every food in: The Secret of Mirror Bay by Carolyn Keene
The Secret of Mirror Bay by Carolyn Keene
Originally published 1972
This is a weird, unusually mean book. And considering the other entries in the Nancy series so far, I don’t say that lightly.
Nancy, Bess, and George travel to visit Nancy’s aunt Eloise to spend some time in the country at her lake house, and solve the mystery of vacation scammers and also a missing Russian children’s carriage? I don’t even know any more, you guys.
As usual, Nancy has a twin that is impersonating her for criminal reasons, and also as usual for later books in the series, there’s some kind of financial fraud. (It occurs to one that Nancy has a lot of doubles, after 20 books or so. She must be extremely unremarkable looking. Either that, or there were a lot of redheads in the 1960s/70s.) Also, they meet a college student working at a summer camp who’s studying luminescent fungi. And George gets bit by a poisonous centipede, and a local saves her from imminent death.
Oh, and there’s like, a glowing wizard. Because it’s the 1970s, and that makes sense. I think.
There’s a decent amount of food, but it’s mostly accompanied by George being shockingly cruel to Bess. You know it’s pretty bad when even the other characters in the book are described as “uncomfortably changing the topic.” Eeeeesh.
I do absolutely love that they eat pickled walnuts and nasturtium buds - that addition is a standout in a sea of unremarkable sandwiches and ring salads that are so typical for other later Nancy Drew books. It makes me wonder if the author personally experienced them, since that’s something that would be home canned.
It’s not the absolute weirdest Nancy book, but it feels a little like a fever dream at times. Let’s review the food!
Chapter 2: News of a Sorcerer
Refrigerator full of cold coca-cola
Fruit and cottage cheese salad
Bags of food with jars of jam and jelly - “peach preserves and pineapple-”
Chapter 4: The Green Apparition
Baked chicken
Chocolate roll with pickled walnuts (pickled “green walnuts, barberries, parsley, even nasturtium buds”)
Chapter 5: A Rescue
Toast and tea
Chapter 6: The Cardiff Giant
Old-fashioned candy
Chapter 7: Scuba Search
Cheese souffle served with tiny ham sandwiches, corn on the cob, and tomato salad
Chapter 8: Bess’s Fright
“Wild strawberry mousse heaped in the center of a ring of fluffy sponge cake”
Coffee and bacon, scrambled eggs and toast
Chapter 10: Footprint Lesson
Coffee
Chapter 15: Burglars!
Cream of tomato soup, ham-and-cheese sandwiches, and watermelon
Bonus Bess joke: “We’re having snail soup and broiled grasshoppers. Do you like them?”
