Reply To: TBC: What role do the recipes and food shared in the Briar Club play among the women and within the story?
I think the food shared between the women made them into a family and provided food to some residents who couldn’t afford it. The camaraderie and the food gave the residents something to look forward to and led to a complete Thanksgiving meal which was unfortunately interrupted. No one particular recipe stood out for me, except for the culinary pornography of Arlene’s candle salad. That certainly provided a laugh. But it was the instruction of how to eat the recipe and what music should accompany it that I thought was more important. The music for Pete’s Swedish Meatballs was “I Wanna Be Loved;” love was definitely missing in Pete’s life since his father left. Each recipe’s music illuminates something about a character’s life at that particular moment–an emotion or a need.
When I was much younger, I loved to bake. So, I would bring one of three cheesecakes to a Briar Club meeting: German Chocolate Cheesecake, Chocolate Malt Cheesecake or Triple Layer Toffee Cheesecake which has a vanilla layer with incorporated chopped Heath bars sandwiched between a chocolate layer and a vanilla layer.
