The writing continues and these last couple of weeks have been dedicated to experiencing place and channeling fictional worlds through food. As part of this exploration, my chapter looks at food in literature from a broad perspective before moving on to Maine cookbooks and regional food traditions, literature and pop culture-inspired cookbooks and Theresa Carle-Sanders’ Castle Rock Kitchen (which has been a frequent focus here), and fan-created recipes, including those on Geeks Who Eat and Food in Books.

And no matter which section of the chapter I’m working on, it all keeps coming back to blueberry pie. Writers who have chronicled their own adventures in King’s Maine invariably mention the blueberry pie at Dysart’s Truck Stop in Hermon (which I ordered myself while I was there, making this research and writing moment a real deja vu moment). Neil McRobert, who wrote about his travels in Maine as a prologue to his own cooking experiences with Castle Rock Kitchen, is particularly eloquent in his description of Dysart’s blueberry pie:

I mythologized that blueberry pie. I can’t really recall how tasty it was, but in my mind it’s The Pie that stands for all pies, my Americana fetish on a plate, the final flavor of an uncanny day. Food does that, doesn’t it? It grafts itself to memory with a tenacity that only teenage love songs can rival. Now, each time a restaurant or diner or a meal of any sort is mentioned in a Stephen King story, I’m transported back to that Formica table, with the New England night falling softly outside.

And really, all I can say is “same, McRobert.” Except I was there at lunch instead of dinner. With the prospect of a return trip to Maine looking likely in the not-so-distant future (fingers crossed), that Dysart’s pie is at the top of my list of things I’m most looking forward to having a second time.

And just as I was ready to refocus and leave that blueberry pie in the rearview mirror (at least for now), I was right back to blueberry pie, in my consideration of Carle-Sanders’ recipe for Blueberry Cheesecake Pie, inspired by King’s novella ‘The Body.’ Of all the recipes I’ve looked at for this chapter, this one is the most intriguing, in a lot of ways. After all, the scene from which it draws inspiration features a pie eating content that ends with everyone puking all over each other: first, Lard Ass Hogan’s blueberry pie, and then … everybody’s everything else. It’s a really memorable scene, but it’s really not one that makes you say “you know what sounds DELICIOUS? Blueberry pie.”

This thread led me down a path of considering the ways in which recipes, whether by professional chefs or fans, subvert expectations and reframe the food as it appears in King’s fiction. Another good – and heartbreaking – example of this is Carle-Sanders’ recipe for “Crab Canapes,” inspired by the scene in Pet Sematary (1983) of the gathering at the Creed house following Gage’s funeral, where Ellie walks around the party with a tray of canapes, devastated by her brother’s death and with her parents too lost in their own grief to wonder why Ellie feels the need to take on this responsibility or to stop her. This is a moment where it’s impossible to imagine anyone wanting to immerse themselves in the characters’ subjectivity or that it would be possible to associate this scene with a particular taste, given that grief often robs us of our appetites and robs even the most comforting foods of their taste.

I’m in the home stretch of the food chapter and turning my focus to King adaptations filmed in Maine. With Thinner (1996; based on a 1984 Bachman book) on that list, I guess I’m not quite done with pie just yet.