had so much fun cooking and eating dozens of delicious Daniel Tiger recipes. It’s my most-used cookbook!
What’s so special about a cookbook inspired by a beloved fantasy world, such as the Neighborhood of Make-Believe? Can I learn something from cookbook magic to help me become a better writer? And how can I get more fantasy fiction recipes into my life?
Let’s dig in!
Mixed media immersive experiences
Our kiddos love the Daniel Tiger show on PBS Kids. Our youngest has watched The Daniel Tiger Movie approximately ten thousand times. We read Daniel Tiger 5-Minute Stories and enjoy board books with fun buttons that play Daniel Tiger songs. We listen to Daniel Tiger songs in the car. Our oldest has a huge Daniel Tiger poster on his wall. Both kids play with Daniel Tiger figurines and giggle together in a big Trolley tent. My youngest sleeps with Daniel’s stuffy, Tigey. Now, the Official Cookbook brings recipes from the series to our table.
For our family Daniel Tiger isn’t just a show, it’s part of our daily lives. I feel like an unoffical member of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. We connect with its fantasy world and characters via many types of media and across such diverse sensory experiences.
These kinds of connections aren’t exclusive to children’s entertainment. Whether I’m listening to a Harry Potter soundtrack or the Evening in Rivendale album by the Tolkein Ensemble, whether I’m sporting my favorite Ravenclaw scarf or my Wheel of Time necklace, I’m not just maintaining connection to a fantasy series I love, I’m deepening the connection.
Books, video, and music are powerful avenues of immersion. So are toys, clothes, and decorations. Not only do these secondary experiences integrate story into our days, but they strum the many strings of our senses.
Which is why food swings the doors open wide for incredible immersion in a fantasy world. Food is a sensory triple-whammy: taste, smell, touch. I’ll never forget my first time cracking open a box of Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans (inspired by Harry Potter) and sorting through the brightly-colored sweets to determine if I had a Marshmallow or an Ear Wax jelly bean.
Eating our fictional fantasies makes them part of us, literally as well as figuratively. The realizatiaon leaves me wondering now to leverage that massive power when creating my own fictional worlds.
Writing immersive fictional experiences
Maybe someday I’ll write a fantasy series so popular that manufacturers will clamor to transform my fictional confections into reality. Until then, I’ll do what fantasy writers have been doing for decades—write the food into my stories.
Before Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans were produced by the Jelly Belly company, Rowling wrote about them in the Harry Potter books, along with pumkin juice, Butterbeer, and a whole bunch of stodgy-sounding British dishes from steak-and-kidney pudding to meat pies.
The Wheel of Time makes brilliant use of food to portray the varied cultures of its vast fantasy world. Honeycakes, spiced wine, hot fish stew, plum punch, roasted peas, sourdough bread. Characters from one region have a lot to say about the cusine from a different land—often complaining it’s too rich or spicy compared to their home cooking.
Tolkein also uses food to fantastic worldbuilding advantage. The Hobbit kicks off with a bunch of dwarves gnoshing on Bilbo’s precious pantry preserves: pickles, cheeses, seed-cakes, ham, cold chicken, apple tarts, beer, wine coffee.
Every time a writer mentions food, we get that triple-whammy: taste, smell, texture. Not to mention, food may involve a visual description; we might even hear the crackle of fat on the fire.
Food helps readers engage with our story and inhabit our ficitonal worlds. Cuisine engages multiple senses and can become an invaluable worldbuilding tool.
It should come as no surprise, then, that well-loved fantasy worlds inspire cookbooks.
Cookbooks from my favorite fantasy worlds
When I started researching, I found cookbooks from the Redwall series, the Discworld series, Narnia cookbooks, and Zelda cookbooks. I was astounded and delighted by the fantasy cookbook selections.
Here are a few that intrigue me:
The Shire Cookbook (LoTR)
The Wizard’s Cookbook (featuring recipes from Oz, D&D, Narnia, and more)
I have a couple of these on reserve at the library. Maybe one will become so important to our household we have to buy it.
Food is world building’s best friend
Writing food into our fiction is a fantastic way draw readers deeper into stories. For readers, eating food inspired by those stories is such a fun way to connect and engage with favorite lands of make-believe.
A cookbook offers even more than just the experience of eating—making food is a sensory experience like no other. My three-year-old can tell you, as he pours smoothies into popsicle molds, mashes bananas with his hands, and plunges his little fingers into fragrant coconut flakes.