While food is a matter of survival in The Long Walk and a prominent part of relationship building in ‘Salem’s Lot, if you had asked me before this Castle Rock Kitchen-focused reread, I wouldn’t have recalled food being particularly important in Cujo, aside from the Sharp Cereal Red Razberry Zingers fiasco and the snack Donna packs before she and Tad head out to Joe Cambers’ garage. But in returning to this old favorite with a particular eye out for food, it turns out that breakfast is frequently on the Trentons’ minds. 

Sure, there’s the potential career-killing disaster of the Red Razberry Zingers, but Vic also tries (unsuccessfully) to think up an ad campaign angle for eggs while he eats a blueberry muffin, while on her last morning trapped in the car with Tad, Donna finds herself dreaming of the breakfast she’d love to have if she ever gets out of her sweltering Pinto. The breakfast table is also the site of complicated family dynamics, with the food and conversation there often setting the tone for both the Trentons and the Cambers. Vic and Donna talk about Tad’s fears of the monster in his closet while Donna makes Vic breakfast before he heads to work (8-9) and later, when everything seems on the verge of falling apart as Vic gets ready to set out on his business trip to try to save the Sharp account, Donna gets up early to make Vic waffles as they consider the future of their marriage and family (101-103). Tad joins them, telling Vic that “I made myself wake up early so I could say good-bye to you, Daddy” (103). Noticing the minutiae of his loved one’s patterns and idiosyncrasies, Vic notes how they each have different waffle-topping approaches: his with oleo and strawberry preserves, Donna with just a calorie-conscious “dash” of syrup (102), and Tad’s syrup forming “a small ocean” (104). These are the intimate rhythms of the Trenton family’s lives, familiar and comforting in the midst of the personal and professional chaos.  

Castle Rock Kitchen features two Cujo-inspired recipes, both for breakfast dishes: “Dog-Days French Toast Casserole” and “Blueberry-Lemon Curd Muffins.” The french toast casserole is drawn from the fantasy breakfast Donna imagines on that final morning. As Donna dreams of being rescued, “The real thing was the thought of food … Breakfasts, for instance, take breakfasts: two eggs fried in butter, over easy if you don’t mind, waiter. French toast. Big glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice so cold that moisture beaded the glass. Canadian bacon. Home fries. Bran flakes in cream with a sprinkle of blueberries on top” (253). Carle-Sanders’ take on french toast in Castle Rock Kitchen is layered with flavor, including bread, cranberries, orange zest, and maple syrup, and the smooth density of the casserole is topped with a strudel that includes oats, walnuts, brown sugar, and cinnamon, for a sweet and crunchy finish. This definitely isn’t your everyday french toast, with the addition of the cranberries and strudel topping elevating this familiar dish. There’s also something quite liberating in the make-ahead nature of this recipe, which is mostly put together the night before, which frees the cook to “enjoy at the table with the family, instead of trapped at the stove” (Carle-Sanders 17). Given that both Donna Trenton and Charity Camber occasionally chafe against their restrictive roles as wives and mothers—albeit in very different ways—a recipe that would give them the opportunity to make breakfast while also being able to spend leisurely time with their families seems particularly fitting. 

The second recipe, for “Blueberry Lemon-Curd Muffins” riffs on Vic grabbing a coffee and a muffin as he ponders the egg campaign. Vic doesn’t like eggs but Tad does, and Vic makes a mental note to run this challenge by Tad later. (The Tadder’s astute marketing recommendation: “I’d tell em eggs taste good” [104]). While Vic’s blueberry muffin seems pretty unremarkable, the muffins in Castle Rock Kitchen are bursting with fresh blueberries, filled with a (surprisingly easy!) microwave lemon curd, and topped with a light sugary crust. They’re dense and hearty, packed with fresh, fruity flavors. 

Whether the foods are everyday—the Trenton family’s waffles, Vic’s muffin—or an unattainable fantasy, they mark the rhythms of these families’ lives and routines. The Trentons’ breakfast table is the site of tension and stress, but also of love, nurturing, and shared laughter. The significance of food, as well as the symbolic meaning ascribed to it and the emotions associated with it, are a complementary counterpoint in Vic’s work on the Sharp Company account, from the whimsy of the Cookie Sharpshooter and the domestic comfort of the “George and Gracie” cake ads to the now woefully compromised Sharp Cereal Professor and his reassurance that there’s “nothing wrong here” (27). 

But there’s plenty wrong and the breakfasts Donna and Vic shared with Tad are destined to become dreams of a different sort, brief and fleeting moments of happiness and togetherness around the table before all was lost, remembered now with both love and heartache.

[Page numbers are from the Signet paperback edition of Cujo]