Sholm Pearly

I love food.

I love cooking.

I love fiction.

How could I not love the combination?

Years ago, when I was just a teenager, I heard about this Spanish novel that introduced each chapter with a recipe that embodied all the emotions of it’s main character. Who was that wonderful writer who had deciphered my heart to create exactly what I craved for?! With those vague clues I tracked the novel down. It turned out to be Mexican and was called “Like water for Chocolate”. I read the famous novel by Laura Esquivel and was delighted. I wanted more! But in Australia it felt hard to get anything else of the kind. I don’t know how it was in the early 2000s for anyone else.

Truthfully I can’t remember much of the plot now, probably because I read it so long ago, or maybe because it was more a love story than anything else and I’ve never been much into them when they are the main plot driver, I’m afraid. There was a little magical realism, which I like, but I would have loved it more if it had been uped a notch.

Maybe I should watch the movie to refresh my memory 😀 Sounds like a fun night in perspective especially, if I combine it with a platter of rose petal quails (to those who red the book)… maybe it’s more of a valentine’s day event to organise…

I’ve read other stories like that since. And I must admit this is something I’d like to do one day, a food driven book revealing parts of the souls of my main character through recipes. I wrote a cookbook years ago (and lost it in a terrible moment when my computer died as I was updating my backup on my external memory drive…  corrupting the drive, destroying my files).

Anyway. I still have a little plot line scribbled somewhere for novels… actually I have a few, as I couldn’t imagine having a lone book on one of my biggest passions: my own stomach!!! For the cookbook though, I’ll have to start again.

Stepping out of this ellipse, I will get back to what really caught my attention. It’s all those youtube videos which now recreat important recipes found in fiction (films, games, books…) and I love it! I wanted to do that as a teenager and young independent adult but always had ridiculously unpractical, pocket sized, dark and hideous kitchens. None of them could ever be filmed in… So, good on all those youtubers, and I hope I see this trend growing and gaining interest!

On youtube I’m thinking of channels like:

Bryton Taylor’s food in literature

Feast Of Fiction

Cinema and Spice

But there are a lot more!