Book Review: Fairy Tale Feasts

I stumbled on this book at the library last week: Fairy Tale Feasts: A Literary Cookbook for Young Readers and Eaters. What a fantastic book! The premise is to pair a recipe with a fairy tale or folk story. For example, "The Little Mermaid" is followed by recipes for Seaweed Stuffed Shells and Tomato Sauce; "Hodja Borrows a Pot" is followed by Hodja's Kebabs and Cucumber Yogurt Salad. This week Laurel made--completely by herself!--Runaway Pancakes (to go along with the story by the same title) and fruit salad (to go with "The Fox and the Grapes"). Next on our list are Cinderella's pumpkin tartlets and sweet chocolate mousse from "Seven Hills of Sweet."

I love that nearly every page in this book contains an extensive sidebar giving further information about both the story itself and the foods. In the recipe Perfect Porridge, for example (which follows "The Magic Pot of Porridge"), the sidebar lists such facts as "In the old days, porridge was eaten by a wooden spoon, because..." and "Scottish porridge makers use a 'spurtle...'" etc. etc. Really fun book!