Dark Tower Aunt Talitha

How to Throw a Dark Tower Cosplay Party

In The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, Roland and his ka-tet encounter Aunt Talitha and the old people who live outside the city of Lud. Citizens of Lud have long since gone crazy, with the Pubes and Grays murdering each other year after year, and everyone worshipping strange, murderous cults.

But Aunt Talitha’s people are normal, nice people who just hide away from all the harriers and raiders. They try to make their home look like ruins, so that no one stops to rob them.

These nice folken give Roland’s ka-tet a great feast. They don’t have a lot of food left, and by the time the ka-tet moves on, the folken may well be in danger of starving.

At any rate, I was thinking: how awesome would it be to have a cosplay party, complete with the food served to the ka-tet? Below, you’ll find some Recipes of Mid World inspired by Aunt Talitha’s (and the others’) culinary expertise. So put on your hat, tighten your rawhide thong, and get ready for a feast!

Dark Tower Boozing

Another woman came out with a tray of glasses. They were mismatched but spotless, twinkling in the sun like fine crystal.

The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, p.173

Into your beautiful, mismatched, crystalline glasses, you’ll be pouring graf — strong apple beer.

River Crossing Homemade Graf Recipe

Ingredients

  • 10 tablespoons of sugar
  • 2 tablespoons of dried yeast
  • 1300 ml apple juice

Procedure

Mix the sugar, yeast, and juice until they all dissolve. Pour the mixture into a glass container. Then, just let it sit (in a cool place with no direct sunlight) and ferment for three days.

While doing research for this article, I came across the following video for making apple beer jailhouse style. Not only do I think the people of River Crossing would have approved of his methods, his accent is almost exactly how I imagined the River Crossing folk sound!

Seriously, listen to this guy. He sounds like he’s straight out of River Crossing:

How to Cheers in Mid World

“Will you drink to the earth, and to the days which have passed upon it?” he asked. His voice was hoarse, trembling with emotion. “Will you drink to the fullness which was, and to friends who have passed on? Will you drink to good company, well met?

Roland Deschain

Should you find yourself standing up in front of everybody with your glass held up but no words coming to mind, there’s a great quote to read!

Of course, if you’d like something simpler, there’s always the classic,”long days and pleasant nights.”

River Crossing: The Main Course

EDDIE THOUGHT THE MEAL he ate that day was the best he had had since the mythic birthday feasts of his childhood, when his mother had made it her business to serve everything he liked—meatloaf and roasted potatoes and corn on the cob and devil’s food cake with vanilla ice cream on the side.

Waste Lands, p.174

The folks at River Crossing prepared a lot of comfort food for the ka-tet. Here are some recipe ideas for your River Crossing cosplay event!

Bill & Till’s Killer Buffaler Meatloaf

As thee knows, the last of the cows at River Crossing died over thirty years ago. So what’s the key to the River Crossing meatloaf? Buffalo meat!

This recipe is actually quite simple! You just smoosh all the ingredients together, put them in a pan, and stick the pan in the oven.

Ingredients

  • Buffalo Meat (ground, 2 pounds)
  • Garlic (3 smooshed cloves)
  • Eggs (2, beaten)
  • Onion (1/4, minced)
  • Bread Crumbs (1/2 cup)
  • Buffalo Cheese (1/2 cup. Parmesan might be easier to find)
  • Worcestershire Sauce (1/2 Cup)
  • Spices: salt, black pepper, thyme, oregano, basil, sage (to taste)

Procedure

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees (farenheit). Mix everything in a big bowl. Use your hands. Get dirty! People once mixed ground meat with special kitchen supplies, but the world has moved on since then.

Next, you’re going to spray a pan to make it non-stick, then squish your meat flat into the pan. Then just bake it for about an 75 to 90 mins. That’s basically it!

You can put some sauce on top too if you want.

Mercy’s Roast Terpaiders n’ Corn on the Cob

I guess roasting potatoes is probably a pretty straightforward procedure, but I found this simple Youtube guide that I really liked. Unlike the apple hooch video, the narrator’s voice does not sound anything like River Crossing folken. Fortunately, however, his potatoes look damn delicious.

Similarly, corn on the cob is far from rocket science. Yet, if you’re anything like me, then you probably take it for granted when something’s easy. Why look it up when all you have to do is cook the darn vegetable and eat it?

Well, apparently there’s enough nuance in cooking corn on the cob that people had to make videos about it (spoiler alert: all that really happens is she boils them in a pot!)

Aunt Talitha’s Devil Food Cake

Ingredients

  • Butter (half cup)
  • Bitter chocolate (3 ounces)
  • Sugar (2 cups)
  • Eggs (2)
  • Flour (2 1/4 cups)
  • Baking soda (1.5 teaspoons)
  • Salt (quarter teaspoon)
  • Milk (quarter cup)
  • Vinegar (1 teaspoon)
  • Water (a cup)

Procedure

First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees (f). Put grease and flour all over a pan (9 by 13 inches works best). If you have a giant black cookstove that takes up an entire corner of the room, that’s best. If not, a normal kitchen oven will have to do.

“The black cookstove took up one whole corner. It was immaculate, and the wood stacked in the brick alcove next to it looked both well-chosen and well-seasoned.”

The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, p.173

Next, you’re gonna melt the chocolate and butter together in one container and set it aside. Separately, cream the sugar and eggs. At last, mix all 4 ingredients together. At this stage, it’s important to really beat the shit out of your mixture or else you could end up with weird scrambled eggs. Once you’ve got a homogenous mixture, mix the water in, too.

Next, just throw everything else in together. Keep mixing. Remember the face of your father.

Bake Aunt Talitha’s Devil Food Cake for a half hour.

As far as the toppings go, the River Crossing folken topped their Devil’s Food Cake with buffalo cream and blueberries.

“Only buffaler cream,” Aunt Talitha said …The cake turned out to be loaded with blueberries. Eddie thought it beat by a country mile any cake he’d ever had.

The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, p. 174

By the way, I’m choosing to interpret that quote to mean that the blueberries are toppings (rather than being baked into the fabric of the cake) because I think it’d be easier to prepare this way.

As far as the “buffaler cream” is concerned, I’d be surprised if anyone reading this has access to fresh buffalo milk, so I’ll just go ahead and suggest some good old fashioned basic supermarket bought whipped cream. I did, however, find this interesting video from Kolkata, India, which shows how to skim cream from buffalo milk, were you so inclined.

This video says true and we say thankya big-big.

After-Dinner Beverages: Dark Tower Coffee


Eddie lifted the cup to his mouth and sipped experimentally. He wouldn’t have gone so far as to call it roadmud, but it wasn’t exactly Blue Mountain Blend, either.
Susannah tasted hers and looked amazed. “Why, this is chicory!”
Talitha glanced at her. “I know it not. Dockey is all I know, and dockey-coffee’s all we’ve had since I had the woman’s curse—and that curse was lifted from me long, long ago.”

The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands p.175
Dockey: Dark Tower Coffee (photo from Pexels)

What kind of coffee did they drink in The Dark Tower? Well, according to Susannah, the River Crossing folken drank chicory coffee, although Aunt Talitha had never heard the name. Presumably, the world had moved on since anyone had last called chicory chicory.

Chicory is a flower that’s found all over our keystone world. But it’s the root that concerns us here, because it is from the root that we get our chicory coffee, or Aunt Talitha’s “Dockey.”

Fun fact: people use chicory for health reasons. It is purported to help with bloating and constipation, and even liver and heart health, although WebMD doesn’t seem to keen about it. The site does mention that chicory is good for digestion, though.

That could be why the River Crossing folk offer chicory coffee to the ka-tet after the meal. I hope it makes a grand addition to your own dinner!

Here’s a little video about chicory coffee. The host is actually terrifying. He looks like Dracula or some weird evil horticulture experimenter or something. Is that just me? Anyway, if you can get past his looks, there’s actually a lot of interesting information about chicory.

How to Make Chicory Coffee at Home

First, let me just say that the following video is making things way too complicated in my opinion. If you ask me, you really just need to get your hands on some chicory roots, wash them off, roast them, and steep them.

Problem is that it might not taste so good.

Final Thoughts

And that’s it!

Thank you very much for reading this article to its completion.

And if you do throw a party, be sure to send us some pictures. I’d love to see what you come up with! You can contact me on my Facebook page or via the contact form (reply there will take longer due to high amounts of spam).

Be sure to bookmark Dailysack.com, click around the site, and come back to visit every now and then.

Don’t be a stranger!

Dark Tower Aunt Talitha






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