My Menu For A Fictional Dinner

Yesterday I linked to a list of 'The Best Books That Never Existed' from The Guardian UK's David Barnett. It was a brief catalog of some of the cooler works of fiction that exist only in other works of fiction -- sort of like the contents of Dream's library in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman or of the lighthouse in Dylan Horrock's Hicksville . Anyway, it was so popular with our staff that I decided to leach off Barnett's brilliance and come up with a similar shtick for today's blog post.

(Don't be mad, David. I saved you a seat at the kids' table.)

Let's start with the dinner rolls:
Most manga fans will agree that no book has ever made bread sound better than Yakitate!! Japan (Takashi Hashiguchi). It's the story of Young Kazuma, a bakery prodigy with one dream: creating 'Ja-pan,' the ultimate bread for Japanese taste buds. (Fun fact: 'Pan' means bread in Japanese.) For those of us too far gone to worry about counting calories, why not add a little butter from the churns of the Little House on the Prairie (Laura Ingalls Wilder)?

Alternate choice for finicky fictional eaters:
Lembas bread from the LOTR trilogy (J.R.R. Tolkien)

Soup:
Um, I'm not a huge soup sipper, so I'm gonna dedicate this one to Mr. Bennet and his British brethren: The mysterious 'white soup' served at the Netherfield ball in Pride & Prejudice (Jane Austen).
Actually, you know what? I want to change my order. 'White soup' sounds like it's gonna look like wheat paste and taste like something from my days in the all-boys' school. Is it too late to get a bowl of Heartbreak Soup (Gilbert Hernandez) instead?

Alternate choice for finicky fictional eaters:
Chicken Soup for the (insert random, self-diagnosed malady here) (Insert random, shameless author's name here)

Appetizer:
Let's see...do I get an appetizer or do I save room for dessert? Who am I kidding? I do both. In fact, I'm gonna go American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis) and order an entree -- lobster with caviar and peach ravioli -- as my app.

Alternate choice for finicky fictional eaters:
Salad from Anthony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare)
(Okay, so no one in A&C actually talks about salad, but the expression "salad days" is used by Cleopatra.)
(And yes, I did have to resort to Googling blindly to find this one.)

Main course:
For my 'real' entree, I'll have the orgasm inducing 'Quail in Rose Petal Sauce' from Like Water For Chocolate (Laura Esquivel). Oh, and my advice for the fellas: Put your napkin in your lap before tasting.

Alternate choice for finicky fictional eaters:
Wilbur from Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)

Dessert:
I'm gonna have go with one of those giant banana splits that Jughead used to always order at Pop's Malt Shop in Archie Comics (various), with a side of maple syrup so I can drown the sundae in it. (This is a super stretched to the limit reference to the scene in To Kill A Mockingbird where Alabama redneck Walter Cunningham pours syrup all over his dinner. Truth be told, I often do the same damned thing.)

Alternate choice for finicky fictional eaters:
Madeline cakes from In Search of Lost Time and/or Remembrance of Things Past (Marcel Proust)
Note: I'm giving myself +5 blogger points for finally referencing a college level work of fiction. We now return you to your regularly scheduled dumb shit, already in progress.

Now it's at this point -- before the plaque settles and the semen stains -- that I'd politely excuse myself from the table, run into the bathroom, and brush my teeth with the toothpaste from The Toothpaste Millionaire (Jean Merrill & Jan Palmer). This goopy amalgam of household items is the brainchild of a poor kid who decides that store bought toothpaste costs too much so he recruits a group of his neighborhood pals to make and market their own. (Oh, and the best part? The packaging. They sell the shit in in old baby food jars.)

Voila! My belly is full (Jim Aylesworth & Wendy Anderson Halperin) and my teeth are white (Zadie Smith). While I clear the dirty plates, why don't y'all give me your ideas for alternate dishes in the comments section.