One of my biggest pet peeves when I’m reading a book is when the author never mentions when or what their characters are eating. All humans need to eat to survive!
Talking about food can also be a great way to give insight into your characters. For example, the Baby is very food-motivated – he loves meal times. When you put his bib on he will wave his arms around and make lots of noise until you put the food in front of him. He is, however, a bit picky about what he is willing to eat … and his preferences seem to change everyday. I have a sweet tooth but I hate eating on the run – I need to sit down if I’m going to eat and I like to eat most things (even pizza) with a knife and fork. The Husband is quite an adventurous eater. When he goes to a restaurant he will often choose the strangest sounding thing on the menu just to try it.
Food can also have emotional significance. This was true for me while we were travelling around Austria because a lot of the foods we ate reminded me of my Oma (my grandmother), who died a few years ago. Oma was an impressive woman and an amazing grandmother – she was a school teacher for many years and, although she was at times a bit strict, she loved to spoil her grandchildren and took us to lots of interesting places. She was born and raised in Austria (she moved to Australia in the 1950s), and she always made Austrian foods to bring to family events. As we were wandering around Austria I made it my mission to find as many of Oma’s delicacies as I could. And I was excited that I tracked down most of them!
Marillenknödel and zwetschgenknödel
These are lovely dumplings that Oma made on very special occasions. She either put a whole apricot (marillen) or zwestchgen (plum) inside. At the restaurant they served them with cream and ice-cream but I remember eating them with lots of brown sugar!
Linzer torte
This is a yummy cake named after Linz, a city in Austria. It has a lattice pattern on the top and some of its ingredients include hazelnut meal and apricot jam (although the Linzer torte we found in Austria had berry jam instead). I remember eating this during our family Christmas celebrations on Christmas Eve.
Apfelstrudel
I ate lots of apple strudel (consisting of mostly pastry and apples) in Austria in a quest to find the one that was most like Oma’s. Lots of Australian cafés sell strudel, but Oma’s strudel was better – its pastry was very thin which I think made it extra tasty. One morning, at a café in Salzburg, I was excited to find a strudel that looked, smelled and tasted almost as good as Oma’s!
Wiener schnitzel
As you can tell from the list above my favourite Oma dishes were generally her sweets, but she also made an excellent veal schnitzel (often served with her famous potato salad). Schnitzel was on the menu of pretty much every restaurant we went to so I ate it often. The pieces of schnitzel were always huge! Eating it reminded me of going to Oma’s house for dinner and leaving feeling incredibly full.
When you’re talking about the foods that the characters in your stories are eating, perhaps try to think about what those foods make them feel. Maybe, just like some of the foods in Austria reminded me of Oma, a food could remind your character of a person who is or was very important to them. Or it could bring back good (or bad!) memories of an event or place they went to.
The more techniques you can use to give readers an insight into your character’s feelings, the better!
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