Do you have 'fun' with food in fictional settings?

[Naruzeldamaster]

You know, stuff like Blue Milk from star wars or Butter Beer from Harry Potter, or Giggle Juice from Fantastic Beasts.
I tend to not make too many fictional foods in my stories cause I never know how relevant they will be.
When I do make them I tend to make them based on an actual thing. I have a few things that are purely fictional, but not too many. Even though in video games and stuff those details tend to be my favorite things in the lore. I'm a huge nerd for flavor text. (Bad joke I know, I had to ok?)

Like I have a plant that's basically 'spice' from star wars, it's my 'catch all' plant for abusive substances (the kind you smoke or otherwise ingest in the way you do smokable plants) in the story. The only things really known about it is that it's Toxic at certain nutritional values but it's otherwise a good way to get high.

 

[pmmg]

I rarely mention food in my stories, and I suspect the diets of the characters are not ones anyone would envy. (Honestly, I dont think I could live in my world and survive. I would not want to eat any of what they must eat.) Given the opportunity food would offer to show more of the cultures, its just not something that comes up.

I do make up a lot of trees, plants, and animals that would be part of the diet, but...never really the preparation of them. It occurred to me somewhere along the way, I have never mentioned a cow in my stories. I am toying with the idea of there just not being any in the lands they live in.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

I rarely mention food in my stories, and I suspect the diets of the characters are not ones anyone would envy. (Honestly, I dont think I could live in my world and survive. I would not want to eat any of what they must eat.) Given the opportunity food would offer to show more of the cultures, its just not something that comes up.

I do make up a lot of trees, plants, and animals that would be part of the diet, but...never really the preparation of them. It occurred to me somewhere along the way, I have never mentioned a cow in my stories. I am toying with the idea of there just not being any in the lands they live in.

I tend to not mention food either, unless it's something relevant for later. Or the characters are actually stopping to eat for a scene or two.
In this story there's a character who's food increases stats as you eat them (yes 'stats' are a thing in this story, like Strength/Stamina etc) so some scenes have food in them. I already mentioned the herbal plant in my first post.

There's a scene where they're navigating a cave and their lanterns run out of oil. So I invented a type of maggot that glows in the dark, when other entities eat it the enzymes they produce make the consumer glow (usually in whatever color the worm happens to be glowing when eaten). The effect can only be seen in pitch darkness and is temporary, provided you aren't chowing down on them constantly for nutrition. (the worms are good protein when cooked and only give the glow when eaten raw) Then the glow starts becoming bright enough to see in broad daylight and can be permanent.

 

[pmmg]

Yeah....I am not eating worms to glow

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

Yeah....I am not eating worms to glow

Not even if they actually tasted good? XD (they're called gummies for a reason, though they taste much better cooked than raw)

 

[pmmg]

Well...I mean, if they were mostly sugar...

 

[Orc Knight]

I do. Maybe not to blue milk levels, but food is there. And I use to touch on culture as it is a cornerstone. And my own tastes tend to end up in my writing, as at least several of my characters will like spicy and tropical foods. Hells, got at least one character who's family rose up from butchers, cooks and other jobs around food. But also as soldiers.

Food inevitably ends up in my writing, because I like it and am a bit of a foodie myself. And like to do cooking myself. I've even wrote some recipes from my stories. And I like the glow worms idea. I tend to stick to sea food (as I said, I trend tropical and coastal, fantasy or sci fi) so I've had said MC start a story butchering a shark and getting ready to cook it up before getting ambushed at sea. She actually ate the heart of it while waiting for the attack to get on.

 

[Patrick-Leigh]

The Mermaid protagonist of my current project is a foodie. Her bioluminescence changes depending on how much she likes or dislikes the food she's eating. I'm trying to make her as adorable as possible in the scenes where she's eating. She can also eat a lot due to having two stomachs (one in the torse, one in the tail.) Her second stomach is for storing up food for long periods of swimming, so if she fill it to capacity, she loses her appetite for at least a week, depending on what sort of food she's consumed. On top of having two stomachs, her metabolism is somewhat elevated due to her keen Magic Detection. She can identify things down to the atomic level (and even subatomic if she really pushes herself) with her antennae, but this comes at the cost of higher calorie consumption, so she has a big appetite. A running gag will be her absolutely trouncing people in eating contests, despite her being small and petite compared to other Mer. (She's inspired by the Little Mermaid.)

Anyway, here are some of the images I'm using as inspiration for how she eats.

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[ThinkerX]

Strange feasts wither stranger attendees appear in my stories.

 

[Mad Swede]

I don't create specific types of food or drink for my setting, but I do use real-life examples of food and drink and I do this by using descriptions of flavour. For example, many of the wines my characters drink are described, and those descriptions are based on real wines from real places. I also use real herbs and spices, particularly when I need to use something like that for a specific purpose like sending someone to sleep or poisoning someone.

 

[Devor]

I have a full menu written out for the "Tavern and Grocer" my characters hang out at. They're all sprites and other tiny fairies. I chose to go with unusual proteins, heirloom vegetables, zero grains, and a wide variety of seasoned jellies. Oh, and the drinks are mostly based on edible flowers. It's mostly stuff that could exist in the real world, if you were willing to try hedgehog gravy over sprouted greens in a Mirabelle prune cup, topped with grated chestnut and a cheese crumble. The tavern has a common table which is kind of like a small cheap buffet where a couple items swap out every day (today it's hedgehog gravy, tomorrow it's squirrel paté), or you can order a fancy meal (Dragonfly Potasué), or you can buy groceries (coney sausage).

It was fun to come up with.

 

[Finchbearer]

I have a full menu written out for the "Tavern and Grocer" my characters hang out at. They're all sprites and other tiny fairies. I chose to go with unusual proteins, heirloom vegetables, zero grains, and a wide variety of seasoned jellies. Oh, and the drinks are mostly based on edible flowers. It's mostly stuff that could exist in the real world, if you were willing to try hedgehog gravy over sprouted greens in a Mirabelle prune cup, topped with grated chestnut and a cheese crumble. The tavern has a common table which is kind of like a small cheap buffet where a couple items swap out every day (today it's hedgehog gravy, tomorrow it's squirrel paté), or you can order a fancy meal (Dragonfly Potasué), or you can buy groceries (coney sausage).

It was fun to come up with.

Super cute. It sounds like the fairy version of a Michelin star restaurant.

 

[Finchbearer]

I don’t ’have fun with food’ as far as fiction goes, or how you describe it, I write in a more serious manner in general.

That being said I have a world where tiny people exist in an African-inspired world where a beetle might be skewered and cooked over a fire a bit like a hog-roast.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

We have a lot of fun with the intersection between food and magic. One of our MC's is a wizard and a potion master, and she's also a home cook and was taught both by a cabal of vampire queens who she describes as, "I was raised by about 40 radical feminists, so this could get interesting." So, she makes a whole lot of medicinal potions and a whole lot of yummy noms. And at that intersection?

Orgasm brownies. Ooey, gooey, chocolatey brownies... with a little kick.