Just a Pinch of Thyme

I wanted to put aside some of my foibles in The Burning Crusade Classic for the moment and talk about something near and dear to my heart.

Food.

You know, this stuff.
From masterclass.com, but apparently
it's an Adobe stock photo.

 

If you've ever gamed with friends --whether it's playing D&D or Settlers of Catan around a table, playing Smash Bros around a television, or kicking a soccer ball around in the yard-- you know that food and drink makes a good gathering great. It never has to be fancy, but it does have to leave you full. 

Food is also a window into a culture. The various cuisines around the world pay homage to the immense cultural variety out there, and you could spend a lifetime exploring various cultures through cuisine. The late chef Anthony Bourdain strove to put that exploration into his television show, Parts Unknown. I remember distinctly his episode in Libya, not too long after the revolution there; you could feel the danger Anthony put himself in just to explore the cuisine that few Americans have ever experienced. 

***

As much as food is a window into a culture, it is also a window into our fictional worlds. 

I am a big Tolkien fan*, and I used to scour the bookstores and library for books about Tolkien and Lord of the Rings. Books by J.E.A. Tyler and Robert Foster found their way onto my bookshelf, as did a book that I discovered when perusing the shelves and the Downtown branch of my local library:

The library's version was in hardcover.

It was a book made for fans by fans. Yes, there were articles by some scholarly critics and a short biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, but what fascinated me were the fan related sections. There was a map of Middle Earth as it looked in the First Age, as a fan noted the Blue Mountains were in both maps and simply combined the maps of LOTR and The Silmarillion. Another article that fired my imagination (and no doubt planted the seed of my blogging career) was about the LOTR fanzines that sprang up all over the world in the wake of Tolkien fandom. There were also fan-made scholarly articles, poems, filk songs**, and even a listing of the more popular fan clubs and fanzines (and their addresses) in the back.

Alas, those fan club addresses were out of date. And yes, as a middle schooler I did try them, which is how I know.

But there were also recipes.

I may try to take another pic, but I didn't want
to damage the book.

These were fan inspired versions of foods found in Lord of the Rings, or as in the case of Scotch Eggs Strider, a Scotch Eggs recipe with Aragorn's Bree nickname attached to it.

While I remained fascinated by the recipe section, I knew my parents were less than thrilled by my Tolkien obsession already without me turning the kitchen into Tolkien fan food zone. 

So my interest in these recipes slumbered, until they were revived by another book:

I slightly tweaked the coloring to make
the bottom left corner more legible.

I'd somehow managed to "sneak" the original Dragonlance Chronicles past my parents, despite their being published by TSR, the publishers of the "Satanic" Dungeons and Dragons. So when a cousin of The Tolkien Scrapbook for the world of Krynn appeared, it was a no brainer that I'd grab a copy. 

And yes, among all of the other articles, there was a recipe section:

Again, not the greatest of photos, but it'll do.
Also, actor and lifelong D&D fan Joe Manganiello
referenced this book in a review for, well, you'll see.

Being just out of high school by the time Leaves was published, I kept those recipes in the back of my head for a time when I could try some out. That came later, after college, in my then girlfriend's (now wife's) apartment. Considering my cooking skills needed a lot of work, she tolerated my interest if it meant cookies were going to be made (and they were). 

Still, I never really had the time to follow through on this interest to the extent I wanted, so Leaves went back on the shelf.

***

Ages came and went, and the world changed.

First came the rise of the "themed party". No longer chained to birthdays, variously themed parties became popular in the 90s and have stayed with us until today. Just go look at the magazine aisle at any craft store and you'll see what I mean.

Second was the 800 pound gorilla that was Harry Potter.

Harry Potter became such a phenomenon --which continues to this day-- that Harry Potter themed parties are a cottage industry all to themselves.

Some parties are more elaborate than others.
From stuffmumslike.com.

So with an environment like this, food from Leaves or The Tolkien Scrapbook fit right in. And believe me, as I was to discover, themed foods from other SF franchises are very much a thing.

***

My kids gave me this as a gift this past Christmas:

Yeah, this is the book Joe reviewed.

The inside of Heroes' Feast is gorgeous.

It looks like a modern cookbook, complete
with the luscious food pics.

And I have to admit that I didn't see this coming.

I mean, I expected that there'd be Harry Potter cookbooks out there, and I've even seen one for a Star Wars themed party. But something like this, where the authors tried to imagine what the food in a D&D setting would taste like and interpret that like this? And that they'd convince a publisher to actually, you know, publish it? THAT I wasn't expecting.

With this in mind, I started poking around the internet, because surely D&D was not a harbinger of the fandom cookbook revolution. 

And... Wow. 

There's a ton of cookbooks out there for all sorts of gaming and literary fandoms, such as The Elder Scrolls, Lord of the Rings (naturally), Fallout (really?), and A Game of Thrones. Oh, and there was another cookbook that caught my eye. I collected some of my birthday money*** and picked up this:

In a world of $200 18" statues, this
cookbook gift set was a bargain.

"You didn't!" --Cardwyn

"Oh yes I did." --Me

"You could have just asked me! My sister could have written half of this!" --Cardwyn

"You do realize you're a figment of my imagination, right?" --Me

"..." --Cardwyn

And yes, your eyes do not deceive you, it comes with a 2-sided apron: Alliance on one side, 

Everybody ignore that 80s era
door behind the apron.

 

Horde on the other.

I have to admit that the Horde
side does look better.

And the interior is just as beautiful as Heroes' Feast is:

Yeah, I could go for some chops right now.

Okay, I want to try these recipes. ALL OF THEM. But at the same time, I realize that I've got responsibilities, things to do, and so I can't commit to doing all the recipes at once. So I'm going to have to pace myself, picking and choosing what makes the most sense for the moment.

I have kind of a hard and fast rule about cookbooks: if I can find about a half dozen recipes that work their way into my regular rotation, it's definitely worth picking up. If I can then find about another 6-10 recipes that I'll occasionally go to, then I've got a real keeper. So these two cookbooks have a tall order to fill, but I think that they're up to the challenge.

And if nothing else, there's the drink section to keep yourself lubricated, right?

 

*Not nearly as big as Stephen Colbert is, but when I was much younger I could have possibly claimed that level of obsession.

**Filk are fan made songs with a particular SF, Fantasy, or Horror theme, and frequently utilize the music from a popular song for their lyrics. In that way, it's a cousin to the spoof genre, as popularized by Weird Al Yankovik and Doctor Demento. Just like Weird Al used the Greg Kihn Band's "(Our Love's In) Jeopardy" music to create "I Lost on Jeopardy", filkers took The Beatles' "Penny Lane" to create "Middle-earth". Or converting Peter, Paul, and Mary's "Puff The Magic Dragon" to "Smaug the Magic Dragon."

***Most of the time I get gift cards to hardware stores, because there's always something around the house that needs repairing. But this year, I just got cash, which was fine with me.