I am so excited to share my new project with you. My husband Rhett came up with a plan for this year. It's his project, really, but it will definitely take the both of us to follow through with it and has become our project. So this is what we do: Twice a month (possibly more) we will watch a Disney animated film, find all foods that have been featured and then make them. Thus making for ourselves a Disney cookbook. I have the privilege to share our journey with you in the form of these articles. When we've set up our official blog, I'll let you know. For now, you get to see my side of the project. We will be watching the Disney movies in chronological order. Thereby starting with Snow White, followed by Pinocchio, etc. Please note: When we get to movies like Ratatouille, we will be splitting our posts into parts as to be able to create each featured dish.

This week was our first feature film cook. In Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, she comes to their cottage, and offers to make them dinner if they let her stay. The Dwarves wisely agree to this, and off Snow goes to make them soup. This is a very general thing to make, so where do we start? Well, later in the movie as the dwarves settle in to sleep downstairs, Grumpy sleeps in the kettle. While fishing out a wooden spoon from underneath himself, he says, "Hah! Women! A fine kettle of fish." Now the saying "a fine kettle of fish" actually is an idiom meaning that it's an awkward situation. We took it as a double entendre and made a fine kettle of fish stew. Not just any fish stew, we looked into dwarfish folklore, and common stew recipes from Germany. Being that Snow White originally takes place in Germany. On top of which, there was a sack of potatoes seen multiple times in the cottage. So we know potatoes were probably used. There were also rolls featured on the table when dinner was served.

Stew wasn't the only food featured in the film. I'm not talking about how to poison an apple, so don't get your hopes up. Snow White finds out that the dwarves love gooseberry pie. The next day while the dwarves are at work, Snow makes a gooseberry pie for Grumpy. This was actually difficult. Gooseberries are nowhere to be found in Chicago. We finally found a can of them for about $5 at a Whole Foods market downtown. We did cheat a little with the pie, and bought a frozen crust, then a box crust mix to make the top crust. Am I saying "crust" too much? Either way, gooseberry pie is delicious! If you ever see gooseberries in the store, get them and make a pie! You won't regret it.

There is not enough room in this article to actually give you the recipe and how-to of the soup and the pie, however I will provide the DVO links. All food images used in this article were taken by either Rhett or myself. Each step required a picture, and all the pictures will be posted on our Disney Cook blog.

The soup ended up just a little bit too bitter between the fennel bulb and the low-quality beer we used (hey, we're on a tight budget right now). The recipe I linked to has been corrected, if you dare try it. It's quite intensive, and we did try to use authentic foods. We used perch, because that's a common fish dish in Germany, we also bought (cheap) German-brewed beer.

Fish Soup Recipe

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Gooseberry Pie Recipe

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I hope you continue to enjoy the Disney food journey with me! Although we are just at the beginning, I can already tell it will be a grand adventure.