Dietary Needs at Hogwarts.

[Sister Mary Lunatic]

No: HPFGUIDX 12625

There is excessive attention paid to food descriptions in the Harry Potter
books.  I've always figured it was because, at the time JKR was beginning to
plot and write the HP books, she was a "welfare mom" and probably struggling
to feed herself and her daughter.  When you're hungry, you think obsessively
about food, you SEE food everywhere... in shop windows, in print, on
television... When I'm "dieting" and go to bed a bit hungry, I have what I
call "grocery store dreams", in which I push my cart up and down the aisles
of the local grocery, filling it to the brim with cookies, snacks, candy,
and other munchies.  Fortunately, I always wake up before I have to pay for
it all...

Speaking of food at Hogwarts, in PS/SS Chapter 10 (Halloween), at the
evening's dinner (before the troll was discovered) it says "The feast
appeared suddenly on the golden plates, as it had at the start-of-term
banquet."  Which implies that the food does not appear suddenly the rest of
the time.  I wonder if the day-to-day meals have the food arriving in more
traditional ways, like a regular school cafeteria where you take your tray
and pile up the food from a special table or counter, then go sit down.
Before I noticed this sentence, I had assumed that it appeared magically at
each table 3 times a day, and the kids helped themselves while seated.

SML