Food AND Books

When I was a child, my mother used to drink buttermilk. She was the only one in the family who liked it, and I can still picture her stretched out on the lounger on our front porch with a glass of buttermilk in the summertime. At that point in my life, my taste buds still young and willing to work long, hard hours to wallop me with intense flavor every time something touched my tongue, I’d have agreed to go six months without reading my beloved Cricket magazine to avoid having to drink a glass of buttermilk.

Somehow, though, my hatred of buttermilk didn’t register when I read about Laura Ingalls helping her mother at the butter churn, always hoping to get a little buttermilk. Her buttermilk wasn't sour and distasteful, but rather sweet and delicious, and my mouth watered as I read about it. I longed to drink some of that buttermilk right along with her, just as I longed to eat some of that maple candy Mr. Edwards brought after he ran into Santa Clause on the Prairie, even though I’d had maple candy from Hickory Farms and knew it made me feel sick. For some reason, I was sure that these foods must have been different back then. No child could possibly like the modern versions, but I trusted Laura implicitly. She was one of my best friends. If she claimed to have eaten and loved these special treats in all her little houses, I believed her.

Heidi did the same with her goat’s milk. Goat’s milk isn’t something I’d ever had, but I wanted to join her up there in those mountains, playing with the goats and drinking what was quite obviously the world’s best milk. Forget the fact that I was the world’s pickiest child when it came to cow’s milk. It had to be served at just the right temperature (it couldn’t be the least bit warm). I wouldn’t drink it unless I had some food to eat with it. When we visited England in the summertime, I didn’t like the milk (having been served only homogenized milk in America, I wasn’t used to what I would now consider that delicious cream that floated to the top of the bottles). My sense of how milk should taste was so keen, I could probably have sniffed a glass of United Dairies 1973, and told you exactly what kind of grass that cow had been eating before she was milked. Taking a sip and swirling it around in my mouth, I would have given it either a stamp of approval or one of disapproval, the latter resembling a reaction from Miles had he been presented with a glass of Merlot in the movie Sideways. Nonetheless (and despite my mother telling me she was sure I wouldn’t like goat’s milk), I wanted my parents to go out and get a couple of goats, so we could have fresh goat’s milk with our breakfast every morning.

After reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I became obsessed with trying to nibble slowly at my Hershey’s chocolate bars (which I was sure were completely inferior to Wonka bars, but I had no choice). I felt so sorry for Charlie living in that small place that obviously always smelled like cabbage soup (a smell I despised) with all those grandparents in one bed, and I was so impressed with his ability to make those once-a-year-chocolate bars last so long. How lucky I was to have a father who would bribe me with chocolate bars in order to have some company when he had to run errands. I should learn to appreciate them more, though, and to savor them the way Charlie did. Do you know how hard it is to make a Hershey bar last even two days? I fell madly in love with Charlie and his self-restraint.

I haven’t revisited any of these books in a long time, but boy do I still connect the foods with the books. Today, I’m far less picky about what I eat, so I can truly imagine enjoying the foods described in the books I read, and I could probably write an entire book about the foods I associate with specific titles. For instance, I’m not sure why a book that’s all about food, like Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking, would encourage one specific food to march front and center in my mind, but I can’t look at that little yellow paperback sitting on my shelf without thinking about mouth-watering gingerbread, eaten warm on a crisp, fall afternoon. When I see Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides, I’m reminded of the huge amounts of shrimp my parents’ friends from Charleston would bring up when they came to visit us in North Carolina, and how we’d sit around the living room table peeling them and dipping them in cocktail sauce (an evening in heaven, as far as I’m concerned). Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird reminds me of those inadequate sandwiches my own hapless father (just like hers) used to prepare, never as good as the ones my mother made, despite having the same ingredients. And is it possible to read a Janet Evanovich mystery without wanting to race off to a state fair and purchase a couple of homemade cakes, hoping one will be as good as the kind Stephanie Plum’s mother bakes?

Funny, although I’ve learned to like yogurt, especially yogurt made from goat’s milk, I’ve never learned to like buttermilk. I’m sure, though, that if I could only prepare it in a little log cabin, in the middle of the Wisconsin woods, using an old-fashioned butter churn (the added bonus here being a fabulous workout for the arms), it would be divine. But until I finish that time machine, I think I'll go bake some gingerbread. Although it isn't exactly "crisp" yet, fall is definitely in the air here.