Of Mice and Meals
Redwall by Brian Jacques
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Continuing in my process of reading books for young people that I neither read nor heard of as a young person, I’ve started the Redwall series. Actually, my friend Tucker holds Mossflower as one of the most influential books in his life, and I want to read that, but it comes after this first book, Redwall, so I read ths first.
It was sweet. Can’t say I was ever at a loss for what would happen next or which cranky bad guys would turn out to be good, or what monstrous villain would suffer a vicious death or which sweet mouse girl would marry the brave mouse hero, but the world of woodland creatures who inhabit castles, belong to mouse monk orders and gather dandelions for salads, was quite a reprieve from my graduate studies.
But putting the more-than-predictable plot aside, the true delight of this book is the descriptions of food and feasts the medieval woodland creatures create. I leave you with some incandescently hunger-arousing descriptions.
“Tender freshwater shrimp garnished with cream and rose leaves, deviled barley pearls in acorn puree, apple and carrot chews, marinated cabbage stalks steeped in creamed white turnip with nutmeg.”
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1 | Josué
May 7th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Brian Jacques became so famous for how he writes the meals of Redwall that there’s a Redwall cookbook:
http://www.amazon.com/Redwall-Cookbook-Companion-Books/dp/0399237917
I was a mega-fan of Redwall back in the day. I remember reading it as a kid and it was the first 150+ page book I ever read.
2 | Erin
May 7th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
I have that cookbook! I purchased it at the Univ bookstore and it came with 2 tix to Jacques’ reading. I read them years ago but my favorite was Salamandastron .
3 | Kj
May 7th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
I’d heard of this legendary cookbook but had yet to see it. Too bad it doesn;t have the recipe for Grayling a la Redwall
4 | erika
May 11th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
seriously? a cookbook? I want it. from the sounds of it, it would be yummy and interesting. My brother-in-law loved those books. I bet the description of food is one of the draw cards for kids.
erika