For the SF&F writers among us: describing food

[SimonDoom]

I'm really into food being erotic. My next story , to be pu wished in a few days, is called Personal Chef.

 

[StillStunned]

If you want to go crazy in your SFF world, leave stew behind and have them eat hot dish and lime jello salad.

There was a site some years ago that had photos of strange foods from the 1970s. Things like jello potato salad. It would be perfect for sci-fi, but no-one would believe them.

 

[Otto26]

Or something the cow passes...?

Hey, the insect-vomit market is currently very lucrative.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I think of all those different-colored marshmallows with toothpicks stuck in them from Star Trek TOS, as well as the odd-shaped and colored foods under the little doom-covered plates. They looked like Jellow out of molds, and the styrofoam cups were silver straight out of the food processor. That made it so Sci-Fi 60s addition.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I left Texas just shy of my 13th birthday. I had a pillowcase full of clothes and 75 cents in my pocket, and I never looked back. I'm an Okie yesterday, tomorrow, and forever. I'm a Texican nevermore!

Texas' loss. Sorry you left. You're welcome to visit any time.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I've been back a few times. I had to go back to Huston for my birth mother's funeral recently. I thought the hard feelings about her and my father wouldn't survive their deaths, but they're still there inside me. My Dad, adopted father, says I need to forgive them. I'm trying.

Texas' loss. Sorry you left. You're welcome to visit any time.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I've been back a few times. I had to go back to Huston for my birth mother's funeral recently. I thought the hard feelings about her and my father wouldn't survive their deaths, but they're still there inside me. My Dad, adopted father, says I need to forgive them. I'm trying.

He's right1. Forgiving them is for you. It doesn't mean you have to forget what they did. It just means you can let it go and let it be their burden, either here, or in the hereafter.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

So what does everyone else do?

There's a scene in one of the vlad taltos books where they go to a rural place and there's a comment that every meal during harvest time is accompanied by a salad of flax greens dressed with flaxseed oil (they grow flax). I have no idea how historically or agriculturally accurate that is (wouldn't flax greens be quite fibrous by harvest time?) but it was memorable.

The thief series is set in a Greek inspired setting, so they have a lot of olives and salty cheese and, yes, bread.

And of course Tolkien has lembas.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think of all those different-colored marshmallows with toothpicks stuck in them from Star Trek TOS, as well as the odd-shaped and colored foods under the little doom-covered plates. They looked like Jellow out of molds, and the styrofoam cups were silver straight out of the food processor. That made it so Sci-Fi 60s addition.

Kirk originally was from Iowa, right? He must have brought some of the Midwest with him into space.

 

[NotWise]

I have one historical fantasy in SF&F. It's placed in Spain at about 1000 AD, so I did some research into what they would most probably eat. It was stew.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

There was a site some years ago that had photos of strange foods from the 1970s. Things like jello potato salad. It would be perfect for sci-fi, but no-one would believe them.

The Gallery of Regrettable Foods?

https://lileks.com/institute/gallery/

-Rocco

 

[alohadave]

In defence of stew, stew is a one-pot meal. There's a bunch of positives to using one pot. It's hot and and fairly forgiving. I have cause to cook without a kitchen, in winter, for a crowd (20-30 people) who've done a hard day's work, and stew is an all-round favourite.

And you can keep adding to it based on what you have on hand. Perpetual stews were a common practice when refrigeration was not available.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Adding this to the Limerick thread in a moment or two...

The content of stew's willy-nilly
it's often described as just silly
but whatever you do,
it always holds true
You don't put beans in your chili

 

[Otto26]

When I was researching "The Sands of Mars" (Coming Soon! Ish. Maybe.) I wanted to evoke the feeling of traveling deep into a desert and read some historical accounts and discovered tsampa. It's a roasted grain (barley in this case) that has been ground into a rough flour. Because it's roasted, it's already cooked. So you can eat it as is or you can mix it with water to form a cake or a paste that can be eaten or shaped into a patty and cooked. On the silk road they mixed it with tea. It could be carried in bags or compressed into blocks. Which rang a bell in my memory. When I served in the military in the 90's some of the MREs contained the oatmeal cookie bar.

The modern, oatmeal, version of tsampa. Turns out that pretty much every culture has a roasted grain version of tsampa. Anyway, it gets way too much attention in my story. I should cut it all out and pare down to the essentials. But I'm not.

 

[XerXesXu]

I've only once mentioned food:

'She led him to the stall. Chickens' entrails concertinaed on a stick, and impaled portions of seafood and chicken feet were the main fare. Allyza selected six items, which were dipped in sauce, and plunged head first into a small plastic bag to enable her to carry them. He paid 30 pesos, and, as they walked on, she pulled a stick from the bag and offered it to him. "Special for you."

The flat, pear-drop shaped morsel smelled of fish, and sweet, smoky barbecue sauce. Taking it, he asked, "What's this?"

"Pussy lips!" She burst out laughing.

He saw the allusion, and as he bit into it, she leaned into him. "Next, you like to eat mine?" '

 

[TheRedChamber]

I don't think I necessarily agree with this.

Even in Tolkien and even without reaching for the book, there's a whole bunch of different foods mentioned - mushrooms, frying bacon and eggs, Gollum catching fish, as well as lembas which someone else mentioned.

George R.R. Martin is also constantly writing food porn into his works (as well as porn porn).

 

[Voboy]

There's stew and there's stew, though.

A beef bouguignon and a coq au vin are both famous, tasty dishes that sound exotic. But they're also both stew. Same with a tagine, or even a pot roast.

Stew doesn't have to be "just" stew. It can be a delicious, classic masterpiece.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

True story about food...
Friend of mine in high school's older brother did three tours in Vietnam.
As he told me, on his last recon of a small village with a guy that had been in country for about ten minutes.
Shop keeper in a meat market was using a stick to keep the flies off the meat.
The new guy shouted in amazed disgust, "Oh my god, it's a dog!!!"
To which the shop keeper replies, in an excited voice, "No, no GI Joe. No dog, no dog, Puppy..."

 

[Britva415]

Chili does NOT have beans or it becomes a stew

Beansless chili is already a stew.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Beansless chili is already a stew.

Heresy, heresy, I say.

 

[Britva415]

Heresy, heresy, I say.

Which benighted place is it, again, where their chili doesn't have tomato products?

Perverse!

 

[Unblemished]

I’m going to go against the OP and say that this whole thing isn’t really true? Fantasy authors being ridiculously descriptive about the food their heroes eat is such a common thing that it’s practically a cliche. I don’t think anybody was about to mention The Gentleman Bastards, because even if they’re food porn (I couldnt get into The Lies of Locke Lamora, so I don’t know) they’re also pretty modern books doing the same thing with food that a thousand other fantasy writers have done, back to the start of the genre.

GRRM is renowned for constantly talking about feasts and revels full of capons and pies and honeyed locusts. On the kiddy side, no Redwall book was complete without a detailed description of the food culture of every bunch of talking animals that appeared, topped off by a giant feast accompanied by lashings of good October Ale. Food is a recurring theme in Discworld, complete with multiple running gags and a rather parodic cookbook.

Then you’ve got Robert Jordan, getting all worldbuildy with it in The Wheel of Time, where not-European peasants didn’t know what strawberries were and peaches had evolved to become poisonous. Christopher Paolini got lampooned for having his farmboys eat too well. Diane Duane has a no-shit foodie blog about the stuff her fictional characters eat. Even Warhammer gets in on the act here and there, several times in Gotrek and Felix that I recall. Don’t even bring up Tamsyn Muir or I’ll be here all day.

Remember that the genre was largely defined by Tolkien, and he loved food almost as much as he loved singing. His Hobbits are partially defined by their love of food and the good life, and that’s not to mention the elvenlembas or the foul cocktails and fouler meat used by the forces of Mordor. It even extends back into folklore, with castles of cheese and witches gingerbread huts and ever-providing cornucopias and such.

Sure, there’s a lot of authors who like to portray dirty peasants in sackcloth clothing eating gruel, but “oh god it’s another feast scene, prepare for a goddamn list of food items that goes on several pages” is also a really common thing to see.

 

[StillStunned]

The Gallery of Regrettable Foods?

https://lileks.com/institute/gallery/

-Rocco

That's the one!

 

[UsuallyPresent]

Hey, the insect-vomit market is currently very lucrative.

Oh, how sweet! Spinning a different take on honey! *golf clap*

How about rotted subsentient drippings? (Cheese) or voluntary neurotoxin consumption? (Horseradish)

 

[wastelandwriter]

Yeah, stew is a one-pot meal, and you can throw whatever's handy into certain kinds... but every time I've made stew it has been a ton of work and I want to call bullshit on a bunch of the fantasy books I've read.

I tend to gloss over food because I feel like it's one of those details I need to cut for pacing, but I also kinda kick myself because it's important for world-building and letting a story breathe.

However: my novel Hot Restart is an erotic space opera with good doses of comedy. At one point, the protagonists go to a Very Human Restaurant Establishment (owned & operated by alien insect people), where one of them gets—as a single plate—"Three jalapeno-buffalo-wing-fried mozzarella chicken tender pretzel-peanut hot dogs on a pizza-flavored hamburger bun." The owner believes three hot dogs on one hamburger bun is a better value than the standard versions of either food.