
A girl’s gotta eat–she may as well eat like a heroine.
Join me and my book-obsessed kindred spirit Jenny Williams as we time travel through favorite heroine classics to glean all the foodie wisdom: How to eat, picnic, comfort, host and more like your best-loved bookish stars.
Elevate your eating life to the level of Anne of Green Gables, Jane Austen, Maya Angelou and Zora Neale Hurston; come to the table with us as we learn how to eat like heroines. Listen to our first two episodes here!


Episode 00: From Anne Shirley to Zora Neale Hurston: An Introduction to a Foodie/Bookish Podcast
Why did Anne of Green Gables invite her minister over for cold tongue? What was up with Ma’s Spider Pan in Little House on the Prairie? And why were the heroines obsessed with currants, blancmange, and calf’s foot jelly? A snappy sketch of everything the bookish stars have to teach us about how to nourish and flourish here and now.
Shownotes:
If your bookish/foodie heart goes thump at the thought of deconstructing the picnic in Emma, the semi-murderous ingredients in Anne of Green Gables’ “liniment cake,” and the swoony sentences Maya Angelou used to describe barbeque sauce, do we have a podcast for you!
In this episode, we unpeel the show that promises to feed both your inner book geek and epicure, with segments such as: Time Travel (historical dishing), Heroine Spotlight, Cook Like a Heroine (recipes), Heroine Takeaways, Bookseller’s Daughter and Friend Recommend (book reviews), Heroine Challenges and Maud’s Mailroom.
Tell us what element of eating like a heroine you are most interested in learning about! DM me or Jenny on Instagram or Facebook, or drop me a line here on my website. You could be in a future episode!
Episode 1: Picnic Like a Heroine, Part 1: Blissfully Sticky with Katy Carr

Who was the mystery heroine who picnicked like a boss and taught us that the bar should be set at “blissfully sticky”? Get your red checkered blanket ready to roll, because we can’t wait to talk all things heroine and picnics.
Shownotes

No one picnics as blissfully as a heroine. In this show, we give props to Katy Carr, of What Katy Did: She knew how to elevate the plowman’s lunch to something magical.
We reveal the captivating history of the picnic, dating back centuries, and urge you not to go bananas like the Victorians (so no “epic collar of calf’s head”). Finally, we offer tips on how to pick a setting like a heroine and ponder how our friend Natalie’s suitor was able to make fettuccine alfredo on the side of a mountain.
Katy’s Mini Molasses Pies: https://www.acoalcrackerinthekitchen.com/2021/01/16/shoofletts-mini-shoofly-pies/What’s your favorite picnic memory? Do tell so we can share in a future episode.
Extras:
A partial history of the picnic
The English word “picnic” comes from the French term “pique-nique”, which was used from the mid-1600s on to describe epicures who brought their own wine when dining out. A BYOB foodie situation, if you will. This evolved into a potluck of sorts, in which people would bring their own wine and their own food, but it would still be an indoor thing for a long time.
Where ‘picnic’ comes from is something of a mystery. Drilled down from the original French “piquenique,” the word was likely invented by joining the common form of the verb “piquer” (meaning “to pick” or “peck”) with “nique,” possibly either a Germanic term meaning “trifle,” or merely a nonsense rhyming syllable to twin with the first part of the word.
Could “to pick” mean “be selective” about “trifles,” or maybe frivolous foods that one wouldn’t eat everyday? Or do we just crave a scoop of beauteous English trifle with berries and custard?

What’s your favorite food to bring on a picnic? Comment below for the chance to be included in a future episode! And don’t forget to listen to the podcast. It’s more fun with YOU!
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