01-20-2009, 02:11 PM
It's not trivial, it's a good thread. 
I love descriptions of food and/or weather in the stories. While I often don't feel a compulsion to prepare and eat what's described, yep...my appetite often gets whetted, lol.
One thing I don't ever crave is "tea and toast." Egad, that's already old. ;p
In "Reception at Hightower," the heroine basically never eats. She's recuperating from a nervous breakdown, is in a hostile environment (of course), is quite possibly teetering on the edge of another nervous collapse...and all she consumes are coffee and cigarettes.
No wonder she's half anemic and hallucinatory...
I can't help wondering how much of the authors' own attitudes towards food factors in; probably quite a bit. Some of them must have been flat-out anorectic.
A really good Gothic with lots of food references is We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. Someday I'm going to make a 2-layer cake [1 chocolate, 1 vanilla] decorated with pink frosting and golden foil leaves about the edges, and call it "The Merrycat Cake." And no, it won't contain any..."additives"...such as that found in certain sugar bowls - lol.
I love descriptions of food and/or weather in the stories.
While I often don't feel a compulsion to prepare and eat what's described, yep...my appetite often gets whetted, lol.One thing I don't ever crave is "tea and toast." Egad, that's already old. ;p
In "Reception at Hightower," the heroine basically never eats. She's recuperating from a nervous breakdown, is in a hostile environment (of course), is quite possibly teetering on the edge of another nervous collapse...and all she consumes are coffee and cigarettes.
No wonder she's half anemic and hallucinatory...I can't help wondering how much of the authors' own attitudes towards food factors in; probably quite a bit. Some of them must have been flat-out anorectic.
A really good Gothic with lots of food references is We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. Someday I'm going to make a 2-layer cake [1 chocolate, 1 vanilla] decorated with pink frosting and golden foil leaves about the edges, and call it "The Merrycat Cake."
And no, it won't contain any..."additives"...such as that found in certain sugar bowls - lol.