| Recently unearthed cartoon by M@. Only slightly related. |
I’ll bet if I ever had an opportunity to sample some of the old-timey foods found in classic literature, they wouldn’t be so appetizing. But I’ve never actually eaten salt pork or corn pone, so nothing in the world makes me hungrier than reading about rugged protagonists tucking into such down-home, hearty vittles. Even when the characters in the book complain about their rations — “Alas, we subsisted on nothing save a half-satchel of mouldy corn dodgers and spoilt corned beef!” — I secretly believe they would be delicious. I don’t know what sorghum is, or even what it looks like, but my imagination tells me it’d go great on a buttery biscuit with a tall jug of country lemonade to wash it down. My mouth waters as Huck Finn packs his rucksack with the most basic of provisions: a bottle of warm buttermilk, a side of bacon, sugar, coffee and a few fresh catfish. Yet, I don’t generally care for seafood, don’t drink coffee and get grossed out whenever I see a dried milk flake fall off the cap and into my glass. Plus the idea of shoving raw bacon into my backpack and eating it a week later is so repulsive that I’m having a hard time finishing the bland oatmeal currently in front of me. So it’s fair to say I haven’t the constitution for frontiersman fare, but I’m nonetheless enamored with the idea of it. Take this excerpt from the delightful book The Swiss Family Robinson, which basically reads like an extremely exotic menu: "… apples, oranges, guavas, apples, and pears resting on cool green leaves, lay heaped in pyramids … a haunch of venison, cold fowl, ham, and tongue … surrounded by bowls of milk and great jugs of mead." You just try to tell me you couldn’t go for a helping of venison and tongue right now, even though we both know these dishes, especially when prepared in the rudimentary Robinson kitchen, would probably have us gagging for hours. Same with their meal of wild penguin and cocoanut milk, but I’m licking my lips all the same. Heck, my sister Katie admits she mainly reads old pioneer novels for the pages about food. Her favorite excerpt from Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder: “Ten pancakes cooked on the smoking griddle, and as fast as they were done Mother added another cake to each stack and buttered it lavishly and covered it with maple sugar. Butter and sugar melted together and soaked the fluffy pancakes and dripped all down their crisp edges.” Editor’s note: We apologize for the missing conclusion in this column. The author was not able to finish due to a malfunctioning keyboard, which he swears is a software issue and has nothing to do with the maple syrup and powdered sugar scattered on his desk. |
