Looking back over my past entries I've been trying to work out what I have learnt from doing this blog...
I have realised that parties and the food we eat at them play a big role in our lives, especially as children. Children's literature throughout the years has shown different interpretations of what food means: from teaching kids manners, responsibility, how to cook, gender roles and even about controlling female desire. In the present day children's literature has moved from the didactive narrative of the Victorian era to a more fun, light hearted narrative form such as in Roald Dahl books where food becomes a function for humour as the revolting is used to entertain children. The texts I have analysed have shown all the different interpretations in relation to party food or a theme for a party and so I think it is clear to see how children's literature is a perfect starting point to look at if you want to come up with a creative theme or kind of food for a party that kids will love. The recipes I have shared with you are a great example of this and I hope they have given you ideas for some exciting parties of your own. I've really enjoyed making the recipes myself and have also enjoyed looking back at my own childhood. I have discovered that food can signify important memories in our lives and particularly our childhood, thus it is good to have happy memories of baking in the kitchen with your Mum, choosing your birthday cake each year and of feasting on yummy food at parties. So I would definitely encourage letting kids help make any of the recipes I've suggested as although it will be messy, you're bound to build lots of memories of fun and laughter in the kitchen as even my Mum and I do now, and I'm 21!
Happy cooking, eating, and partying!
(And maybe I'll be back with more posts or a new blog!)
For my last lot of party food I thought I would show you something savoury. These Porcupines are simple to make and great as party nibbles that look fun at a kid's party. Although I would say mine look more like some strange alien like creatures rather than porcupines!
Makes 2 porcupines
Ingedients
2 oranges or grapefruit
150g (5oz) Cheddar cheese, cubed
1 x 227g (8oz) can pineapple pieces, drained
50 cocktail sticks
2 stuffed olives, halved crosswise
1 small gherkin, halved (I used dried mango slices instead as I'm not a fan of gherkins)
20 cocktail sausages, grilled
Cut a slice off one side of each fruit so they will stand firmly.
Thread cheese and pineapple onto cocktail sticks, and stick into one fruit to make the porcupine's spikes.
Pierce 2 olive halves and 1 gherkin piece (or mango slice) with halved cocktail sticks. Push them into the fruit to make the porcupine's eyes and nose.
Place a sausage on each of the remaining cocktail sticks and stick them into the other fruit. Make the eyes and nose in the same way.
Recipe from: Handslip, Carole. The Sainsbury Book of Children’s Party Cooking. London: Cathay Books, 1985.
I decided to use this recipe after reading Toast by Nigel Slater last week for my lecture. Although it is not a children's book it is a memoir of Nigel's childhood where he writes about his memories in separate sections all titled with a different food that reminds him of each memory. So I thought it would be good to look at someone else's childhood memories of food and what it meant to him. In the section 'Cheese and Pineapple', Nigel talks of his family not having parties but instead just friends that drop by. His view of being a child at these impromptu parties was that "Everyone was taller than me. It was as if I wasn't there," (42) which shows how children can be overlooked at adult parties and how they are no fun for kids, especially if there's only one child there. As the only child there, Nigel is used more like a waiter who has to pass round the food. His family possess a certain snobbery with everything surrounding food as they do not eating certain foods or brands as they think they're 'common': "Babycham, sandwich spread, tomato ketchup, bubblegum, HP Sauce and Branston Pickle could never even be discussed let alone eaten" (55). This is also shown when Nigel talks about the food he has to serve visitors with as he states a families' social status depends on "whether you had Huntley & Palmer's Cheese Footballs or not" (42). This shows a snobbery with food as people's social standing could be judged on whether they serve guests the fashionable food of the moment. Nigel also discusses the cheese and pineapple they serve which reminded me of my Porcupine recipe, although mine is a more fun child-like version. Nigel is in fact horrified by the cheese and pineapple, he sarcastically calls it "The pièce de résistance" (42) and exposes it for the basic dish it is:
"Few things could embarrass a would-be chef quite as much as having to hold out a whole grapefruit speared with cubes of Cheddar and tinned pineapple on cocktail sticks to men in cardigans" (43).
He does not like that this dish is seen as 'fashionable' by the grown-ups as he really appreciates food and sees it for the basic, non-sophisticated dish it is and so he states that "When it came to offering the dreaded grapefruit to everyone else, I would throw my head in the air and flay my nostrils" (44). This shows his distaste for the dish and his dramatic nature as a child. Nigel writes this episode with a sarcastic tone to portray how now as an adult he can identify how comedic his behaviour was and to highlight the ridiculousness of the adults snobbery. Despite, Nigel's obvious disgust for cheese and pineapple I think it makes for good party food for children, especially with the porcupine design! Being a well known chef now I'm sure he still would be horrified by my recommendation but there's nothing wrong with simple, easy to make food, particularly if you're a busy parent and any kid would probably prefer a funny looking porcupine to caviar at a party.
Image from Google: Nigel and his mother
Nigel also presents an example of children cooking in his memoir such as how I've shown you Milly-Molly-Mandy's attempt at cooking for her party in a previous post. Nigel makes it clear that he was a child with a love of food and so it makes sense that he would like to cook. He writes of his memories cooking with his mother, "Every few weeks my mother and I would make jam tarts;" (15) as much as he criticises his mother's attempts at cooking in his writing he also shows how cooking with his mother actually brings them together. When making jam tarts he states "Mother didn't like cooking. She did this for me," (15) suggesting she does it because she loves him and knows it will make him happy. This suggests how cooking together can create fond memories for a parent and child.When Nigel's mother dies, his father's and his life become very different significantly because there is a lack of cooking. So when Nigel's father meets his next wife, Joan, their life becomes filled with food again as she is a good cook, in fact much better than Nigel's mother. As a teenager Nigel starts cookery lessons at school, in his first lesson he makes a perfect Victoria Sponge which he cannot wait to show his father as "who for all his disinterest couldn't fail to congratulate me [/him]," (182) when it came to good food being made. Joan is not impressed by this and starts to make more and more food herself for Nigel's father on Nigel's cookery lesson days making it like a competition between the two of them. So here cookery and food becomes a way of control, of who has the upper hand with Nigel's father.
Despite this negative connotation with cookery, we should emphasise the positive side to it with cooking bringing families together. Letting kids join in in the kitchen can be messy but is fun and great for bonding. It's good to have memories of cooking with your parents and especially for something like a party where kids can feel proud to say they helped Mummy make the birthday cake or Porcupines (that is if you fancy using the recipe in this post!). Slater, Nigel. Toast. London: Fourth Estate, 2010.
"There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it" (90).
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was written in 1865, before "Flora's Story" (1874); so you would think the book would emphasise similar constraints on children as shown by Rossetti in my previous post. However, Lewis Carroll presents a fantasy world where Alice may remain a child forever and her Victorian world with it's strict rules is turned upside. So the book appears to reject the didactisim and moralism which dominated Victorian literature for children.
The tea party presented in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is another form of party, other than a birthday, which I have been discussing recently in my posts. A tea party is a prime place for manners and etiquette to be examined, just like how the children's behaviour at Flora's birthday can be analysed. Margaret Visser states the dining table is "a constraining and controlling device, a place where children eat under the surveillance of adults" (Daniel, 48) which means that a table at a tea or dinner party is the perfect place for adults to instil manners into a child. In Wonderland there is the question of who the adults are at the tea party, the Hatter and March Hare, appear to be so but do not necessarily behave in an appropriate way for adults in Victorian society.
Image from Google
The party is a parody of the formal British custom of afternoon tea where the characters behave very strangely such as the Hatter dipping his watch in his tea and pouring hot tea on a guest's nose to wake him up! The characters' absurd and unusual behaviour reminds the reader of 'good' behaviour in the real world compared to that in Wonderland, which is shown throughout the book. For instance, at the table the Dormouse has fallen asleep and the Hatter and March Hare are "resting their elbows on it," (90) which is an example of impoliteness and bad manners that Victorians would not have advocated. Furthermore, Alice herself breaks the rules of etiquette and acts assertively which subverts the Victorian conventions of what the girl child should be like, as shown in my Flora's Birthday post. For example, she asserts her own power and also ignores polite etiquette by joining the table although she has not been asked:
"The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it. 'No room! No room!' they cried out when they saw Alice coming. 'There's plenty of room!' said Alice indignantly, and sat down in a large armchair at one end of the table" (90).
She also talks back to the March Hare:
"'Have some wine,' the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.
Alice looked around the table, but there was nothing but tea. 'I don't see any wine,' she remarked.
'There isn't any,' said the March Hare.
'Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it,' said Alice angrily" (91).
This again shows how all at once, Alice breaks the convention of polite manners of not talking back to a grown up yet also asserts her own independence by speaking out. Thus, this suggests she is acting as an equal to the supposed adult characters which was unlike how Victorians saw children in relation to adults, to them childhood was very much a stage of life before one reached adulthood. Here the March Hare also breaks the rules of etiquette by offering something that is not available which would be seen as impolite. The March Hare and other characters go on to display more actions of bad manners throughout the tea party such as the Hatter who says to Alice, 'Your hair wants cutting' (91) which she declares is rude as 'You shouldn't make personal remarks' (91). This shows she knows how to behave properly and so is deliberately subverting the rules of her society in this world where they do not seem to exist. As well, this suggests she takes on a parental role of reproaching the Hatter for bad manners. This behaviour from the adult characters shows how they do not conform to manners and etiquette usually seen at a tea party either.
The tea party is also unconventional as there is pretty much nothing else on the table except TEA. I know it is a tea party but traditionally afternoon tea would consist of miniature sandwiches, scones and perhaps some fancy cakes, (it certainly does at Harrods anyway!). So the lack of food makes the tea party unusual too. However, this may be to show how the focus is more on the subversion of manners and etiquette.
Here's the tea party scene in the 1999 film adaptation.
As I mentioned above, afternoon tea is a popular thing to do at Harrods, but don't get me wrong it's not my local or anything - I'm a student after all. But Harrods would probably be the ultimate place to have the 'poshest' tea in London in our modern world and where manners would still be highly regarded.
However, having afternoon tea or tea parties is also a custom that has become more popular recently as a trendy thing to do without the upper class associations to it - more for the stylish cupcakes on offer and quirky tea sets and cake stands to show off.
So with the 'posh' sigma attached to tea parties, children aren't necessarily associated with this type of party unless they are very well behaved. But why not go with the trends and throw a less conventional but more quirky tea party with a Alice in Wonderland theme for kids!
Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 1993.
Daniel, Carolyn. Voracious Children: Who Eats Whom in Children's Literature. London: Routledge, 2006.
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