Once Upon a Time

As a child I fell in love with stories pretty quickly. My family were unfortunately gifted with the job of reading me books, poems and nursery rhymes every night, sometimes over and over until I was satisfied that we both could quote them at will. My poor sister probably still knows the beginning of Peter Pan better than I do. Through this I found my love of literature and as soon as I could read on my own I couldn’t be stopped.

 When I wasn’t reading I was just as happy to cook with my mum who makes the best cakes in my opinion. As you can see from the pictures above my main cooking influence from her is that it should be just as creative as it is delicious. Even as I write this she has just walked into my room with a cupcake she just made. It was peanut butter flavoured with chocolate icing and tasted amazing incase you wanted to know. 

If I have time I love to help her cook and have so many amazing memories of times when I did as a child. When I look back, my family reading to me and cooking with me hold a large proportion of my memories.

So the opportunity rises for me to explore the two in tandem, just like they are in my memories from childhood. Food in Children’s Literature is something that is overwhelmingly present though I never really noticed it at the time. Thinking on it as an adult I see how food was used to be symbolistic, didactic and sometimes purposefully made disgusting for the sake of a child's entertainment. 

Just like using the wind and trees as symbols as we often see in writing, food can do the same. It presents something realistic and necessary to us and connects us through commonly known imagery. Although there is one beautiful difference between nature writing and food writing. You can’t taste a tree. 

Food is one of the wonderful things in life that involves all five senses. 
You can see how aesthetically pleasing food can be.
You can hear the sounds of it crunching or breaking.
You can feel the textures and how they are different. 
You can smell the aromas of every ingredient.
And most importantly you can taste it. 

In my opinion that makes food a great thing to write about and in this blog I intend to explore this in some of the stories I loved so much growing up. I intend to look at fairytales, poems, nursery rhymes and books that feature food and depict them in interesting ways and question why that is. I even intend to recreate some of the foods I read about myself, including recipes. So watch this space.  

I’m off to steal another cupcake from the kitchen. 

Sammy xx