A friend who edits a library newsletter had a writer fall through and I agreed to dash off a 500 word article as a favor dealing with barbecue and picnic books.
I find lots of picnic books for kids lit and that’s fine, anything helps, and some barbecue cookbooks, but can anybody think of some books (fiction or non, adult or YA) in which barbecue or picnics play a big part? Off-hand I can think of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe and Gone With the Wind (the barbecue scene at Twelve Oaks), but I’m probably missing a couple of obvious ones.
It’s a very short article so I can wing it with what I have and the children’s books and cookbooks, but if you can think of any better ones, much appreciation!
There’s a number of picnics in Dornford Yates ( Berry & Co. ), especially in And Berry Came Too, where Berry ( Major Pleydell ) loses his trousers when his German Shepherd spills beer on them, and he wraps himself in a bolt of material called crayonne (?).
Some people find Yates a little precious, but he’s OK when one feels like that sort of thing. A trifle snobbish.
Weren’t Enid Blyton’s Famous Five always having a smashing picnic while out on their adventures? Even better, The Comic Strip Presents did a great, snarky parody (Five Go Mad in Dorset). As I recall, literally every meal or picnic consisted of “Cold turkey, cold ham, bags of tomatoes, heaps of lettuce and lashings of ginger beer!”
There’s the scene at the end of The Right Stuff (the movie–I don’t remember if it’s in the book) with the Mercury astronauts as the guests of honor at a big barbecue held by LBJ in the Astrodome. There are also some scenes earlier in the movie of the test pilots and their families having cookouts at their homes at Edwards AFB.
The music The Pajama Game was written by Richard Bissell and George Abbott and based on Richard Bissell’s novel 7 1/2 Cents, so the novel probably includes the company picnic which is in the musical. (That said, I haven’t read the novel.)
Picnics also occur in the YA novels Forever and Ever by Janet Lambert and A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter. (Although the latter is more of a group of snacks held monthly than full meals.)
Jack and Cathy Ryan intend to have a barbecue for the visiting Prince and Princess of Wales, but are interrupted by terrorists, in Tom Clancy’s Patriot Games.
There’s a picnic in Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women. Considering all the flirting that takes place just in that scene, it should count as YA.
In almost all of Marta Perry’s Pleasant Valley novels there are picnic lunches after church services.
Non-fiction: Out of print, but lots of fun: Mrs. Appleyard’s Kitchen by Louise Andrews Kent, talks about Vermont picnic food in the 1940’s, among many other things. The Food of a Younger Land, edited by Mark Kurlansky, which is a collection of WPA articles about regional food in the 1930’s and earlier, including barbecue and picnics.