Foodspiration

Another thing that's inspiring me right now is Winter's Tale, an incredibly imaginative, inventive and visually rich novel by Mark Helprin. It's 673 pages long, I've been reading it since Christmas, and it's actually sort of taking over my brain. Here's a passage in which an eccentric and probably crazy maid named Boonya rattles off a list of her master's favorite foods that the new cook will have to learn how to make:

"Oh, durbo cheese stuffed with trefoil, camminog, meat of the vibola, roast bandrilog seeds, satcha oil hotcakes, young Dollit chicken in Sauce Donald, giant broom berries, creme de la berkish tollick, serbine of vellit, pickled teetingle, chocolate wall hermans, trail lemons, Rhinebeck hot pots with fresh armando, parrifoo of aminule, vanilla lens arrows, fertile beaties, archbestial bloodwurst, Turkish calendar cake, fried berlac chippings, cocktail of ballroom pig, vellum cream cake, undercurrents, crispt of tough boxer lamb, sugared action terries, merry rubint nuts, and rasta blood-chicken with sauce Arnold." (p. 352)

Hungry? Me neither. But it makes me want to read even more slowly. And then it makes me want to make up some of my own. Like... Burnt hat-velvet crumbcake. Pureed fintoon-bread. Aged foil blossoms.