“You can’t have adventures on an empty stomach,” reasoned Dick.

Enid Blyton is the queen of fictional food. I set out to write a post about the four fictional feasts I would love to eat, but quickly realised that everything that I was writing about was from Enid. Why does she love food so much? How does she make it sound so magical? I just don’t know. But here are the things that stick in my mind as the foods I’d share with my small, plucky crime fighting gang.

1. Pop Biscuits

From The Faraway Tree series. They’re biscuits that you bite into, and they POP and your mouth fills with honey. They definitely can’t be properly recreated because they are at least a small percentage magic, but they sound so wonderful. I don’t really like honey that much, but I don’t care. I want these.

2. Potatoes buttered in their jackets

From pretty much every Enid Blyton book. I love jacket potatoes anyway, but somehow this description makes this (wonderful) food sound even more excellent. It would always follow at the end of a list… ‘and potatoes buttered in their jackets’ as though it were the perfect completion of a meal. Which, of course, it is. I’m delighted that this is something I can actually achieve.

3. The Food Machine

Again from The Faraway Tree series, I can’t remember which book. But there’s a machine that you ask for any food you like, and I mean ANY FOOD. Cheeky Dick (now Rick in the new PC version) asks for something crazy and terrible – and gets it. But I can remember dreaming about this as a child, just trying to decide what on earth I would choose.

4. Bread and butter

I love butter too – but HOW DOES BLYTON MAKE THIS SOUND SO GOOD! As a child I’m suddenly salivating for this food that I turn my nose up at when Mum adds it to my dinner plate to bulk up the meal. And the fresh cheese too, of course.

Perhaps it’s the children’s overwhelming gratitude for everything they eat, which is very different to my rather picky toddler at the moment. But Enid, thanks for loving food.