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.