Food

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Fiction Prescriptions

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Write in with your dilemmas and our dynamic duo will suggest remedies for the head and heart, drawn from novels, poetry and prose collections.

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Fiction prescribed in this episode:

‘Bay Leaves‘ (poem) by Nikki Giovanni
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Cécé by Emmelie Prophète
Hunger and Thirst by Claire Fuller
The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester
Babette’s Feast (short story) by Karen Blixen
The Distance of the Moon (short story) by Italo Calvino

Ella Berthoud (EB): Welcome to our new episode of Fiction Prescriptions. I’m Ella Berthoud, and I’m a bibliotherapist.

Isabelle Dupuy (ID): And I’m Isabelle Dupuy, and I’m a writer. Today, we’re going to talk about food. Ella, how was your relationship with food when you were young? What are your earliest memories of you and food?

EB: So, I have a pretty bizarre food childhood. My parents were diplomats, so they were constantly cooking amazing feasts which were very complicated. And my mum loved cooking. And she would go into the kitchen for days on end and create amazing [missing words] which were often themed. So, she’d have a theme of a member of the royal family or a colour theme, and she’d create all these piles of meringues that had swirly rainbow colours in them. And I would be her assistant, as I was the only girl – one of four kids, three brothers – and we lived in a sexist world. And so, I would be assisting her making these incredible foods. And so, I thought it was really normal to be making really complex meals all the time. And it was only really when I left home that I started constantly trying to cook for all my friends with these very extravagant recipes that I realised, oh, this is not actually normal. So, it was quite strange. How about you? What about your earliest childhood food memories?

ID: Well, I grew up in Haiti. And it Haiti, one of the funny things was that we had American television. To be honest, it was often half pirated. But we had American commercials on TV. And of course, we grew up eating Haitian food. The food is very good in Haiti. It’s probably the best Caribbean food. It’s a good mixture of Carribean, African, French tradition. A lot of respect for food. But I was fascinated by commercials for McDonalds and Burger King, where they’d show you these flaming burgers on some grill. And they were not in Haiti. So, I remember that the first time I finally made it out of Haiti, when I was 11, and I went to Montreal, I was dying to go eat at McDonalds. And when my aunt took me there, I ate everything: I ate a Big Mac, I ate a milkshake, I ate fries, I ate, I don’t know, probably a, how do you call it, a Filet-O-Fish, and all these things. And I thought it was the best meal ever, and I was very happy.

EB: We were also talking about food memories from fiction. Because I have a very intense memory from the first novel I ever read to myself, which was The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith. And in that book, the dogs are on their way, the dog couple are on their way to look for their puppies, their stolen puppies, and they come to a posh country house. And in that posh country house, there’s an old gentleman, who toasts toast on a stick, and he’s doing it for himself, and then he puts butter on it and eats it. And they’re sitting behind him, behind his chair, unknown to him, salivating. And I really remember salivating when I was reading that book, and I became obsessed with hot buttered toast. And the old gentleman does give the hot buttered toast to the dogs, and it’s a really lovely scene. And I have a lot of intense food memories from childhood books. You said you don’t so much. 

ID: Well, I was thinking about it, and actually, I remember, I mean, this is a very generic one as well, but reading a lot of Asterix, and the Feast at the end of each Asterix and Obelix adventure, which features a roast boar and a huge—

EB: Yeah, very carnivorous

ID: [Inaudible] of food and potatoes and everything. And the potatoes, the vegetables didn’t really attract me, but the roast boar always interested me. And in Haiti, we do eat a lot of pork. Not cooked like that, more either shredded or cut in small pieces and fried. But I always loved pork from there. 

EB: Yes, I remember drooling over that feast as well [laughs]. Also, Tarzan, I just have to mention. 

ID: Yeah, I can’t believe you found food in Tarzan [laughs]. 

EB: Tarzan came up in a previous podcast. And I remember Tarzan eating cooked meat for the first time when he meets other humans [ID laughs]. And I remember, again, salivating over the cooked meat. 

ID: Yeah, a bit about, exactly, a nice barbecued piece of meat or a nice fried piece of meat is a very, yeah, suggestive thing. 

EB: Yes. 

ID: And so, from there, we’re going to start today with a poem, which is also about recollection of early years and food. And this is by Nikki Giovanni, a very famous African American poet, who passed two years ago. Her most famous poem is called ‘Nikki-Rosa’, which is about also about her childhood and about how she was hoping that no white biographer, American, would write about her childhood because they wouldn’t understand that Black wealth is Black love. And so, about her childhood, was not rich at all, actually quite poor, and yet very happy. And this one is called ‘Bay Leaves’.

[ID reads ‘Bay Leaves’ by Nikki Giovanni]

‘I watched Mommy
Cook
Though I cooked
With Grandmother

With Grandmother I learned
To pluck chickens
Peel carrots
Turn chittlins inside out
Scrub pig feet

With Mommy I watched
leftovers for stew
Or vegetable soup
Great northern beans
Mixed collard turnips and mustard greens
Garlic cloves Bay Leaves
Very beautifully green
Stiff   so fresh
With just a pinch of salt
Not everything together
All the time but all the time
Keeping everything

I make my own
Frontier soup in a crock pot
I make my own ice cream with a pinch of salt
And everything else
With garlic
But fresh Bay Leaves
Are only for very special
Ox Tails’

This is a preview of the show. The full text is available as a PDF here: Fiction Prescriptions: Food

Next time on Fiction Prescriptions: Superstitions.

(Playful book chat only – not medical advice. If you need serious support, contact samaritans.org)

Ella Berthoud

Ella Berthoud is a bibliotherapist, visual artist and novelist.

Isabelle Dupuy

Isabelle Dupuy is a writer and broadcaster.