Green Eggs and Ham

I loved Dr. Seuss as a child, I think it was the rhyming scheme that I enjoyed the most. My sister and I have a tradition of watching The Grinch every Christmas and every year I wish I knew what Roast Beast tasted like. Dr. Seuss writes in a way that is fun, wacky and utterly addictive to children. The rhyming scheme makes it easy to memorise his tales and even now I know lines of some of his works off by heart. 

For my last post I have a bit of a Sam theme, considering it is my name. Green Eggs and Ham was always my favourite because of the appearance of my name. Looking at it now I also see it has a fantastic didactic lesson. 

When I was little I decided I hated mushrooms without even trying them, if anything had mushrooms in it then I would refuse to eat it. I think it was the way they looked that put me off them. In the end I tried them one day and realised that they weren’t as bad as I had thought and that I actually really liked them. I know most children go through stages like this all the time. Green Eggs and Ham tells this same story with the same conclusion. The lesson being that you will never know if you like food until you try it. Children are notoriously the most fussy eaters so this is a great lesson to teach them early on.    

Using something as strange as eggs and ham that are green is the same idea. It looks weird to the characters like mushrooms did to me so they instantly refuse to eat it. Dr. Seuss has a habit of creating strange and wonderful sounding foods in his works to add to the fantasy and the intrigue you get from his wacky ideas. 

I found a wonderful cookbook called Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook with recipes put together by Georgeanne Brennan and photography by Frankie Frankeny. The book looks at many different tales from the works of Dr. Seuss and works to create and help others attempt the crazy fictional foods that are mentioned. There are quotations from the stories and illustrations with each entry. Each recipe has a brief introduction and goes on to list the ingredients then the method as you would find in your typical cookbook. 

I’m pretty sure this cookbook is my new favourite book ever! It completely fascinates me with its creativity and I had so much trouble narrowing down which recipes to try, (Who-Roast Beast was a close contender) in the end I decided to try the two that involved my name considering that was the reason I loved Dr. Seuss in the first place. 

So here are my attempts at the recipes from Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook for Green Eggs and Ham and Silly Sammy Slick’s Sodas!

I tried two versions of this one with orange juice and the other with raspberry puree. I preferred the raspberry one but both were very fizzy and very sickly! No wonder Sammy was sick sick sick! 

The recipe for Green Eggs and Ham

My own version. I did not like them Sam I am!

Stone Soup

"For this stone will always make a good soup as long as you work on it together" (p.105)

Stone Soup is one of the stories that both my mum and sister mentioned to me straight away when I told them about my blog idea. They have both worked in schools with young children and tell this tale to teach them how to be kind to people and of the wonders of team work. 

The version in Fairy Tale Feasts is the Portuguese version which tells of a Monk who is a man of faith and poverty. The monk wanders into a village and after being cruelly turned away from every home asks to borrow a pot to make soup from a stone. The villagers become curious and the monk tells them of how delicious it can be with a few different items to “make it better” and one by one they all provide him with the ingredients. In the end they have enough delicious soup to feed the whole village. 

Stone Soup is told in many different ways some using travelers, old women and even tramps as the main protagonist. Regardless of this the moral is still the same and makes this tale perfectly didactic. Children will remember the clever plan and learn that it is better to be kind and cooperate well with others. 

The story appears in Fairy Tale Feasts in the soups section. This is interesting as we have discussed in class that most cookbooks will always feature a soup section in hopes of encouraging home cooks to include this as a valid course in the typical meal. Soup is popular in many cultures and is often used to feed the poor just like the porridge in my previous post. 

Stone Soup also works as a recipe for children. You are told one by one as each ingredient goes in and can construct your own version from that. Fairy Tale Feasts lists your typical recipe for vegetable soup but also as a side note gives the idea of a Stone Soup party in which every guest brings their favourite vegetable and makes it together in true Stone Soup spirit!