Open Book Blog Hop – Food, glorious food!

Uncategorized 2 Minutes

What is your favorite fruit dish? Can you share a recipe for it? Do you include food in your stories? While we’re talking about food, pumpkin, yea or nay?

My favourite fruit dish is apple pie. I particularly like the recipe given to me by my husband’s grandmother which has a very unusual and tasty sweet pastry.

If you would like the recipe, you will find it at the end of my free Sir Chocolate story book here: https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/free-story-the-marzipan-witch-and-the-golden-swan/. In case you don’t know, Robbie’s Inspiration is my baking and fondant art blog.

I do have a tendency to include food quite often in my stories. Why wouldn’t I? People do most of their socialising over meals – well, they do in my family and among my friends group.

I included apple pie in Through the Nethergate when Henry Scarle, a ghost who has recently reincarnated as a result of Margaret’s unique abilities, tries food for the first time in 400 years.

This is the extract:

““Why don’t you try something,” Margaret said suddenly. “You have a physical body now, you may well be able to enjoy food even if you don’t need to eat to sustain yourselves.”

Henry looked delighted at the thought and decided to order apple pie and cream. The pie looked delicious and he wanted this experiment to be worthwhile in case it made him ill afterwards. Lizzie didn’t order anything. She would see how the food agreed with Henry first.

“At least one of us has to be in guaranteed working order,” she said.

Food comes up quite often in my forthcoming novel, A Ghost and His Gold.”

This is an extract from the war experience of Pieter, a Boer [a Boer is an Afrikaans farmer in South Africa], just before he leaves with his brother, Willem to fight in the war against Britain:

“Sannie was famous for her potjiekos, a rich stew comprising of beef, potatoes and plenty of vegetables which she cooked slowly, in a three-legged cast-iron pot, over hot coals until the meat was tender and the vegetables soft.

Pieter’s meals for the past few days had comprised of rusks, dried bread and biltong with water from their water-skins, and his mouth watered as the rich fumes from the stew wafted through the house.

When the meal was ready, Pieter and Willem tucked into the food with gusto, knowing that they were unlikely to enjoy such a good meal again for a while. The main course was followed by Sannie’s home-made melktert, a traditional dessert consisting of a sweet pastry crust containing a custard filling made from milk, flour, sugar and eggs, and sprinkled with cinnamon.”

Ina Paarman | Shin and Oxtail Beef Potjie
Picture from Ina Paarman’s recipe for shin and oxtail beef potjie: https://www.paarman.co.za/all-recipes/shin-and-oxtail-beef-potjie/

I like pumpkin but only as a savoury dish. I enjoy it with a rich gravy or in a potjie or stew.

Do I cook, I hear you asking. Well, yes, maybe a little and I bake a great deal. I love to make exotic cakes. You can find out more about my baking on Robbie’s Inspiration.

What do other bloggers think about this week’s prompt. You can find out by clicking on the link below.

Rules:

  1. Link your blog to this hop.
  2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
  3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
  4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
  5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

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Published by robertawrites235681907

I am a writer of young adult fiction and poetry

Published

65 thoughts on “Open Book Blog Hop – Food, glorious food!”

  1. I love it when authors include food in their stories. I always include the food of the country Amanda is visiting in my Amanda Travels books. It’s true, characters often discuss things over food which moves the story along. I love baking with fruit and make a great fruit kuchen which hubby enjoys.

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      1. My wife is gluten/dairy/etc free and hasn’t eaten red meat in the 40 years I’ve known her. I indulge in a hamburger occasionally and I think I ate a filet once in the last ten years. I sometimes complain that for the most part we eat veggies, fish and sawdust and turkey or chicken on holidays but it hasn’t killed me so…

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  10. I think I would have to name cherry pie as my favorite fruit dish, followed by strawberry pie, and then apple. I include scenes in my stories that are set with people socializing over meals or coffee, too. Like you, I grew up that way. I’m not much of a baker, but I do like to cook now an then 🙂

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  11. For a favorite fruit dish, I would have to say the blueberry pie my mother would make at camp. Wild blueberries are much sweeter than cultivated. Now that you mention it, I do include food iin my fiction, usually to provide some kind of context or to indicate how the characters are feeling.

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  12. Apple pie is probably my favourite fruit dish, but I do love pumpkin pie too. Unfortnualy it’s virtually unheard of here in Australia. In fact, sweet pie doesn’t go down well here at all. They’re all about meat pies here 😣

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    1. That is interesting. I am lucky, I just instinctively know how to cook and bake. I never follow a recipe exactly as I always know when to change it for climate and other factors that influence the outcome, especially for baked goods.

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  14. That stew looks wonderful! Almost any fruit is good in a pie–apple, blackberry, etc. Peach and blueberry is a lovely combination. Pumpkin pie is really sort of a custard, with the so-called “pumpkin spice” to give it flavour, as pumpkin is pretty bland. Most North Americans wouldn’t think to use pumpkin in savory dishes, but are okay with squash cooked that way.

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    1. How interesting that in the USA pumpkin is seen as a sweet dish. That is completely different to here in South Africa where is is nearly always a savoury vegetable dish. I have eaten pumpkin fritters which are sweet but never pumpkin pie. Afrikaans women are generally very good cooks. Thanks for visiting.

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  16. As cooking and food are important to me, I always like to mention what the main characters are eating in both the novels I’ve written so far. In My Life in Darkness I frequently mention what food Melissa is being given to eat by Astrid (as Astrid is a vampire I don’t really need to point out what she’s eating), often it’s food I would like to eat myself.

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  19. I like all of it. Not sure of favorite. Pumpkin pie is good or as soup or a savory dish. Persimmons,pineapple,pears, figs and plums and peaches are great. It seems if I can’t find fresh and certain varieties not usually found in the small town I live. Medlars is something I have a friend who likes and want to try if could find. Cherry pie with lots of vanilla ice cream is a favorite lately. The oxtail-beef potjie looks great would love to find a place that cooked it that way. I used to like cooking but now it’s frozen or canned and take out. Once in a while I keep trying to make gumbo. Takes work to get it right and I’m lazy. But I like to eat. 🙂

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    1. Hi Ed, I have never had pumpkin or cherry pie. We only ever have apple pie and I’ve had peach cobbler. I like all of these fruits but I haven’t her do medlars. I’ll have to look that up. I do like to cook and prefer homemade to take away or other instant foods. Thanks for visiting and commenting.

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  21. Excellent, Robbie. And the photos have me drooling! For me, it really does add a lot to a story when a character’s meal is mentioned. That’s almost a “requirement” (unofficial) for high fantasy stories. I’m not sure how common it is in other genres. I took a cue from Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire series, when I saw how much more real it made her heroine when the author occasionally described her breakfast or what outfit she was putting on. So yes, I include food in most of my stories. Terrific post. Hugs on the wing.

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    1. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Teagan. I think so too. I love that you include young women with healthy appetites in your books. Modern women need role models who are normal and healthy as we are continuously beset with these unnatural images of women in the media.

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  22. You just gave me an idea. I have a creamed curry recipe my daughter gave me. It’s based on butternut squash, which is fine, but takes a lot of effort. I’m now wondering if I could base it on canned pumpkin. Got to give it a try sometime this winter.

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      1. Or more garbanzo beans. Or less cream. Playing with proportions is how I make my daughter’s five-alarm hot curry into my more subtle (maybe two-and-a-half-alarm) curry. She also puts coconut oil in hers, but I don’t because I’m allergic. I use cream and peanut butter instead.

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          1. You do what you have to do if you’re allergic to a key ingredient. Ivyl and I experimented and she said dairy cream and peanut butter got as close to coconut oil as we could get. She wanted me to embrace almond milk, but at $7 for a quart, I balked.

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