Hunting for recipes in ‘The Hunger Games’ trilogy

Writing a cookbook based on Suzanne Collins’ “Hunger Games” trilogy while living in Los Angeles proved challenging for author Emily Ansara Baines.

Exactly where might one find beaver fillets? Or squirrel meat? Or groosling?

Google “exotic meats” and a world of wild game is more easily procured than by snare or bow and arrow, as Katniss Everdeen must do as she forages for her family before she becomes a participant in the “Survivor”-style (but to the literal death) “Hunger Games” of the young-adult series.

Emily Ansara Baines

Still, Baines’s hunt for ingredients for the recipes in “The Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook” was not without its pitfalls.

One order for squirrel meat netted Baines a cardboard box with a dead squirrel in it.

“I’d rather my meat come to me already skinned,” said Baines in a telephone interview from Los Angeles, where she is a substitute teacher for middle and high school.

“The Hunger Games” is this year’s One Book, One Community title for the Sarasota County Libraries. Baines will participate in a discussion via Skype Tuesday evening.

The cookbook came about when Baines was working as a chef for a post-production film company and had to concoct something new every day. As a huge fan of the “Hunger Games” books, Baines had the idea to use it as inspiration for some recipe development.

She pitched the idea to Adams Media.

“After I realized I had signed the contract, I went through each of the books with a highlighter and highlighted every mention of food,” she said. “Then I started experimenting with various recipes, like seaweed bread, not something we find very commonly.”

Although the book is “unofficial,” Baines is not at odds with Collins or any other aspect of the book or movie treatment, she said.

“It’s an homage to her, an appreciation,” said Baines. “It shows that I’m a huge fan. I’m not trying to rip her off.”

Recipes in the cookbook range from the difficult foraging Katniss must do to feed her family in her starving District 12 to the decadent recipes residents of the Capitol enjoy. When Katniss and Peeta are being groomed as their District Tributes before the Games begin, they stuff themselves on rich delicacies; Katniss’s favorite is lamb stew with dried plums.

“The Capitol dishes are way more fun to cook,” said Baines.

But she also enjoyed developing recipes for the nuts, fruits and grains that are the staple foods of the Districts.

“I’m a huge fan of carbs,” she said.

One recipe in the book is simply a favorite recipe of Baines’s.

“I love banana bread and so I snuck a recipe into the book,” she said. “I’ve been told countless times there’s no bananas anywhere in the book.”

Emily Ansara Baines