kathleen_dailey (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kathleen_dailey) wrote2023-08-20 01:13 pm
kathleen_dailey) wrote2023-08-20 01:13 pm
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Food is love (and sometimes a plot point)
Salon has a fun article on Christopher Pike's practice of cooking for his nearest and dearest.
Pike's food-prep setup in his quarters reminds me of the way I envisioned Uhura's (though on a much smaller scale) in Unspoken Truth 30 years ago. Now I know whose example she was following!
Hmm, thinking about cuisine served aboard a Federation vessel engaged in long-term interstellar exploration--on the one hand, I would expect it to be appetizing, varied, accommodating of cultures' and species' preferences and taboos, and available in equal quantity and quality to officers and crew alike. On the other hand, maybe the TOS Enterprise people actually craved those brightly coloured nutrient cubes and chose them over galley-prepared food. (In "The Corbomite Maneuver," we heard about the Enterprise's galley, and in ST:TUC, we got to see it, which IIRC triggered some fannish debate at the time.) Maybe the galley-prepared meals were also used as matrices or prototypes for synthesized or replicated food? If so, the raw ingredients themselves may have been synthesized or replicated from industrial-size blocks of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins in the first place ...
Anyway, in my corner of the Trekfic universe, a number of shared and solo meals (whether handmade, delivered by TOS-era food dispensers, or produced by TNG-era replicators) function as plot points, character notes, or set decoration. I must have been inspired by the meal that the RC had her chef prepare while Spock was aboard her ship. Which, Spock acknowledged, was "far superior to [the cuisine] of the Enterprise" and "a very powerful recruiting inducement."
But it was only when I reread all the stories, decades after writing them, that I realized with a bit of a jolt how often I'd used scenes involving food and drink to (I hope) advance the action and plot and reveal something about the characters to the reader.
The article includes Leah Chase's recipe for jambalaya, which inspired the dish served in "Under the Cloak of War." SNW's food stylist, Tanya Osmond, "confirms that choosing to have Pike cook jambalaya for this occasion is a small homage to ... Benjamin Sisko, the son of a New Orleans' chef for whom the dish holds tremendous family significance." The recipe sounds delicious, and I foresee a trip to the St. Lawrence Market in the near future.
Pike's food-prep setup in his quarters reminds me of the way I envisioned Uhura's (though on a much smaller scale) in Unspoken Truth 30 years ago. Now I know whose example she was following!
Hmm, thinking about cuisine served aboard a Federation vessel engaged in long-term interstellar exploration--on the one hand, I would expect it to be appetizing, varied, accommodating of cultures' and species' preferences and taboos, and available in equal quantity and quality to officers and crew alike. On the other hand, maybe the TOS Enterprise people actually craved those brightly coloured nutrient cubes and chose them over galley-prepared food. (In "The Corbomite Maneuver," we heard about the Enterprise's galley, and in ST:TUC, we got to see it, which IIRC triggered some fannish debate at the time.) Maybe the galley-prepared meals were also used as matrices or prototypes for synthesized or replicated food? If so, the raw ingredients themselves may have been synthesized or replicated from industrial-size blocks of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins in the first place ...
Anyway, in my corner of the Trekfic universe, a number of shared and solo meals (whether handmade, delivered by TOS-era food dispensers, or produced by TNG-era replicators) function as plot points, character notes, or set decoration. I must have been inspired by the meal that the RC had her chef prepare while Spock was aboard her ship. Which, Spock acknowledged, was "far superior to [the cuisine] of the Enterprise" and "a very powerful recruiting inducement."
But it was only when I reread all the stories, decades after writing them, that I realized with a bit of a jolt how often I'd used scenes involving food and drink to (I hope) advance the action and plot and reveal something about the characters to the reader.
The article includes Leah Chase's recipe for jambalaya, which inspired the dish served in "Under the Cloak of War." SNW's food stylist, Tanya Osmond, "confirms that choosing to have Pike cook jambalaya for this occasion is a small homage to ... Benjamin Sisko, the son of a New Orleans' chef for whom the dish holds tremendous family significance." The recipe sounds delicious, and I foresee a trip to the St. Lawrence Market in the near future.
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