13. Fun with food
I’ve always loved whipped cream and strawberries. In fact, when I was little, I loved them so much that I used to fantasise about filling up a room with whipped cream and strawberries and swimming around in it.
The whipped cream would be soft but thick enough to support my body and I’d imagine myself swimming around with my mouth open just sucking in strawberries and cream for the rest of my life.
It seemed perfect—well, as long as I didn’t worry too much about how and where I’d go to the toilet, or whether the cream would go off after a while but hey, isn’t not having to worry about practical considerations the whole point of a fantasy?
I used a version of this food fantasy in the story ‘Why I love Choco-pops in fifty words or less’ (Just Shocking!), except in this case Andy is imagining swimming around in a room full of Choco-pops and milk.
I know that a life spent swimming around in a room full of whipped cream and strawberries or Choco-pops and milk is maybe not everybody’s idea of a good time, but one thing is for sure: fantasising about food is fun.
The Treehouse books are full of ‘food fantasies’. For example, Andy and Terry have a marshmallow machine that follows them around and shoots marshmallows into their mouths whenever they are hungry. They also have a banana-enlarging machine and a machine that vaporises vegetables so they are in no danger of ever having to eat things like brussel sprouts.
When Andy and Terry make popcorn they leave the lid off and run around catching the freshly popped popcorn in their mouths. And when they need to quench their thirst, they do so in their lemonade fountain.
Andy and Terry eating popcorn and drinking lemonade treehouse-style.
They also have an ice-cream parlour with 78 flavours of ice-cream to choose from, including Goldfish Surprise, Flying Monkey and Deep-fried Doughnut.
Of course, not all food fantasies are necessarily ‘fun’. Sometimes they are deadly serious, such as when the bubbles Terry blows after drinking lemonade and chewing bubblegum are so large and so filled with burps that he becomes trapped in one and floats away from the treehouse.
Terry floating away from the treehouse in a burp-filled bubblegum bubble (The 13-Storey Treehouse).
Food can be used for things other than eating, of course: giant bananas are great for clearing your treehouse of unwanted monkeys.
The 13-Storey Treehouse.
And, as Danny and Andy discover in the story ‘Food fight’ in Just Stupid!, almost any item of food can be used as a weapon.
Just Stupid!
TRY THIS
Fantasy food machine
Design your own fantastical food machine. Draw a picture of it. Describe what it does, its features and any possible dangers associated with it. Feel free to use one of the ideas below.
A machine that:
• Can turn any type of food into chocolate
• Can make food come alive so you can play with it
• Can turn dirt into food
• Can make lollies invisible (so they are easier to hide)
• Can turn any type of food into a large cake (e.g. marshmallow cake, jellybean cake, bubblegum cake)
Marshmallow machine
… OR THIS
Food fight
Make a list of the ten best foods to use in a food fight. Use labelled diagrams to show how to use each food to attack others or to protect yourself against attack.
… OR THIS
Design a restaurant
Here’s your chance to create the ultimate dining experience, either for yourself or for a specific type of customer. You can do it either as a description of what a typical visit to the restaurant might be like or you might find it easier to do it in the form of a labelled diagram, or a combination of both of these. Whichever way you choose, you will need to think about:
• The name of your restaurant
• The furnishings—tables, chairs, pictures, etc.
• The menu
• Is entertainment provided?
Themes for your restaurant might be:
• Sport
• Animals
• Exotic and unusual foods
• Completely imaginary foods
• Everything liquid
• Dangerous foods
Your restaurant could be for humans or it could be for:
• Dogs, cats, cows, etc.
• Aliens
• Zombies
• Vampires
• Witches
