Rabbit Food

Some nice people invited me to watch Miss Potter this afternoon, so I thought I'd bring a snack from my old Peter Rabbit cookbook. I hadn't look at it in years, since my children were little and I was a stay-at-home mom. It's much worst for the wear; kinda gross looking, actually. But we obviously used it a lot; the cover was stained, petrified crumbs fell out of the spine, and the pages for the best recipes were stuck together. I have dozens of cookbooks on my shelf, but the state of the pages is a good way to tell what I'd recommend.

After much deliberation, I settled on carrot cookies. Although "natural," these cookies aren't health food. Each cookies is about 2 points, according to my Weight Watcher calculator. I guess that's about 140 calories. I accidentally left out the butter, and they were fine. That might have saved a half a point or so.

Littletown Farm Carrot Cookies
(from Dobrin, Arnold: Peter Rabbit's Natural Food Cookbook, Fredrick Warne, New York, 1977)
1 1/2 cups sliced carrots
salt
1 C unbleached white flour
1 C whole wheat flour
2 1/2 baking powder
1/4 t cinnamon
1/8 t nutmeg
1/2 t salt
1/2 C shortening
1/2 C butter
1 C brown sugar
2 eggs
3/4 C golden raisins
shortening to grease the cookie sheets

Boil the sliced carrots in enough salted water to cover, for about 15 to 20 minutes. Until tender. Cool.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. and grease cookie sheets.

In a small mixing bowl, stir the flours, the baking powder, the cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt together with a fork.

In larger mxing bowl, mash the carrots, and add the shortening, butter, and brown sugar. Blend well. Beat in the eggs, then fold in the flour mixture, then the raisins.

Drop by spoonfuls onto the cookie sheets about 2 inches apart and bake for 10 minutes.

Yield: 4 dozen cookies.

What Does Food Writing Have to Do with Fiction?

Food writing seems almost too easy.

While all writers struggle to uncover long-buried memory triggers, to share reality in basis terms like smell and taste, and to touch readers with evocative connotations, food writers' material puts them ahead of the game.

For my nonfiction class, I've just read MFK Fisher's The Gastronomical Me, some of the famous essayist's most autobiographical pieces. Reading the book reminds me of how many childhood memories are keyed into some sort of food or cooking.

I don't think it's just people like Mrs. Fisher, or even me--"foodies," as the media say--that remember life in terms of food. We're a nation obsessed with eating, or not eating, as the case may be. The childhood favorites, the holiday meals, the sack lunches, they are all right there, just under the surface, informing our adult food neuroses.

Although I've been told to delete any and all scenes that involve people making tea, pouring coffee, and the like from my fiction, I suspect taking a cue from the easy life of a food writer wouldn't be a bad idea.

Yes, filling space with the protagonist fiddling with the tea service is probably a bad idea. But finding the meal--a pauper's thin gruel of oats to a king's roast turkey, dripping fat and swimming in onions and sage--that defines the emotional energy of the scene is an excellent tool.

Serve it to the reader and he'll be eating out of your hand.