All things considered, if you’re going to be trapped somewhere during a potentially apocalyptic event, a grocery store doesn’t seem half bad: it may not have all the comforts of home, but it would be well-stocked with food—including a wide selection of non-perishable, long shelf-life items—and other supplies. As I walked through Food City in Bridgton, I couldn’t help mentally overlaying the Federal Foods of King’s The Mist (1980; collected in 1985’s Skeleton Crew) atop the everyday aisles, considering how I could best use the available resources and which areas of the store were the most (and least) defensible against the Lovecraftian horrors that lurk in the mist. Ultimately, Food City was just a regular grocery store, though that doesn’t make the horror of The Mist any less powerful: after all, it’s when the everyday and the terrifying intersect that things have truly gone awry. 

When David Drayton, his son Billy, and an assortment of their local neighbors and summer people find themselves trapped in Federal Foods as the mist rolls in, the danger comes from multiple sides. First and foremost, there are the creatures in the mist, including the tentacled terror that snatches Norm the bag boy from the store room, pterodactyl-esque monstrosities, and the spider-like creatures that have claimed the pharmacy next door, as well as others that remain unseen, amorphous shadows or behemoths too large to comprehend. But the people trapped in Federal Foods quickly turn on one another as well, pointing accusing fingers and trying to lay the blame somewhere, with their fear eventually sparking violence, which culminates in Mrs. Carmody’s demand for a human sacrifice. Finally, for many of these people, the dangers within their own heads are enough to break them: machismo that drives them to actions they can’t live with, stubbornness that sends them out into the mist to prove a point and ends in death, fear that threatens to paralyze them and make escape impossible. 

But whatever the next moment holds, they are at least well fed. The first night in Federal Foods, Mr. McVey, the butcher, cooks chicken on one of the store’s gas grills, served up with the store’s deli potato salad, feeding the people and using up some of the stock before it has a chance to go bad. Life or death situations and the coming of the darkness might not be great for the appetite though, as David notes that “The chicken smelled good, but not many people wanted to eat” (102). 

In Castle Rock Kitchen, Carle-Sanders includes a recipe for “Deli Potato Salad” inspired by The Mist. Carle-Sanders’ potato salad recipe uses red potatoes as a base, with lots of delicious, crunchy vegetables, and a sauce that’s a light, zingy blend of mustard, mayonnaise, and pickles. The potato salad has shredded carrots in it and when I shredded mine, I did so a bit too finely, which resulted in slightly mushy carrot strings that got lost in the larger mix, but that was a mistake on my part and more substantial shredded carrots would add a nice pop of crunch, color, and flavor to the potato salad. 

When I think about The Mist and food, though, Mr. McVey’s chicken and cold-case potato salad aren’t the first examples that come to mind. As the mist comes rolling in and shoppers crowd to the front windows to get a good look—with some ill-fated folks heading out into the mist itself, never to return—one of the Federal Foods managers, Bud Brown, becomes nearly hysterical, shouting at shoppers who he fears are walking away with food for which they haven’t paid. Bud is just as frightened as everyone else and this is a desperate attempt to restore order, to prove to himself and others that things haven’t gone that bad, haven’t crossed that irrevocable point of no return where confusion will slide into chaos. In the customers’ mad dash to see what they can see, Bud “grabbed a box of mushrooms away from a lady who was crowding past him to look out the window … and the lady screamed, ‘Give me back my mushies!’ This bizarre term of affection caused two men standing nearby to break into crazy laughter—and there was something of the old English Bedlam about all of it, now” (57). 

With these “mushies” in mind, I decided to try my hand at developing a Mist-inspired recipe of my own: “‘Give Me My Mushies’ Toast with Onion and Cheese.” I sliced up a 12-oz box of baby bella mushrooms and julienned a medium yellow onion, then cooked these down in a combination of butter and olive oil. Once the vegetables were cooked, I added a bit of beef broth, seasoned the mix with coarse salt and pepper, and let it all simmer until the broth had reduced down to create a thick sauce. Finally, I sliced some fresh bread, topped each slice with the mushroom and onion mixture, covered each with a slice of baby Swiss cheese, and popped them under the broiler until they were bubbly and melty. 

For a first attempt, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. The mushroom and onion mixture was hearty and flavorful, though in future attempts, I’ll play around with the spice palette a bit more. The bread was a bit softer than ideal and the next time around, I’ll either buy a crunchier bread to start with or toast the bread before topping it, to achieve that textual contrast and satisfying bite. 

As I cooked, I pondered what might have sent this woman out for mushies when everything looked so uncertain in the aftermath of the storm. It’s likely she had other groceries she had picked up, maybe in a cart she abandoned to go get her peek at the window, but with the power out all around the lake, I wouldn’t think mushrooms would be particularly high on anyone’s post-storm shopping list. Bread and sandwich fixings seem a more accessible choice (and these are picked over or gone completely by the time David and Billy get to Food City). Foods that don’t need much preparation or cooking, that can be eaten as is, feel like they’d be more in demand as people start cleaning up after the previous night’s storm. Not mushies. As I played around with my recipe, though, I started to think about how I could make these toasts without power, and with a few adjustments, they could easily be made on a grill or even a grate over a campfire without too much trouble. Of course, that’s only a really good option when it’s just regular storm clean up, where the biggest challenges include chopping downed branches and clearing debris, waiting for the power company truck to make its rounds, not so much when a mist full of monsters rolls in.

[Page numbers are from the 1986 Signet paperback edition of Skeleton Crew]