Sarah’s Gmail quote of the day was: “I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.” – Stephen King.
That started us thinking: What does that say about romance authors? What’s their food item literary equivalent? Well, fear not, readers! Trust the Smart Bitches to come up with the perfect food counterpart for your favorite authors.
Nora Roberts: Ice-cream. You can always have ice-cream. Sometimes it’s a little bland or frosty, and sometimes it’s just what you needed when it’s hot as hell outside. Ice-cream is rarely, if ever, bad.
Cassie Edwards: Potted Meat Food product. It’s marketed as food, and it tries very, very hard to be food, but ultimately, it’s Food Product. Frighteningly ubiquitous, and therefore even more terrifying.
Laura Kinsale: Saffron. Rare and exclusive, but packs a huge wallop when used.
Laurell K. Hamilton: Cilantro. Some people LOVE her to the point of OMG obsession, and some people cannot stand her and think she tastes like soap.
Jennifer Crusie: Obvious choice: cherry pie.
Loretta Chase: Coconut milk. Looks like cow’s milk, but most decidedly is not cow’s milk, and adds incredible richness and flavor to any dish.
Julia Quinn: Trifle. Light, happy, not too maudlin, not too filling to be an after-dinner treat.
Catherine Coulter: Deep fried Twinkies. Once upon a time, it was a good junk food. Now? Not good at all, despite the potential.
Lisa Kleypas: A basic chocolate layer cake. Sometimes absolutely spectacular, sometimes pretty bland and chewy with frosting that’s too sweet, but dude, it’s still chocolate cake, so we’re having a piece.
Anne Stuart: Dark, dark chocolate with random habaneros hidden inside.
Sharon and Tom Curtis aka Laura London aka Robin James: An incredibly intricate, arcane cake that looks glazed and normal on the outside, then you cut a piece and holy crap there’s fondant and buttercream with fruit and about 18 layers of 1/2” thick rich cake in between, all sliced so thin it looked like someone used a razor.
Barbara Samuel: A really, really high-quality brownie. Deceptively simple ingredients, but incredibly dense and delicious.
Patricia Gaffney: A big bowl of hearty stew that’ll warm you to your toes and make you feel good. Unless it’s the older bodice ripper novels she wrote for Leisure, in which case, she’s cheese. Perhaps Swiss, for the plot holes. (We’re not necessarily knocking them, mind you. Candy owns almost all of them, and loves them all.)
Dara Joy: American Cheese. Cheesy, yet weirdly plastic, completely unearthly, not quite a food—yet a total guilty pleasure, should you choose to debase your palate so.
Connie Mason: Casu marzu. Cheese so bad, it can actually make you go BLIND.
Sharon Shinn: Sour cream blueberry muffins. People think she’s a quickbread, but really, they’re giant cupcakes without frosting that people justify to themselves as Not Cake because they eat them for breakfast and get them two tables over from the cupcakes. Some Bujold and Asaro novels qualify, too.
Judith McNaught: Grocery-store cupcakes. Sometimes, you just crave them, so you buy a box and eat, like, a dozen in a row. And you suddenly realize that you feel a bit boofy because they’re way too sweet and greasy, and not only that, they have the same basic taste, even though they claim to have different flavors and frostings. See also: Jude Deveraux and Johanna Lindsey.
Kathleen Woodiwiss: Chinese American food. Sometimes it hits the spot, but too often it panders to what people *think* Chinese food should be, so it’s way too salty, way too greasy, and WHY IN THE SHIT IS SOY SAUCE IN EVERYTHING? Just because it’s Chinese food doesn’t mean you slather soy sauce on all of it, you goddamn infidels.
Doughnut: JR Ward. Jhelli philled dhoughnutz, phull of ahngzt, pain and sadism—oops, sorry, zsadism, all skull-shaped with frosting fangs and tiny candy shitkicker boots, trying really hard to look hardcore and scary, but DUDE. It’s a DOUGHNUT. Sure, it’s tasty. It may be a Voodoo Doughtnut, even, and God knows Candy’s fond of those things—in fact, she loves them so much, she got married in the store. But c’mon. They’re DOUGHNUTS, PEOPLE. GET A GRIP.
Bertrice Small: Tex Mex. When done right, it can be yummy, but when mass-produced, contains way too much sour cream sauce and a lot of heat that’s weirdly flavorless.
Harlequin Presents: Cup O’ Noodles ramen. They’re highly standardized, they’re everywhere, they’re cheap, they aren’t especially filling, and nutritionally, they’re about the equivalent of a bag of rocks (actually, the bag of rocks might beat the ramen, because the dirt clinging to the rocks might provide a little B12), but they work if you need calories, and some of the variations can be pretty tasty.
Danielle Steel: Cheez doodles.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips: Tortilla chips. Delicious and addictive, but: Blue corn? White? Yellow? Low salt? Tequila salt? Extra salt? Pretty much about the same.
Diana Palmer: Biscuits. Made by virgins. Who are mistaken for whores by hard-faced Texan cowboys with women issues the size of, uh, Texas.
Stephanie Laurens’ Cynster series: Pocky. There’s Men’s Pocky, Almond Pocky, Strawberry Pocky, Green Tea Pocky, Coconut Pocky, Milk Pocky, Honey Pocky, Grape Pocky—Pocky Pocky Pocky. All variations of “sweet crap coating a pretzel stick.” And really, if “sweet crap coating a pretzel stick” doesn’t accurately describe all the humpings-on in a Laurens novel, we don’t know what does.
Edited to add:
Oops! Forgot to include this author in the entry:
Linda Howard: Foot-long hot dog with bullet-flavored relish and a lot of mustard. Can’t quite wrap your lips around that monster? TRY HARDER. RELAX. You’ll love it even as it hurts you. Really.
Ah maggot cheese . . . I saw this a while back on some food show and couldn’t seem to change the channel. I was frozen with horror and disgust, but I couldn’t look away as they ate it. *shudder* I’m not even sure I can go near a nice triple cream for a while, so disturbing was the narrative, where they went on and on about how the maggots make it extra creamy.
iffygenia said, “I swear to bbq I read this as: You THINK you’re getting a sweet creamy filling but instead it’s packed with sperm.”
ME TOO!
What is wrong with us???
That’d be a salty, creamy filling.
Still better than eye-and-gut attacking maggots, though.
Bertrice Small is peanuts: a mild pleasure for some, deadly for others.
What is wrong with us???
I blame it squarely on LKH. I mean really. I have it on good authority that I’m exceptionally pure.
The maggot cheese carries the ultimate foodborne illness, that’s for sure. Think it beats trichinosis for food/parasite creep factor.
OK,
Flight of ideas here—-
Mary Balogh—Scones and tea
Julie Garwood—Butterscotch candy
Gabaldon—Handmade shortbreads of course
Um. I’m only 56% pure. Whatever. I’m still blaming it all on LKH
You know Amy,
Casu Marzu (a cheese that can bite back) is just aching for being written into a paranormal romance as part of the villain’s daily dietary requirements.
Amy… get it in the notes!
At least the infested cheese link was work-safe….
And no mention of Georgette Heyer?
I’m 24% pure….more than I want to be but still ahead of the skank cheese!!!!
<
>
Don’t be sorry. Her older stuff’s better than the newer stuff. Or so says I.
Or maybe it’s just that I can’t, heh, relax enough to enjoy the newer stuff.
And Diana Gabaldon SOOOOO has to be something meatier and more filling and longer lasting than shortbread.
~triple chocolate penetration~
Candy…you feeling okay? Yeah, I bet you are.
I’m thinking Elizabeth Lowell is peanut butter. Eaten from the jar. And you spoon some jam into the jar beforehand so you can basically have a sandwich without the bread, and then your teeth start to hurt and stick together. Not that I did this last night or anything.
Georgette Heyer? White soup and negus.
Or maybe Bath buns.
What about Emma Holly?
Linda Howard’s… older stuff’s better than the newer stuff
Linda Howard’s older stuff is like a sloppy joe. Full-flavored messy goodness we loved “back when”, but totally off the modern diet today. Damn it, we can’t eat mindfully all the time!
Linda Howard’s newer stuff is like a giant sugarfree candy cane melted to the rug. It’s bland, it’s saccharine, it’s shapeless, and after a while you want to drive the spiky end through the roof of
the heroine’s
your mouth and into your skull to stop the misery.
I’m just sitting here eating a normal meal for me… a footlong hotdog that’s always warm, followed by a jelly donut covered in ice cream…. followed by some bon-bons.. (Julie Garwood)
It’s all fattening, and it’s certainly not brain food, but man, it all really makes me fat and sassy and happy as hell.
Hmm, I think of Gaffney more as chocolate decadence or these: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/102755
Or this: http://www.saveur.com/food/new-recipes/smith-island-cake-51805.html
And Laura Kinsale? Definitely this: http://www.saveur.com/food/classic-recipes/lady-baltimore-cake—51211.html
I so need to do some baking now.
“It’s all fattening, and it’s certainly not brain food, but man, it all really makes me fat and sassy and happy as hell.”
excellent description of her old stuff… not so crazy about the contemporaries, tho.
oh, i haven’t thought of a Lady Baltimore cake in years…. yum. speaking of Kinsale: Candy, did you ever finish Flowers from the Storm?
Maybe Gabaldon is a substantial meat pasty, one of those pot-pie type things sold in Scotland.
As long as it’s not deep fried Mars bars with an Iron-Bru, the other thing they sell in Scotland.
J. D. Robb—a martini: pungent, intoxicating and best savored one at a time.
That’s “Irn-Bru”.
Still an improvement over their other treats, blood pudding and haggis.
Thanks for the meat pasty for Gabaldon. All I could think of was Haggis and that’s just too, too EiiCH!
Oh, thank you ladies soooo much for Casu marzu. I just can’t begin to tell you how special that made my day. I think I may have gone off food for life now. *gag*
Ya know, when I was in Orkney they had home made short bread with toffee and chocolate on top. Maybe that is what Gabaldon is.
OR, sticky toffee pudding! Yeah!!
“Stephanie Laurens’ Cynster series: Pocky. There’s Men’s Pocky, Almond Pocky, Strawberry Pocky, Green Tea Pocky, Coconut Pocky, Milk Pocky, Honey Pocky, Grape Pocky—Pocky Pocky Pocky. All variations of “sweet crap coating a pretzel stick.†And really, if “sweet crap coating a pretzel stick†doesn’t accurately describe all the humpings-on in a Laurens novel, we don’t know what does.”
I absolutely love you for this comparison. It’s so so accurate. Thank you, Bitches, THANK YOU.
I would kill for a glass of Irn Bru…
mmmm, stickey toffee pudding..yanno, haggen daaz has that as a flavor…but im thinking not so much in the way of maggotty cheese ice cream…hehe…ok, so did everyone gag just now???
Cilantro always burns my mouth, so if the adage about getting burnt stops you playing with matches, a burning mouth should stop any tempation to pick up the Harlequin (for me at least)
After the maggot cheese are there any candidates worthy of solent green?
I think I broke something laughing.
I can’t pick a favourite, but this:
deserves special applause. Hee!
Mmmmm. Yummy.
Oh-oh. I feel a little bit sick now.
Oh, and what about Judith Ivory? I’m thinking this: http://www.saveur.com/food/classic-recipes/chocolate-spice-cake-pudding-50439.html
Or maybe French croissants filled with Callebaut bittersweet chocolate.
Eloisa James: one of those 7 mini course gourmet experimental extravaganzas, which may or may not compose a coherent whole and fill your belly.
Sabrina Jeffries: Starbucks full fat iced caramel machiato. It’s really good, but has a lot of ice as filler. And the drink tastes the same every time.
Mmmm, Irn-Bru:
Looks like jelly bear juice, tastes loke jelly bear juice mixed with puke… and it totally makes your hangover go away.
There has to be an author to whom that applies.
I think my new career goal is to be so famous, someone compares me to food. But not cheese. Not any kind at all.
Christine Feehan—Tiramasu
Dark, dangerous and expensive. (When you have to buy EVERY one of the series cause you can’t stand it)
Nalini Singh—Enchiladas
A little spicy, and even better as leftovers (meaning you can reread her again and again)
Patti O’Shea—Chocolate Chip Cookies
The ingredients LOOK familiar, but the way they’re put together is addicting.
Amanda Quick—Baked Chicken Casserole
This is the dish you get at a church fundraiser and think “I’ve had this before.” It’s great and you love it, but you realize your mother used to make the same thing for you when you were little.
*ducks flying tomatoes*
What about Sherrilyn Kenyon? I’m thinking she’s like the pringles in the hotel mini bar. You vow you won’t spend the money, but you have a couple horrifically expensive mini-bottles, and next thing you know you’ve polished off a can in record time. You promise yourself you won’t do it again, but the next time you’re in a hotel, there’s another can…
Thank you iffy and Nifty I don’t feel so alone now. Sometimes I want to tear my hair out at JR Ward fandom and then I remember I have one or two Howard category romances on my hard drive.
Oops. my apologies to vegemite fans…although I don’t personally know any, I’m sure that there must be some.
*grin*
Me! I’m a happy little vegemite! Scroll down to download the song.
http://tinyurl.com/2fj8l
Sherilyn Kenyon- I have to say, probably blue box mac and cheese. Looks good, but does stick with you for more than a minute after you are done.
Christina Dodd- caramels
Meg Cabot- green bean casserole- always creamy, with crisp bits, and occasional cheese thrown on top
Between the maggot cheese and the happy little vegemite song now whirling around my brain (damn you Keziah Hill!!) you bitches have set me up for a very long day at work…