Today, we’re going to talk about a fun topic, and that is what we can learn about food from children’s and young adults’ literature. Even literature for adults, like Jane Austen – I’m not sure what you would consider that. But there’s such beautiful descriptions of food and dining in books. And it comes from other eras, other countries, or other times that are very different from the way that we live now. I love to look at that, reflect on it, and see what we can learn from it.
One of the things that stands out the most when I think of children’s literature is The Famous Five by Enid Blyton – The Famous Five and The Secret Seven. I just loved those books as a child, and I think what I loved the most was the descriptions of everyday life. I would picture the children going on their bicycles out into the countryside with a picnic packed away for their lunch. And there would be the most wonderful things in that picnic, like a baked ham and cream and fruit cake and berries. There would also be descriptions of them going to a farm and staying on the farm, and the farmer’s wife making jugs of clotted cream and fresh bread and pork pie and hunks of cheese and scones with jam.
It wasn’t a whole ton of unhealthy food, but they really did enjoy their food. They enjoyed their fruitcake, but it didn’t have any icing on it. They enjoyed their scones with freshly made jam from fresh fruit, with cream to add protein. There was a ton of food that was rich, full of nutrition, filling, and satisfying. And it would be from the farm, so it had such high nutrients. There would be lovely fruit from the trees. There would be fresh eggs from the chickens. There would be milk and cream and all kinds of lovely dairy from the cows. Then there would be baked pies, and all these things, and it really just sounds so delicious. You can just picture the farm table laden with all these things.
They were such strong healthy young children, able to ride for miles, able to hike, to have their adventures, and even able to cook when they went on their adventures on their own. Then Anne would do the cooking with the simplest of ingredients and make these delicious meals while camping or staying in a cave. That was, and still is really inspiring for me to think about.
So, the first thing that I really want to take from this is just that whole, hearty, nutritious food makes you strong and healthy. We want to demonize all those wonderful things, like we say we shouldn’t have too much dairy, or we shouldn’t have bread, or we shouldn’t have sugar. When you have these in the whole unrefined form as they come from the farm, they are just amazing; they’re so good for your body and they taste so good. They just are so great for you to eat in the form that they were created, and in the form that we get them from the animals and the plants.
And in those days these foods weren’t filled with pesticides or chemicals. They weren’t kept in storage for months. They weren’t sprayed so that they wouldn’t sprout like the potatoes. Everything was just real and good. And so, getting our food from local farmers; from places where they’ve had the least processing or refining done to them, it’s just the best.
I love all the cheeses. They always had a larder with these big rolls or wheels of cheese. And they would cut a big hunk and the kids would snack on that. And they also drank lemonade and ginger beer. These things were made at home, and did have sugar in them, but were not nearly as bad for our blood sugar as the modern sodas. That just reminds me about whole, healthy, hearty food, made from scratch, bought from farms as often as possible, to really nourish ourselves, our families, and our children, to give them the nutrients they require, give them the right protein and fat that they need to be strong and to do all their schoolwork, and to just thrive.
So, thank you Enid Blyton and Famous Five for that inspiration. Another aspect to this is how the children always ate the food very eagerly. They were hungry. They were busy all day, busy outside, being outdoors, exercising, riding their bikes, running around. And they didn’t eat junk snacks all day. So then, when it came to mealtime they were really hungry and so they devoured the healthy food that was put out, and there was no fussing about I don’t want this, or I don’t want that, or I don’t like this or that. They just ate everything.
I’m going to read a couple of excerpts of Famous Five books where it mentions food. This is from Five go to Billycock Hill:
“And what do you suggest for a light supper?” said Julian.
“Bread, butter, and some of Mrs. Thomas farm cheese”, said Anne promptly. “With a tomato or two if you like, and icy cold milk, and Benny’s strawberries to finish with. That is, if the milk is a time to get cold in the little hole under the spring”
So, the fresh spring water sounds wonderful. And I love how they can go to farms as they travel, as they’re camping, and they can buy milk and cheese and bread from the farmer’s wives. It’s such simple food for a meal, but it’s just so nourishing and delicious. Here the five meet the farmer’s son:
“Hello, hello.” came Toby’s voice, and he appeared around the gauze bush. “Had a good night? I say, aren’t you late? Still having your breakfast? My word, you sleepyheads, I’ve been up since six. I’ve milked cows and cleaned out a shed and fed the hens and collected the eggs.”
The five immediately felt ashamed of themselves. They gazed at Toby in admiration. Why, he was quite a farmer.
“I’ve brought you some more milk, bread and eggs and cake,” he said, and put down a basket.
“Jolly good of you,” said Julian. “We must pay for any food we get from your farm, you know that. Any idea of how much we owe for yesterday’s food and for what you’ve brought today?”
There certainly are things in the Famous Five books that made things easier for them. Besides the lovely farmer’s wives cooking a lot, there were often cooks who cooked for a family. So, I’m not saying we shouldn’t enjoy the convenience of a grocery store and having things pre-made for us, but we can certainly find healthier options than what you’ve bought today. An example is what our kids call duck bread – the bread you buy at the supermarket. When they were little we used to buy that bread to feed the ducks. Instead, you can find lovely sourdough bread that’s well made with not too many ingredients. Finding dairy from a farmer often makes it healthier. There are so many ways that we can make sure that our food is better than that from the supermarket, and especially the processed food and the pre-packaged meals.
These meals they had were so simple. Some really good bread, some really healthy butter, excellent cheese, some good tomatoes, and some raw milk, and there you have a meal. Isn’t that wonderful? Not a lot to cook. I’m going to read another excerpt, and then talk about something from that:
“Now we’ll all have tea, I’ve got it ready, hoping that everyone would be back in time from their extraordinary adventures,” said Mrs. Thomas. “I know Jeff and Ray must be starved. You look quite thin in the face, Jeff.”
They all sat round the big table, Toby next to his hero, Cousin Jeff. They gazed with pleasure at the food there. Surely never, never had there been such a spread before. “Mother,” said Toby, his eyes gleaming, “Mother, this isn’t a meal, it’s a banquet.”
So again, this reminds me of how they’ve been out on their adventures doing all these things, and they come home and they’re so hungry, and there’s this wonderful spread of ordinary food, but it just looks so good, and they’re so delighted to be able to eat it. So, carrying on:
“What would you like to have, Jeff?”
“Everything,” said Jeff, “some of every single thing. I’ll start with two boiled eggs, three slices of ham, two thick pieces of bread and butter, and some of that wonderful salad. My word, it’s almost worth being down that hole for ages to end up with a feast like this.”
It’s quite funny to hear children describe ordinary food. To them, it was such a delight. And here’s the last part:
It was a most hilarious tea. And for once, Benny sat at the table throughout the whole meal and didn’t slip from his chair at once. Why didn’t they have parties like this every day? Why even his father was there roaring with laughter. What a pity the two policemen hadn’t been able to stop to tea. Benny had a lot of questions to ask them.
This also makes me think about how food was used as a way to have a wonderful time together, everybody gathering around the table, around the feast, to enjoy the food. And then there’s the excitement, and they talk about their adventures, there’s chattering, fun, laughter, and everybody’s there, even Dad, who’s sometimes working, and it’s just such a joyous occasion. So, I love that the food’s presented like that; we can get together around the food table and have a wonderful time of fellowship. So, the famous five books were set in about the 1950s, definitely a time of hearty food and healthy children.
I’m going to talk about another series called the Brotherband books, which are for teenagers. They’re set in a fictional world and they’re about this group of small misfit viking boys who learn how to be good vikings. They travel to different countries, and in this book they’re in North Africa and they’re experiencing this different culture and experiencing the food for the first time:
“What’s that called, he asked one of the serving staff. It’s called tabbouleh, Lord, the man told him, and Stig filed that information away for future reference.
If the tabbouleh was good, the lamb was positively heavenly. Marinated in lemon juice and oil, it was pink and tender and delicious, particularly when sprinkled with more lemon juice. There were platters of flat Arridian [Arabian] bread that had been warmed over the coals. The herons [the boys] slid the lamb off the skewers and onto a round of bread, then heaped piles of tabbouleh and green salad onto it, rolled it into a cylinder and ate.
And if some of the delicious lamb juice happened to run down their hands and arms during this process, nobody really cared. It was a simple matter to lick one’s hands to clean them. For the most part, the crew had been silent while they ate. The food was too good to waste time in idle chit chat. But now, sitting back and patting his stomach, Thorn emitted a low burp and addressed his skirl.
“Got the plan sorted out yet?” he asked. Hal nodded, slipping a last chunk of lamb from a skewer and placing it in his mouth. He chewed for a few seconds, unable or unwilling to talk. Then he swallowed, sighed contentedly, and replied.
Here’s another section:
They were served with food and drink, fruit juices and water in the latter case.
The food was delicious. Cold fowl of some kind, served with salad greens with a distinctive sharp lemon dressing, and fresh flatbread. Horace tore at a leg of the fowl and crammed vast amounts of the bread into his mouth.
And the last part:
Around the middle of the day, the house servants set up a charcoal grill in the inner courtyard of the house, and began grilling skewers of seasoned lamb meat. The delicious smell permeated the house, even drawing Hal out from behind his closed door to join them.
The herons sat on low benches in the courtyard, shaded from the sun by striped canvas awnings, while the servants passed around plates of sizzling lamb, and topped with soft fried onions that had been prepared on a hot plate over the coals. There were also bowls of a green leafy salad, dressed with a mixture of olive oil, pepper and lemon juice, and another salad which consisted of cracked wheat, chopped parsley, mint and finely diced tomatoes. Stig tasted it on a piece of warmed flatbread and nodded his approval.
So again, it’s such simple food. The lamb skewers perhaps would have taken effort to make, but the way they use a piece of flatbread and then they put some meat on it, some of the meat juices and then something like tomato and a little bit of onion, it’s so simple. Sometimes we make our meals so complicated.
So again, here there’s the extreme enjoyment of the people eating the food because they’re really hungry. They worked hard in the day, and they’re ready for their meal. And then they really enjoy it, but they also experience something new and they’re happy to eat it because they’re hungry. They’re not fussy about what they want or don’t want. All the food, the food that’s new to them is so good. So, there’s a quick tip for your family. Make your family hungry before dinner. Go to have a few races outside. Say “Let’s race around the garden.” or “Let’s play an exuberant game of Simon Says.” Do something to make your family and your children hungry before dinnertime. Then they’re far more likely to really enjoy the meal.
Here’s a couple more observations from this text; first, the sharing in the community that we’re reading about there helps people to understand other cultures and feel a sense of togetherness, because they’re sharing the food. So, they’re learning from each other about what they eat, and then they have a connection, and there’s the generosity of sharing food. Often this helps people to understand more about each other’s cultures and their own cultures. The importance of the food in their community and their family helps people to share what their culture is, and then they make emotional connections through eating together.
Oh, and I wanted to mention tabbouleh, which is a delicious hearty salad. It’s made with bulgur wheat that’s been cooked and then mixed with parsley, chopped tomato, onion, olive oil, and seasoned with lemon juice and salt, and then mixed together.
In these books we also see illustrated the principle of eating local, eating what’s in season, and eating what you can find where you live. In those days, that was all they could do. They could find the fruit on the trees where they lived. They could get things from the farmers when the things were in season, for instance, lamb when the lambs were in season. That helped them to be healthy. These days the convenience of grocery stores and restaurants is wonderful and a huge help to us, but it’s also very helpful to our bodies to eat local and to eat what’s in season when we can.
Also, sometimes I think we’re so limited in our perspective of what a meal should look like. Especially in the hot weather or if we’ve been inside all day, it’s wonderful to just be outside. Use the grill, and use that time to relax as mom and dad with the kids. You sit around, you chat, you enjoy that time, not having to slave in the kitchen, but let the meat cook slowly on the grill while you’re outside. You’re having a good conversation. Then, sit in your camping chairs and eat the food there. We all love a good grill and I think it can be so much more relaxing sometimes than the rushed kitchen meal, and then eating quickly at the table, and then so many dishes to clean up. Somehow, eating outdoors is simpler and more relaxing for us.
So, I’m definitely going to talk about this more in the future from other literature, but the last thing I wanted to read to you is from a series called Sue Barton, also set in about the 1930s to 1950s, for young girls. And it’s a beautiful story about Sue as a nurse, first as a girl in training, and then as she grows up and experiences the many aspects of being a nurse. In those days nurses went into people’s homes in a lot of places and they really cared about the people and helped educate them.
This is one of those occasions:
The second day, when Sue went out alone, she had occasion to show a mother of six children how to plan a diet and how to budget the father’s meager earnings. The woman listened with anxious attention to everything that Sue told her. The children, meanwhile, were having their lunch, gathered around a kettle of stew, which was at the back of the store. There were no forks or spoons in evidence. Brown little fingers dipped into the stew, poking about in it with happy unconcern, and six pairs of bright black eyes stared at her with unwavering interest, regardless of what was happening in the region of the kettle.
“Do they always eat standing up?” Sue asked the mother.
“Why, yes, ma’am.” she seemed surprised at the question.
“Well, you know,” said Sue with her friendly smile, “it’s bad for their digestions to eat standing up. They ought to sit at the table and have their own dishes and knives and forks, and not touch each other’s food with their fingers. If they learn to eat nicely now, like grown people, they won’t be embarrassed later.”
So, in this case, it reminds us how eating on the run; eating standing up is not that good for us or for our digestion. Our bodies need to know that it’s meal time, they can relax and they can start the process of digestion. If we sit at a table and we leave the rest of the day behind, we start to relax and we can really focus on eating, on enjoying our food, and on each other, and we don’t rush our food because we’re busy having conversations and enjoying each other’s company. We just eat along the way. It’s so much healthier! Our bodies are going to be able to digest that food much better. There’ll be less digestive discomfort. There’ll be a lot more nutrients absorbed from that food. And often we’re tempted to just eat on the run, eat at our desk in front of our computers, or eat somewhere other than in a relaxed way where we are focused on the meal. And I think it’s so important to remember that.
Here’s the next part of that story:
The one table in the room which yesterday had been bare and unused was now spread with clean newspapers. Around it on boxes sat the six youngsters, each with a bowl of cornmeal mush and a spoon. They were drinking milk from individual pickle jars. The father, home for his noon meal, was waiting on the table.
“Oh,” Sue cried. “That is splendid. It’s exactly what I meant.”
The mother’s white teeth flashed. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said. “We’re trying. We want our kids to grow up right.”
So, even here in the simplest of ways with these boxes for seats and pickle jars for glasses, they can enjoy a nourishing healthy meal together. I hope you’re inspired by that. It definitely inspires me so much just to think about how simple things can be, and how nutritious, and how good, and how eating together can lend itself to fellowship and closeness as a family. I’ll talk more about it in a future episode. But I hope you have a wonderful week and enjoy planning meals for your family.
Books mentioned:
Famous Five by Enid Blyton
Brotherband by John Flanagan
Sue Barton by Helen Dore Boylston
