This week in my hunt for interesting book-related tidbits, I came across Fictitious Dishes, an art project by Dinah Fried which consists of five photos of meals from famous literature (below, her Moby Dick inspired meal – click on image to view more as featured in Bon Appetit).

A very strange but also very original idea, I thought (and the photos are beautifully taken), and then I began to ponder what meals from literature I would choose.

My first thought was Harry Potter – I would definitely want to eat some of the delicious food described at Hogwarts feasts, and photographing that would certainly be fun. Treacle tart, and maybe some of those Wizard Crackers I remember from a Christmas dinner scene – they explode in purple smoke and contain presents such as live white mice, from what I remember. There are some meal scenes too in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath which I think would make eye-catching photos – the family never have much to eat, but I can just see a shot of their biscuits and gravy on a plate beside the dusty Californian ground.

Now I will definitely be spending time pondering my other three choices of literary meals – which would you choose? Perhaps Fictitious Dishes has already started a trend, and we’ll all soon be tweeting photos of the food from our favourite books. Or perhaps, with the absence of any talent in photography, just imagining it…

Sara Magness, Editorial Administrator