imaginary food

[truepenny]

Talk to me about food in fantasy. (And science fiction, if you like.)

Readers, what kinds of details do you like to see? What makes a culture's eating habits come alive for you?

Writers (oh, please, writers, you're my only hope), how do you go about inventing cuisines and delicacies and what the street vendors sell? Especially when you are not relying on the old trick of, "I'll make this culture !Japan or !India or !France." How do you figure out what people eat?

Comments

[panjianlien.livejournal.com]

All of the above comments re: location, economics, etc. are spot on.

One thing I have often noticed: in fantasy especially, people seem unnaturally devoted to bread-and-cheese for any non-sit-down meal, and some version of Roast Beast for sit-down meals. They must all be terminally constipated and verging on scurvy. (I mean, really, even the most truncated Ploughman's Lunch ought to offer one some onion.)

Every culture eats greens, even if they have to pull them half-digested out of the stomachs of slaughtered migratory ruminants. The poorer people are, typically, the more greens they eat. The kail-yard, etc. etc. Greens are a poor staple food, as they have few calories and little protein/fat, but they are plentiful (since they do in fact more or less grow on trees) and they have a long season in most climates, and they are almost never a high-status food which means artificial competition doesn't enter into it.

Alliums ditto. Wherever they grow (which is nearly everywhere that isn't polar) they are eaten in quantity.

And triple ditto with legumes. Any culture that stays stationary long enough to cook a pot of beans pretty much seems to do so. Cheap, cheerful, and proteinaceous.

Oh and: I was recently reminded of the immense significance of a culture's staple foods versus the available foods that are not staples, while reading a book on the culinary history of Italy. A quotation from a letter preserved in the state archives in Palermo described two men, starved to death during an agricultural famine, found lying on a beach with their mouths stuffed with half-chewed dune grass. They died on a *beach*. By the *sea*. Where there are, y'know, *fish* and stuff that are certainly adequate for surviving upon.

But perhaps not if you have been raised to believe that fish are not proper food, only the fruits of the earth are.

There is some evidence that this dead-on-the-beach-with-a-mouthful-of-dune-grass is a symbolic and apocryphal story. Nevertheless, not implausible. And rather potent.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I didn't join a writing group I talked to lo these many moons ago is that they wanted me to change the instance in a science fiction story where the characters were making a salad to something "more futuristic": eating food pills was suggested.

And I balked really hard at that, because people have eaten salad forever, and I firmly believe that they will keep eating salad--as you say, every culture eats greens. Food pills are stupid and overrated. Make a damn salad.

[mectech.livejournal.com]

Amen to much of what has been said before re: climate, culture, economics. I'm just chiming in with another example. One of the little details that totally sold me on "Firefly" (the late & lamented TV show) is how the preacher bought his passage offplanet with a simply-decorated but beautifully detailed hinged box of fine wood with cushioned satin-esque lining, which contained 4 large luscious factory-farm-perfect-looking strawberries. The director (probably Joss Whedon), the directory of photography, & the editor set it up to maximize the payoff from revealing what was in the box, & it was incredibly effective at conveying both the social status of everyone involved with the transaction & how the culture's food economy worked. The acting was great too.

[aliseadae]

Whenever my family goes on vacation my mom laments that the restaurants don't serve enough leafy greens. Leafy greens are one of my favorite things as well. That, beans, and fresh fruit. Mmm. No food pills for me.