Between October, November, and December, almost every Northern Hemisphere culture has at least one big family dinner ritual. Maybe you are looking forward to a Norman Rockwell experience, in which you and yours gather serenely around a turkey and exchange sincere compliments devoid of hostile subtext (I sure do hope so). Maybe you are planning on pizza, TV and beer with your found family (that sounds good too). Maybe you are bracing for a holiday period of terrible, toxic family drama (I hope not, but…hey, we’ve all been there). We at the Pink Palace hope all your dinners are yummy and your family drama, whether family by blood or by choice, is minimal. Meanwhile, here are some memorable dinners from Romancelandia to put it all into perspective.
Jennifer Crusie was one of the first romance novelists I discovered, and food has a significant role in her books. People bond by sharing take out, they hang out in restaurants and cafes and bars, they bring each other pastries and coffee – in fact there’s more food in Crusie books than there is sex. I’m of the belief that in a lot of romance, and especially in Jennifer Crusie, the link between food and romance is an important one, one that is not always sexual but which is sensual in a liberating way. Crusie heroines learn to love their bodies and eat in a sensual and free way much before they start having sex. They often have controlling factors in their lives that kept them from enjoying food (bad self-image, pressure from family, depression), so enjoying food is a sign that they are giving themselves permission to own their bodies, and permission to embrace life.
In addition, Crusie books are full of both fun dinners that we wish we were having, and horrible dinners with their own kind of wish fulfillment – the characters usually say all the things we ourselves wish we could say when we are trapped at horrible dinners.
This is made abundantly clear in Bet Me, a book in which the heroine, Min, has been forced to diet pretty much since puberty. The book involves Min’s sister’s’ wedding, and Min’s mother is desperate for Min to lose weight to fit into a dress (in addition to the pressure to diet that the mom applies routinely). The hero, Cal, is appalled by how stringently Min denies herself enjoyable food, and he’s also turned on by how clearly she does enjoy food when she allows herself to eat it. Meanwhile, Cal’s family home is full of excellent food but it’s also full of such emotional coldness that Cal can’t enjoy it.
In two dinners, Cal and Min meet each other’s families, and in both they end up telling the families off for not appreciating their respective children. Here’s dinner at Min’s house, a dinner at which Min’s mother keeps telling her not to eat the bread, or the butter, or pretty much anything that everyone else is eating (“Carbs, Min”). This passage doesn’t convey how funny these dinners are, but it does represent a heartwarming moment:
“Look, I don’t mind you grilling me about what I do for a living,” Cal said. “Your daughter’s brought me home and that has some significance. And I don’t mind your wife asking me about my personal life for the same reason. But Min is an amazing woman, and so far during this meal, you’ve either ignored her or hassled her about some dumb dress. For the record, she is not too big for the dress. The dress is too small for her. She’s perfect.”
Cal buttered a roll and passed it over to Min. “Eat.”
Runner up: The Dinner From Hell in Crusie’s Strange Bedpersons ( A | K | G | AB | Au ). At this dinner, which takes place at a fancy restaurant, Tess is considering exposing a secret that will ruin Nick’s law career. She’s at dinner with Nick, Nick’s boss, and the Boss’s wife, Melisande. They are also with the Boss’s son and his girlfriend, who is Tess’s best friend. Tess and Nick, who are increasingly tense, keep trying to have private conversations under the table on the pretext of looking for a missing fork:
“Children,” Melisande began again, and Tess pulled herself upright, using the table leg for leverage.
“Look,” she said. “We’re conferring down here. The fork bit is just a subterfuge, okay? It’s a ruse. Deal with it.”
Then she ducked down next to Nick.
“Very smooth,” he said. “I think we’re off their Christmas card list.
The Butterbugs Dinner in A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold
This “Regency Romance in Space” has one of the most funny, and horrible, dinner parties of all time. Hero Miles plans his dinner party to perfection – only to discover that his clone and his cousin have switched the place cards, his wacky mad scientists retainer has persuaded the kitchen to serve food made from butter bug vomit, and several extremely awkward secrets are revealed involving various interpersonal relationships. No matter how difficult your holiday dinners may be, at least they won’t involve butter bug vomit. Although that’s actually kind of sad – the bugs look horrible, but the butter is delicious.
Sarah:
Ah, large gatherings for meals around holidays. Pass the wine, please.
My favorite literary family gathering from hell is a cringe-worthy scene of such hilarity, every time I think of it, I start laughing. The book is the first of a series that went off the rails for me, but I can look back at book one with incredible amounts of warmth and fondness, because it was so new, so different, so funny, and so very very enjoyable. I wrote my own ending to the series in my imagination, but the beginning still rocks. Just one word brings all those fun memories back.
And that word is? “Gumpy.”
If you haven’t read One for the Money, here’s the setup of this scene. Stephanie Plum has come home from a day full of mishaps (all her days are like that), and her mom has set the table with the good china and a tablecloth. She’s invited Bernie Kuntz over to set up him with Stephanie. When Stephanie makes for the back door, her mom tells her there’s pineapple upside down cake for dessert, and if she leaves, her mom won’t save her any.
That part might be “from hell,” without any hilarity. Her mom plays hard ball.
Bernie turned to me. “So what are you doing now?”
I fiddled with my fork. My day hadn’t exactly been a success, and announcing to the world that I was a fugitive apprehension agent seemed presumptuous. “I sort of work for an insurance company,” I told him.
“You mean like a claims adjuster?”
“More like collections.”
“She’s a bounty hunter!” Grandma Mazur announced. “She tracks down dirty rotten fugitives just like on television. She’s got a gun and everything.” She reached behind her to the sideboard, where I’d left my shoulder bag. “She’s got a whole pocketbook full of paraphernalia,” Grandma Mazur said, setting my bag on her lap. She pulled out the cuffs, the beeper, and a travel pack of tampons and set them on the table. “And here’s her gun,” she said proudly. “Isn’t it a beauty?”
…”My God,” my mother shouted, “put it away! Someone take the gun from her before she kills herself!”
The cylinder was open and clearly empty of rounds. I didn’t know much about guns, but I knew this one couldn’t go bang without bullets. “It’s empty,” I said. “There are no bullets in it.”
Grandma Mazur had both hands wrapped around the gun with her finger on the trigger. She scrinched an eye closed and sighted on the china closet. “Ka-pow,” she said. “Ka-pow, kapow, ka-pow.”
My father was busy with the sausage dressing, studiously ignoring all of us.
“I don’t like guns at the table,” my mother said. “And the dinner’s getting cold. I’ll have to reheat the gravy.”
“This gun won’t do you no good if you don’t have bullets in it,” Grandma Mazur said to me. “How’re you gonna catch those killers without bullets in your gun?”
Bernie had been sitting open-mouthed through all of this. “Killers?”
“She’s after Joe Morelli,” Grandma Mazur told him. “He’s a bona fide killer and a bail dodger. He plugged Ziggy Kulesza right in the head.”
“I knew Ziggy Kulesza,” Bernie said. “I sold him a bigscreen TV about a year ago. We don’t sell many big screens. Too expensive.”
“He buy anything else from you?” I asked. “Anything recent?”
“Nope. But I’d see him sometimes across the street at Sal’s Butcher Shop. Ziggy seemed okay. Just a regular sort of person, you know?”
No one had been paying attention to Grandma Mazur. She was still playing with the gun, aiming and sighting, getting used to the heft of it. I realized there was a box of ammo beside the tampons. A scary thought skittered into my mind. “Grandma, you didn’t load the gun, did you?”
“Well, of course I loaded the gun,” she said. “And I left the one hole empty like I saw on television. That way you can’t shoot nothing by mistake.” She cocked the gun to demonstrate the safety of her action. There was a loud bang, a flash erupted from the gun barrel, and the chicken carcass jumped on its plate.
“Holy mother of God!” my mother shrieked, leaping to her feet, knocking her chair over.
“Dang,” Grandma said, “guess I left the wrong hole empty.” She leaned forward to examine her handiwork. “Not bad for my first time with a gun. I shot that sucker right in the gumpy.”
My father had a white-knuckle grip on his fork, and his face was cranberry red.
I scurried around the table and carefully took the gun from Grandma Mazur. I shook out the bullets and shoveled all my stuff back into my shoulder bag.
“Look at that broken plate,” my mother said. “It was part of the set. How will I ever replace it?” She moved the plate, and we all stared in silence at the neat round hole in the tablecloth and the bullet embedded in the mahogany table.
Grandma Mazur was the first to speak. “That shooting gave me an appetite,” she said. “Somebody pass me the potatoes.”
Maybe if all of our family gatherings had Grandma Mazur, they’d be much more enjoyable, if not tolerable.
Then there are the Bridgerton family dinners, because the family is completely off the wall. In one dinner, from The Duke and I, Anthony Bridgerton has invited Simon Basset, who is, you know, a duke, to dinner, and neglected to tell his mother that he’d done so.
(Dude. Seriously. Why would you do that?)
Simon had not been prepared for supper with the Bridgertons. It was a loud, raucous affair, with plenty of laughter and thankfully, only one incident involving a flying pea.
(It had looked as if the pea in question had originated at Hyacinth’s end of the table, but the littlest Bridgerton had looked so innocent and angelic that Simon had difficulty believing she had actually aimed the legume at her brother.)
Thankfully, Violet had not noticed the flying pea, even though it sailed right over her head in a perfect arc.
But Daphne, who was sitting directly across from him, most certainly had, because her napkin flew up to cover her mouth with remarkable alacrity. Judging from the way her eyes were crinkling at the corners, she was definitely laughing under the square of linen.
Simon spoke little throughout the meal. Truth be told, it was far easier to listen to the Bridgertons than actually to try to converse with them, especially considering the number of malevolent stares he was receiving from Anthony and Benedict….
Finally, Hyacinth, who was seated to Daphne’s right, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “You don’t talk much, do you?”
Violet choked on her wine.
“The duke,” Daphne said to Hyacinth, “is being far more polite than we are, constantly jumping into the conversation and interrupting one another as if we’re afraid we might not be heard.”
“I’m not afraid I might not be heard,” Gregory said.
“I’m not afraid of that, either,” Violet commented dryly. “Gregory, eat your peas.”
“But Hyacinth—”
“Lady Bridgerton,” Simon said loudly, “may I trouble you for another helping of those delicious peas?”
“Why certainly.” Violet shot an arch look at Gregory. “Notice how the duke is eating his peas.”
Gregory ate his peas.
Simon smiled to himself as he spooned another portion of peas onto his plate, thankful that Lady Bridgerton had not decided to serve dinner à la russe. It would have been difficult to stave off Gregory’s certain accusation of Hyacinth as a pea-tosser if he’d had to summon a footman to serve him.
Simon busied himself with his peas, since he really had no choice but to finish off every last one. He stole a glance at Daphne, however, who was wearing a secret little smile. Her eyes were brimming with infectious good humor, and Simon soon felt the corners of his mouth turning up as well.
“Anthony, why are you scowling?” asked one of the other Bridgerton girls—Simon thought it might be Francesca, but it was hard to say. The two middle ones looked amazingly alike, right down to their blue eyes, so like their mother’s.
“I’m not scowling,” Anthony snapped, but Simon, having been on the receiving end of those scowls for the better part of an hour, rather thought he was lying.
“You are, too,” either Francesca or Eloise said.
Anthony’s tone of reply was condescending in the extreme. “If you think I am going to say, ‘Am not,’ you are sadly mistaken.”
Daphne laughed into her napkin again.
Simon decided life was more amusing than it had been in ages.
“Do you know,” Violet suddenly announced, “that I think this might be one of the most pleasant evenings of the year. Even”—she sent a knowing glance down the table at Hyacinth—“if my youngest is tossing peas down the table.”
Simon looked up just as Hyacinth cried out, “How did you know?”
Violet shook her head as she rolled her eyes. “My dear children,” she said, “when will you learn that I know everything?”
Dear Bitches, we wish you a Happy Season of Family Dinners. May your food not consist of bug barf, may no one shoot the main course (at least, not while it’s on the table), and may you eat your carbs in peace. And for heaven’s sake, don’t throw peas – your mom knows everything.
What are your favorite meals from fiction, hilarious or heartwrenching, or both? Please share your favorite literary feast with us in the comments!
Oh, an opportunity to rave about a book most US readers don’t know about!
I hadn’t read a lot of humorous romance when Going the Distance by British author Christina Jones fell into my hands. It was snarky and irreverent and, because I’d moved to Wales only a few weeks earlier, helped me bone up on some of the UK slang I hadn’t come across yet.
Anyway, the heroine hosts a distastrous dinner party that had me laughing out loud and gasping in sympathy in turns. I can’t remember all the details (my books are in storage right now) but I remember that she discovers she hasn’t turned the slow cooker on so there is no stew, but she fishes out the veggies and serves them as crudites. And her sister is dating a jockey from an opposing stable (I think), and people are saying awful things…
I love that book, and it started my lifelong love of Christina’s work.
Happy Thanksgiving to all! I’m not real big on holidays, and honestly, the first book that came to mind after reading this was “Postcards from the Edge” by Carrie Fisher, and in particular I’m thinking of the scene in which she’s at a dinner party and sees something floating in the soup that looks like an elephant booger. (Yes, this is how I roll, sorry!)
I don’t cook, especially because I have to work on Friday morning, but I’m going to enjoy a nice dinner with one of my children and some other relatives. Bring on the pie!
When I saw the tweet for this I thought to myself “I hope they include the butterbug dinner” and of course the Smart Bitches did not disappoint! Thank you and enjoy your holiday meals! I’m off to cook and re read that dinner party scene…
You hit 2 of my top 3 with the Crusies. I’d add the one in Fast Women. Nell is having lunch with Tim (her ex-husband), Whitney, (his new girlfriend?), Gabe (the hero), Riley (Gabe’s brother) and Suze (Nell’s BFF).
The dinner scene that comes to mind is in Lisa Kleypas’s “Mine Until Midnight” when Beatrix lets a lizard loose on the table to distract everyone from Leo’s horrible behavior.
I have to say that I do enjoy a good family meal in my reads. Things usually come to a head or completely hilarious.
I too had the first reaction of “They better include A Civil Campaign and the dinner party from hell.”
We won’t have ButterBugs at our Thanksgiving feast, but we’re all fans of Lois McMaster Bujold, so I’ll be sure to mention them.
Another vote for the butterbug dinner! Every time I read that book, I laugh until I cry. In fact, I may need to pull it out to read tonight -prepping for family time!
What about the EPIC Netherfield dinner party in Pride and Prejudice? Lizzy’s entire family is an embarrassment. Her mother’s talking too loud about Jane marrying Mr. Bingley, even though there’s not even an engagement yet. Her vicar cousin Mr. Collins is drooling all over her and keeps putting his foot in his mouth. Worst of all, Wickham’s nowhere to be found–even though Lizzy was looking forward to dancing with him and got all dolled up–and instead she has to dance with disgusting Mr. Collins and cold Mr. Darcy. I’ll go on the record as saying that I’d rather break bread with my own family than with the Bennets, no contest.
I immediately thought of the dinner scene from The Duke and I when I read the first paragraph.
I’ll be baking cookies tonight in preparation for tomorrow’s feast with friends. We can count on kid or dog drama before or during the meal. Last year, my oversized Poodle tried to steal turkey off the meat platter. The year before, my friend’s son had a meltdown because he couldn’t have cheesecake before dinner. His aunt and I were right there with him.
Happy Thanksgiving you all!
The two dinners from Bet Me are my favorites. And I agree with Carrie about the importance of food in Cruisie’s books.
This is the first Thanksgiving since my grandmother died and I’ve been remembering all of the good and bad moments from Thanksgivings with her and my dysfunctional extended family. This year I wanted a to do something completely different, so we’re visiting my lovely, functional in-laws. It’s really lovely to not walk on eggshells but I still miss my family.
Bridget Jones and her birthday dinner. The blue soup, the omelette, the marmalade. “Have sneaking suspicion am excellent cook.” Bless.
I love Cherish by Tere Michaels. The relationship between Evan and Matt and the kids is great. Just really glad that we don’t have dynamics like that at our house 🙂
I adore Crusie. Just adore her work. She co-authored Dogs and Goddesses and I laugh myself silly over the cookies every time I read it.
Going the Distance by British author Christina Jones is $1.99 on Amazon
Love the remembrances of dinners literary – the drama doesn’t seem so bad when it isn’t your own family acting out. Happy Thanksgiving and good turkey/meat/vegetable noises to all!
The first book I thought of when I saw this topic was the second in Maureen Child’s Candellano series (can’t think of the name off the top of my head and too lazy to look it up right now). The Candellanos always do Sunday dinner together because that is what Italian families do and the particular dinner I’m thinking of is somewhere in the middle of the book after Stevie and Paul have gotten together, but before anyone actually knows (because Stevie was originally engaged to Nick and everyone believes that they’ll end up together). What sticks out about the scene is that Stevie notices how everyone in the family tends not to see Paul, so he’s quiet while the rest of the family is the typical boisterous Italian brood. Until recently, she’d only had eyes for Nick despite the fact that he’s a total arrogant prick.
Other than that scene, my favorite dinner parties are on television. The Thanksgiving episode from the 6th season of Friends is hands down my favorite. Monica and Ross were so childish in the entire episode and it all comes to boil after they’ve had Rachel’s disastrous desert (a traditional English Trifle mixed with a Shepherd’s Pie because the pages of the magazine were stuck together). All Monica wants to do is tell her parents that she and Chandler are in love and living together, but Ross is afraid to admit that Chandler wasn’t the one who’d gotten high in his bedroom, so Monica announces it to their parents herself. Instead of stopping, she continues to name all the things he hadn’t told them, starting with stealing his dad’s Playboys and ending with him marrying Rachel in Vegas and getting divorced AGAIN. Of course, Ross has to retaliate and goes into things that Monica doesn’t want them to know (“Hurricane Gloria did not break the porch swing. MONICA DID”), shouting out the fact that she and Chandler were living together. Then, all the others join in (Rachel: “I wasn’t supposed to put beef in the trifle” Phoebe: “I love Jacques Cousteau.” Joey: “I wanna go!”).
I remember watching that episode the day after it aired because I had to go to my grandmother’s house for dinner. Thankfully, my mom had finally learned how to program the VCR and she taped all of that night’s Must See TV. I had gotten sick that night and so when I watched it the next morning I could barely breath. That scene had me laughing so hard that I nearly hyperventilated.
Then, there’s the episode of Dawson’s Creek in which Pacey asked a travel writer to stop by the brand new Potter B&B and got all their friends to pretend to be paying guests. The scene around the fireplace (because the heater broke) is so damn heartwarming. It starts with Grams talking about all the nights she and her husband used to sit around their fire reading to each other, saying that with the wood burning, it smells like 40 years of her life. Of course, Dawson has to tell everyone that smell is associated with memory, so they all talk about their favorite smells. (Gail’s was vanilla because it reminded her of when she and Mitch had just started dating and how he would soak his hands in vanilla to get rid of the fish smell. Jen’s was mothballs because it made her think of the costume room at her old school in New York. Joey’s was bacon because it reminded her of their mom cooking on her days off and about how she’d always wanted to own a B&B.)
The next scene is also awesome. Joey wakes up to the sounds of music and the smell of bacon cooking in the kitchen. When she goes inside, she finds her friends dancing around her kitchen to “Ain’t to Proud to Beg” by the Temptations (a throwback to earlier in the episode when Dawson, Joey, and Pacey were watching The Big Chill). A Weekend in the Country, is my absolute favorite episode and in a way it is the calm before the storm because not long after it, they started the Dawson/Joey/Pacey love triangle that gave us the most hideous crying gif ever.
Reading about the “Candellanos always do Sunday dinner” reminded me of ********another****** book Crusie, oh what is the name? Anyway there is this man who made a bet that he could support himself as a PI on what a PI makes when he is really someone quite wealthy. He meets an Italian woman with an Italian family, a grandfather and cousins. The grandparents raised her for reasons. The grandfather and the cousins are all Mafia types and the cousins keep vandalizing the hero’s car. I think his name is Mitch. That family eats a lot of Sunday dinners and Mitch Maybe, goes also. Hysterically funny because the cousins are None Too Bright and extremely protective of our heroine. What is the name of that book?
Ok, I researched. What the Lady Wants.
On a completely unrelated note… Every time I see that cover for Bet Me… I think it has maxi pads on it. Just for a minute. But…EVERY TIME. Why???
Djinnantonnix, because those shoes are so ugly?
Possibly. But why maxi pads? My brain is weird.
I like the Bet me cover and the shoes.
@Djinnantonnix, I’ve never noticed it before, but they do look like maxi pads. I’ll never be able to look at that cover the same way again.
I’m rereading Little Women and there are several meal scenes, starting with that Christmas morning breakfast that the March girls give to a poor family(and are rewarded later for their kindness with ice cream!), plus Amy and Meg have a couple of disaster dinners, with Meg losing her mind over jelly making:)
I love TV Thanksgiving episodes as well-just watched Gilmore Girls, “A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving” where Lorelei and Rory test their limits by attending four dinners. Best part, Sookie getting drunk to cope with her husband deep frying their turkey and his family deciding to deep fry just about everything else!
Hot Head by Damon Suede!
There’s a Thanksgiving dinner where the m/m couple invite a friend to join them. He’d recently been beat almost to death for being gay, by his wife’s family/friends. Having that character see that a family can be welcoming was quite beautiful.
@ Dayle – if you like Going the Distance – Christina Jones has a whole series of interlinked books set in that area and neighbouring villages, so frequently previous characters will pop up as cameos. My favourites other than Going the Distance where Stealing the Show – about a family who run a fun fair and the heroine buys a steam powered carousel which the hero a painter helps her restore. I also loved Jumping to Conclusions which features jockey Charlie falling for a shy librarian type and basically has updates from all the characters of Going the Distance.
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Ah, Crusie’s book Bet Me is one of my all time favorites. I’ve read it so many times I just open to random pages and begin to read. Cal and Min are perfect.
I’ve just re-read Bet Me, What the Lady Wants, Strange Bedpersons and Fast Women. I never realized how often food is consumed in these novels until this discussion pointed it out.