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Those of you who’ve read Diana Wynne Jones’ The Rough Guide to Fantasyland know that the typical food of fantasyland is stew. Maybe with bread. Maybe, if you’re really lucky, bread and cheese both with stew. Or alternately.
I’m not a foodie (lack the qualifications), but I do like to eat, and when I started writing the Paks books, I didn’t know about the “stew” convention. Even though there’s some stew, it’s because I felt it fit that location (and pocketbook) and I had great fun inventing other dishes. Food preferences and eating styles reveal character and offer multiple thorns for plot and character and setting to attach.
At the time I was writing the first Paks books, I had been baking bread for the family for years, had put up preserves and (some only–no pressure cooker) vegetables. I had even made jam from wild strawberries over a campfire (it was difficult, because we kept eating the berries instead of c0oking them into jam. I think we got a whole three half-pint jars of jam out of the experience, but it was delicious. So were the berries we ate, sitting in the berry patch and picking as fast as we could while more civilized persons drove past, averting their eyes from the peasantry.
Anyway. When first writing Paksenarrion’s story, certain foods recommended themselves and others refused to take part in the books. I could have the old-world grains, wheat, oats, rye, spelt…but not the American corn (the term maize has now become as confusing as “corn” once was: Zea mays, the familiar stuff you eat off a cob, is maize in Europe, but in the U.S. “maize” is another grain entirely. I could have cabbage and onions and beans, but not tomatoes and potatoes. Fruit followed an even more interesting pattern: the familiar Rosaceae fruits almost all fell into the book easily–apples, peaches, plums, pears, the brambly berries. Tropical fruits, no. Perhaps they were never shipped that far north? Surely that world has tropics, and tropical fruits…but they haven’t shown up yet. Sometimes the plant was acceptable, but the common name we know wasn’t…usually because it implied too tight a connection to specific localities here. That world is not this world; there are conceptual overlaps but not identify, so those people would call an apple an apple: they would not call an oilberry an olive.
Sometimes books insist and the writer never knows why–even a writer who knows not to call a rabbit a smerp may be stuck with a book that refuses to call a rabbit a rabbit for some reason that may (or may not) come out later. And speaking of animal life…why are there no bison? I don’t know. What replaced them here? I don’t know. Both old and new world had bison of various types…why no bison? Again, I suspect it is the tight association with specific places here–and the human cultures associated with them–that the book refused, just as it would have refused a wayside inn with golden arches out front, if I’d tried to put that in.
But back to food. In both history and art classes, in my first run through college, I was explosed to medieval and Renaissance food preferences and preparation, as part of the culture of the time. The food mentioned wasn’t, for the most part, poor peoples’ food….but it was fascinating in its variety, in the elaborate preparation, in its abundance (on the tables of the rich, at least), in the sensory terms used to describe it. Food items were traded widely, even in the ancient world (there’s a jar that once held fish sauce from Tunis in a museum in Carlyle, complete with advertising declaring it to be best-quality, renowned, etc., for instance.) Agricultural experimentation and knowledge grew, often from monastic establishment “demonstrations.” (Fish-farming, the change to a 3-crop rotation, the northward expansion of herb gardens and medicinal herbs, etc.)
Some of the food activities and food traditions of Gird’s day come straight out of medieval texts, including peasant and landlord attitudes; for Paks’s books, we’re up to late medieval/Renaissance when it comes to food, with considerable trade between north and south. There will be differences in inn cuisine north and south of the Dwarfmounts, but not absolutely so: more dairy in the north, more herbs and fewer spices, but always some. Preservation in the dry parts of the south is often by salting and drying–in Andressat, high and dry much of the year, thin-sliced fruit and meat can be sun-dried and keep long–but in the wetter east and north by cooking with honey to make preserves of fruit, or layering with fat to exclude air, or with salt and smoking (for fish and meats) , or pickling (for vegetables, mostly.)
Some foods showed up without much background. Redroots, for instance. They aren’t carrots, exactly, and they aren’t beets. They don’t taste good raw, but they’re good when cooked (boiled or roasted) and have a fair bit of starch in them. Oddly enough, I know what they smell like and would recognize them if I smelled them–which, since they’re imaginary, I won’t. Then there’s sib. It’s not coffee and it’s not tea–it’s like one of the substitutes for tea or coffee that people have contrived in times of shortage–maybe more like old-fashioned root beer, only as a steeped hot drink, not a fermented one. Bark, roots, twigs, herbs.
But this talk of food is making me hungry–I think I’d better bake some bread today; it’s been too long and it’s good baking weather. (And Happy June, by the way…)
Comment by tuppenny — June 2, 2009 @ 4:13 pm
I have frequently wondered how the ancient Romans managed all that they did without any recognizeable stimulant beverages.
Rome without coffee?
Comment by Kelly — June 2, 2009 @ 4:34 pm
I think that realism in the sustenance area can be very important, but I’m not a purist. For example; an elf eating a magical Pop-tart would make me throw down a book in disgust, but Samwise Gamgee’s preoccupation with “taters” didn’t bother me a bit.
Comment by elizabeth — June 2, 2009 @ 5:41 pm
Clean living and elevated thinking? (joke!)
Comment by elizabeth — June 2, 2009 @ 5:43 pm
Didn’t bother me, either, so it surprised me when my own book refused to let me put in scalloped potatoes, which I love!
Comment by Kip Colegrove — June 2, 2009 @ 6:58 pm
One thing about food in Sheepfarmer’s Daughter hit me right between the eyes. When Paks and her fellow recruits eat their first meal in a mess hall, Sergeant Stammel moves among the trainees, asking at one point, “Well, how do you like army food?” Saben answers, “Seems good enough to me, sir.” Stammel replies, “You’ll eat a lot of it,” and moves along.
This must be a universal military experience. I laughed as I read it and wished I could share it with my father (some years deceased), because he described virtually the same scene from his own recruit days. “How do you like army food?” and “Youl’ll eat a lot of it” are word for word the same as what my father said his sergeant said. My father also told me that the food was good, and that he and others said so.
Comment by elizabeth — June 2, 2009 @ 7:32 pm
That was my experience, too. I guess that’s a standard opening.
But yeah, the food was good. If you come from a less-than-affluent background, it’s probably the best food you’ve ever had, in terms of both quantity and quality. (We had one woman in our platoon who complained that there weren’t enough salads…)
Comment by Barb — June 2, 2009 @ 7:38 pm
Loved your food posting. I always pictured redroot as a cross between a beet and a turnip. I feel they had cheeses, but I don’t remember any of the strange fermented dairy products that one reads of in histories of the nomads. And I can’t remember deer from the Paks stories, but surely they were there too. Oh, and I thought sib was a chicory-like hot beverage (blame my Arkansas roots).
Hope you got to make your bread.
Comment by elizabeth — June 2, 2009 @ 7:56 pm
We haven’t had a nomad POV character yet–fermented mare’s milk is probably in there somewhere. They do have cheese, many varieties within each main group, and that includes cattle, goat, and sheep cheese (remember the rotten sort of cheese the woman tries to foist off on them when Paks, Saben, and Canna are trying to get south to the Duke?) Sib can be whatever brewed drink you want, but somewhere the bits of bark and root are mentioned. Redroots–yeah, a turnip/beet cross might work, but I was thinking of something drier than that–maybe more like a sweet-potato that wasn’t sweet…??? If I ever bite into one, except a yelp of “Redroots! That’s what this is!” Deer: there are deer in deer habitat; they’re regularly hunted and in some places have been hunted out. There’s still plenty of wooded and broken-wooded area for them, so they’re not a serious problem in farmland. I am, however, still arguing with myself over *which kind* of deer…North American white-tails or mule deer? European red deer? Fallow deer? (no, too small.) I’m thinking mule deer to European red deer.
Comment by shadowsryder — June 2, 2009 @ 8:31 pm
Yessss, Red root is some form of sweet potato!
Yellow root would be carrot, cool weather plant from north. Both good for good night vision. How many ways could Paks and her friends cook goose? Around here a form of Canada goose is taking over the lakes and borrow pits in settled areas. They’re very messy. About 8 or 10 would feed a platoon a meal, but the ordinances don’t permit it.
Comment by elizabeth — June 2, 2009 @ 8:53 pm
Once upon a time, my mother’s wealthy boss, who went hunting various places, gave her a Canada goose he’d shot, and she decided we’d have a Dickens sort of meal. Oboy, roast goose! And we’d save the goose down to stuff a pillow (because of course we got the goose unplucked.) This was in South Texas, in the fall. South Texas in the fall is HOT. We started plucking the goose in the kitchen because we wanted to save the down. The kitchen, being on the west side of the house, was HOTTER.
We’d never really seen goose down. Not really. Those of you who’ve ever ripped a goose-down jacket or plucked a goose are already laughing, right? The goose down took to the air like the airy fluff it is…Mother quickly closed the kitchen doors to living room and back porch…and I was supposed to capture the floating down in a paper bag (where we also tried to put handfuls of it, to not much avail!) It was hotter and hotter and the only way to catch the goose down was on our sweaty arms (and faces, and in our hair, and down our necks…) Even so, we ended up with little wisps of goose down all over the house, floating aimlessly…
Then there was cooking the goose. Into its cavity went an apple and an onion and half an orange (I think–my memory may be confusing it with the ducks…) Eventually the goose was done. It was quite good, but nothing to get excited about, we thought, after the amount of work that went into plucking it. Of course, my mother had never roasted a goose before, and there are undoubtedly refinements she didn’t know about.
I’ve heard of the plague of Canada geese hanging around up in the north, not flying south for the winter, overrunning golf courses, etc. Someone should eat them…
Comment by Michael C — June 2, 2009 @ 9:21 pm
Regarding European red deer: that and “moose” turn out to be another confusing term like maize. What’s called “moose” in North America (Alces alces) are “elk” in Europe, while North American “elk” are very closely related to European “red deer”. (Oh my head! Well, this is why we have scientific names.) But you’d probably have several kinds of deer if you have any at all: no reason to have just kind, unless a species has been hunted out, and they seem to diversify like Galapagos finches.
There’s actually surprisingly little reference to large wild mammals in the books: all I can think of offhand are the wolves that kill Gird’s brother, the folokai, wild pigs and horses, and the enigmatic snowcat. I’m probably forgetting a bunch. There must have been wild bovines somewhere at some point, since there are cattle.
Comment by elizabeth — June 2, 2009 @ 9:42 pm
Yeah, I’m aware of the moose/elk/deer thing. And though I, as a naturalist in my other hat, would love to spend time detailing the ecology of Paks’s world, the characters who run the story aren’t that interested much of the time. There aren’t any real biologists–the elves and the Kuakkani are the nearest thing, and they aren’t into taxonomy.
Wildlife I know I’ve mentioned (besides birds and fish and insects of various kinds) include canids (wolves and foxes and probably but not certainly folokai), felids (the snowcat, who’s basically a snow leopard with some magical ability, but also semi-domestic cats and their wild relatives), rabbits, levets (in the weasel family), mikki-kekki (imagine marmosets with porcupine or hedgehog spines), rodents (rats, mice, squirrels), frogs. Others exist but haven’t impinged on the POV characters yet. For instance, there are wild sheep and goats in the Dwarfmounts, but none of our characters have gone hunting up there. There are interesting (!) lizards and snakes in the Copper Hills, but our characters haven’t gone there, either. I’m sure there were undomesticated bovids at one time…but now, in the lands of the story, they’re all domesticated. So are most of the horses. The Westmounts (so far not in the stories) have animals not found in the Dwarfmounts (including dragons, but that’s another whole ecological tangle.)
Comment by Madcooks — June 3, 2009 @ 5:52 am
For me, “red roots” are similar to Japanese sweet potatoes; Red to pink skins, yellow, low moisture flesh that is much less sweet then a Garnet or Jewel sweet potato,but with a pronounced chestnut flavor.
What I love about the Paks books, is the ratio of familiar foodstuffs, bread, cheese, mutton and the Paks world specific foods i.e., sib, oilberries,redroots,etc. There aren’t so many unknown foods, that you are thrown out of the story wondering “what the heck are they eating” and yet not so much known foods that you feel that you’re reading about Ye Olde Ren Faire, etc blah.
A lot of writers get the ratio wrong and it’s really rather jarring. Of course, I’m a professional recipe developer and as such food centric. But Elizabeth Moon always gets the ratio right! And I’m thankful!
Comment by elizabeth — June 3, 2009 @ 6:13 am
Thanks! Hitting the right ratio for a professional in foods is a thrill.
And now I’ll have to find some Japanese sweet potatoes and see if they match my imagination of redroots. (But not at the moment…a plotbomb has hit.)
Comment by Dave Ring — June 3, 2009 @ 9:39 am
Aah. I’d been wondering whether redroots were sweet potatoes, carrots or (most recently) beets. None seemed to quite fit, and I was guessing they are something we don’t share.
Apricots are quite noticeable in Sheepfarmer’s Daughter. Are the rest of the stone fruit family all present? Apricots are my favorite of all fruits. I’m closely watching the five on our two year old Blenheim, and hoping our family of scrub jays does not get to them first.
Before my balance got so bad, we used to go inland to Brentwood on the Sacramento delta every year to pick cherries and apricots. Now, the many orchards torn up for housing developments are blighted with foreclosures, but no one is tearing out homes to replant trees.
Comment by Tuppenny — June 3, 2009 @ 9:43 am
I have on more than one occasion mortally offended Disney brainwashed acquaintances because I tend to mutter ‘dinner’ when spotting a lawn overrun (and thoroughly fertilized) by Canadian Geese. Their droppings (which term sounds way too delicate) are a major menace in Boston along any stream edged walks- such as the Fenway.
Comment by Dave Ring — June 3, 2009 @ 9:47 am
Sudden question — is there an evil god in Paks’ world that is primarily associated with greed? A patron or patroness of bankers and developers?
Comment by Eir de Scania — June 3, 2009 @ 11:02 am
Sorry, but I was laughing out loud when I read about your goose-plucking adventure! Yes, I *know* how much down there is on a goose.
We have Canadian geese in Sweden, too. Their droppings make walking around some ponds rather…interesting. Especially if you have a dog who likes rolling in smelly things. And speaking of geese, here in the south we have a tradition of having a goose meal on or close to St Martin’s day at November 10th. Except that most people have turkey nowadays as it’s easier to fit in modern stoves.
Comment by elizabeth — June 3, 2009 @ 11:11 am
Since I haven’t yet figured out how to tie responses to the comments they’re from, I’m going to try to cover everything recent in one. In more or less order…(grin)
1. Stone fruits: plums, peaches, apricots (gee, I don’t remember apricots in Sheepfarmer’s Daughter…but we had an apricot tree then. Borers got it.)
2. Canada geese in Boston–pretty from a distance, major nuisance up close. But their original habitat’s being used (or modified) by us, so I guess they figure they can return the favor.
3. No…the evil deities would consider that greed and power are closely related, as wealth is a source of power. There is no patron of development.
4. I’m confused about a turkey being easier to fit in a modern stove than a goose. The goose we cooked fit easily into the oven, and I usually think of turkey as being bigger than goose. How big are Swedish Canada geese???
Comment by Kip Colegrove — June 3, 2009 @ 11:13 am
I thought redroots were beets by another name till I discovered that their growth habit is that of a vine. In Oath of Gold, Chapter 21, about halfway through the chapter, the influence of the Lady of the Ladysforest is causing winter-dormant plants to sprout new growth: “Even as Paks looked, tendrils of redroot worked up the nearby wall.” From that point on, I realized we were not dealing with beets. But I did wonder if, as with beets, the foliage was edible under certain conditions.
In any case, root vegetables are essential for keeping, portability, versatility, and so on. So any reasonable human-occupied world would have to have them.
Stews and soups are equally necessary, since I think they are almost a cultural universal and certainly make sense from a versatility standpoint. In particular, how else are you going to feed the troops a balanced diet, over the long haul and without cold storage?
Comment by elizabeth — June 3, 2009 @ 11:29 am
We are way before consideration of “balanced diet…” I think it’s amazing that ancient armies survived…and even when nutrition was better understood and better food preservation possible, getting enough decent food to the troops at the sharp end was a dicey proposition. I’m sure it still is (having had that interesting chat with a supply officer who’d been in Afghanistan.)
Soups and stews are ways to give everyone a fair share of a limited resource–and, in cold weather, a hot meal. Up to a point you can always water the soup, or turn stew into soup, to accommodate more at the table. And you can put more nutrients in, with more ingredients.
Until digital TV took it away from me, I used to watch a channel that had a lot of military news & information stuff on it. One of the interesting ones was on military cookery and how military cooks are presently trained.
Comment by Kip Colegrove — June 3, 2009 @ 11:58 am
Even today, I’m sure the quality of the people in charge matters vastly to the quality of the food the troops receive. I’m reminded of a passage in Carlo D’Este’s biography of Eisenhower that highlights the latter’s interest in, and knowledge of, army food. That interest was presented as an important aspect of leadership.
So,even though Kieri Phelan, for example, wouldn’t have known a vitamin from a Visigoth, he would have known what made for good food by the lights of his time and place, and he made sure his people got the best he could contrive. That’s what I had in mind. Or, to come at it from another direction, one of the ways the reader comes to know Phelan’s quality as a commander is the way the provides for his troops, and food is a key element of that. When the reader sees the recruits receiving good clothing and being well fed, there is no need to say, “their commander-in-cheif knew what he was doing.” It’s obvious. That’s part of why the story is so satisfying to read.
And yes, I’m sure many of those recruits had never had it so good before, in terms of material support. Peasant life is mighty rough,sometimes.
Comment by elizabeth — June 3, 2009 @ 12:20 pm
You’re right about that. The good commanders do their best to see their troops are fed, clothed, equipped. There’s more about that in the new books, because we’re seeing inside the commanders’ heads.
They do have surgeons, who know something about nutrition at a simple level: you need meat to build new blood, you need fruit & vegetables for skin and teeth, cleanliness counts (they do believe in little demons that make you sick and live in dirt…)
I was re-reading Manchester’s WWII memoirs before Memorial Day and being reminded that landing troops on an island is only the beginning…supply is a constant problem. Just talked to Richard (’Nam vet) who said when the troops were out in the field on patrols, they lost weight…getting food to the front lines was and is still hard.
Comment by Kip Colegrove — June 3, 2009 @ 12:37 pm
Speaking of surgeons, rations, landing troops on islands and losing weight in the field: my father was a beachmaster in the Amphibian Engineers in the South Pacific, and the war-within-the-war was between dysentery, malaria, skin disorders etc. on the one hand and rations, medicine and camp discipline on the other.
Nature does not patiently stand by while we fight our wars. One is reminded of the passage in 2 Samuel 18 where “the forest devoured more than the sword”. Yes, they believed some of that was supernatural, but it resonates in any age.
Comment by Eir de Scania — June 3, 2009 @ 12:42 pm
Swedish domesticated geese are the same size as Canadian ones. Our domesticated turkeys, however, are a small breed.
Comment by elizabeth — June 3, 2009 @ 1:11 pm
Kip, your father had one helluva job. Several of my mother’s friends were in that area at that time (some Army nurses who were supposedly not in a combat zone, their future husbands) and Richard’s dad as well.
Up until recently, it was universally true that more soldiers died of something other than battle–mostly disease and the Pacific war dragged that sad tale well into the 20th century. But I read a first-person account by a British soldier of the Peninsular Campaign…much the same on a different continent and with colder rain and thinner vegetation.
My “normal turkey size” is based on the wild ones that used to be around here, which are/were BIG. And fast, and agile, and yes, they could fly. (Watching a big wild tom take off is amazing.) I used to choose the big ones to bake because they were cheaper, but now usually stick to the 16 pounders as they’re easier to lift.
Comment by Dave Ring — June 3, 2009 @ 4:54 pm
I would not be surprised if feeding troops led to much of the knowledge the ancients and medievals had about nutrition. All the incentives were there — a need to keep the troops healthy and strong enough to fight, a need to use economical and transportable foodstuffs, and probably a greater than average chance of record keeping and analysis by staff who could read, write and reckon.
Comment by tuppenny — June 3, 2009 @ 8:05 pm
My father was in the landings in Japan. Supply got messed up and they spent several days in foxholes, under fire, alternating between unheated cans of Dintey Moore beef stew and chili. He was never able to face either ever again. Even the slightest hint of chili powder (and he liked curries) was enough to make him seriously ill.
Comment by Ulrika — June 5, 2009 @ 6:39 am
A late addition to the redroot discussion; I believed them to be a relative to Swedish “svartrot” (blackroot) Scorzonera hispanica. But if they are vines, the relationship might not be quite so close.
Comment by elizabeth — June 5, 2009 @ 8:30 am
Trying desperately to catch up with comments: the more organized ancient and medieval militaries gained some idea of what was needed and how to manage it, but it was Napoleon (not surprisingly) who developed a far more rational supply system.
The WWII vets I knew as a child who’d been stuck with unheated rations for days also couldn’t stand any of the foods they’d had along. The ones I knew mentioned canned baked beans and Spam as their aversions.
Some learned to make their own stoves out of their ration cans (there’s a segment about this in an Ernie Pyle column, collected into a book I have) but that worked mostly in dryer climates than the Pacific islands.
I had to look up Scorzonera hispanica…I’ve never thought of redroots as being in the Aster Family–had always thought of them as either Solanaceae and related to potatoes, or Convolvulaceae, related to sweet potato and other yam-like tubers. Or something in between that’s native to Paks’s world.
Comment by kyta — August 1, 2009 @ 9:39 pm
I read the books young (age 12 or 13, I think), and there were certain parts, especially in Brewersbridge, that made me want to try new foods. I remember insisting that we buy a sharp cheddar cheese and then went home and drizzled honey on it, to the disgust of my parents. I loved eating it and the marriage of the sweetness and the sharp zing of the cheddar, but had never considered eating the two together. It became a “forbidden” snack for me because my mother didn’t approve, and whenever we had cheddar cheese in the house, I’d think about Paks tasting the fresh honey and polishing off a large slice of the cheese drizzled with the honey.
I tried honey (alas, at the time I could not find honeycomb) in milk but didn’t like it… and whenever I had a sweet cake-like bread (a nut bread, or banana bread) I wondered if that was the type of bread that Master Oakhallow gave Paks at the grove.
The food fit perfectly in with the world… and I imagined how wonderful a bowl of stew by the fire would feel after long marches.
Comment by elizabeth — August 2, 2009 @ 10:05 pm
I think (memory is fickle sometimes) that I was thinking of a yeast bread with nuts…somewhat like one I bake, but not exactly. Walnuts rather than pecans, in terms of the depth of flavor. (I like both.)
Comment by kyta — August 3, 2009 @ 10:35 pm
You mean something similar to this: http://cookingontheside.com/white-whole-wheat-walnut-bread/
It looks delicious. We’ll see if I get inspired.
Comment by elizabeth — August 4, 2009 @ 1:15 am
Um…no. Darker. A round loaf. I actually thought of it as looking much like pumpernickel (at least the way I make pumpernickel) but not rye. A year ago, while on a book tour and visiting San Francisco, I had a bread that made me think of the Kuakgan…it was a sourdough based walnut bread, which I strongly suspect had purple grape juice or wine must in the sourdough starter (don’t know for sure.) Very dark, not sour as most sourdoughs, just a wonderful bread.
Comment by William Stanley — September 30, 2009 @ 2:10 pm
Always thought Redroots were related to parsnips. The bitter when raw thing gave me that idea.
Comment by elizabeth — September 30, 2009 @ 3:11 pm
They’re made-up…I supposed parsnips (if parsnips are red-orange) might be an analog. I’ve never eaten a parsnip, that I know of.