There's an initial scene in Thomas Berger's Neighbors ( never saw the movie but the book was bizarre ), where the new neighbors trick the protagonist out of some money to buy dinner. But instead of ordering take out they buy some cheap spaghetti noodles, sauce, cook it and dump it in a bucket to make it look like take out. The neighbors are so hungry they just grab forks and eat it from the bucket without dishing it out. I could not get past this scene without stopping to make some 'cheap spaghetti' lol!
I read a memoir/travelogue called something like An Embarrassment of Mangoes or something like that, about a woman and her husband who quit their jobs and go sailing around the Caribbean. She talked a lot about dishes she made with all the fresh fruit and seafood they had. My mouth was constantly watering while reading the book, and to make it even worse, she included recipes, but it wasn't practical for me to make the food while I was reading, and although I made a mental note that I should totally make some of the food in the book, I never did. I should try to dig out the book and cook up some of the food, although some of the ingredients are hard to come by.
I remember a scene in Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel in which he describes the kind of enormous Southern breakfasts his mother would make for his family. Eggs, hash browns, steaks, bacon, sausages, corn bread, biscuits and gravy, and on and on. It goes on for a half page at least, and I can't get through it without yearning for a meal like that, and about six stomachs to fill with it.
The way GRRM writes feasts in the ASOIAF series always makes me hungry. All the food sounds delicious, and the way he describes wine is succulent. It reminds me of the first time I had a red and a white wine - I thought it would be rich and fruity and like juice, and it was bitter and terrible and I was disappointed.
I LOVED the food scenes in Joy Luck Club. So tantalizing, those Chinese banquets. My mouth always waters. I love food scenes in novels, except that they make me eat!
Every scene in every Harry Potter book where they're having a feast in the Great Hall.. every Start of Term feast, Halloween meal of Christmas dinner has me running to the kitchen to get something to munch on.
