Eat Like Walt: Extra Helpings - Holiday Edition

Editor's note: The following is the first installment of a series from author Marcy Carriker Smothers titled Eat Like Walt: Extra Helpings. Enjoy!

When Eat Like Walt: The Wonderful World of Disney Food debuted, it confused some people. It wasn’t a “cookbook”; it was never meant to be. Rather, it’s a history book and a time capsule of Walt’s life, highlighted by authentic recipes of his era. Moreover, it was a way to look at the ordinary—yet extraordinary—Walt Disney through the lens of food.

After five installments supporting my first book with National Geographic, 100 Disney Adventures of a Lifetime, I’m excited to be partnering with Laughing Place again to bring you Eat Like Walt: Extra Helpings. My mentor once told me: “A book is never finished, it just goes to print.” In my case, that’s accurate. I have continued researching and writing ever since Eat Like Walt was published in 2017. There’s a lot more to share, er, serve.

With the holiday season in full swing, let’s take a look at two of Walt’s favorite dishes, including recipes you can make at home, and the stories behind them.

“To tell the truth, more things of importance happened to me in

Marceline than have happened since—or are likely to in the future.” – Walt Disney

The impact of Walt’s childhood in Marceline, Missouri, cannot be overstated. His childhood hometown served as the synthesis point, which instilled his lifelong love of trains, affection for animals, and provided a rich field of inspiration to draw upon for the many later cartoon shorts and animated and live-action features he would produce, and of course, for the creation of Disneyland. He would return to Marceline again and again as an adult. In the late 1950s, following the success of Disneyland, Walt revisited an idea to purchase the old Disney family farm, a goal he previously expressed in a 1945 letter written to the Secretary of the State Historical Society of Missouri: “I have one unfulfilled ambition, which is to buy the farm my father once owned in Marceline and when the time presents itself, I hope to do this.” His thought was to create a turn-of-the-century living history park set in America’s heartland. “There will come a time when a child will not know what an acre of land is,” Walt explained. “There will come a time when a child will not know what happens when you put a seed in the ground.” Known to locals as the “Marceline Project,” the blue-sky plans for this experience were some of the last projects he considered during his life.

Walt had many fond memories of his upbringing on the bucolic farm. Biographer Bob Thomas recounted one such series of these recollections from Walt: “It was a beautiful farm, with a wide front lawn. Big weeping willow trees. It had two orchards, one called the old, one called the new. One variety was called Wolf River apples, and they were so big that people came from miles around to see them.” As a young boy, Walt would help his family peddle those apples door-to-door, and occasionally enjoy the apple pie his mother made with the unsold fruit. Now you can enjoy the same pie, albeit likely without the prized Marceline apples.

In 1950, Walt and his family moved to their Holmby Hills home in Los Angeles. Soon thereafter, their new cook, Thelma Pearl Howard, “blew in.” She stayed with the Disney family thirty more years. Christopher, Walt and Lillian’s first grandchild, struggled to initially pronounce her name and thus she was affectionately dubbed “Fou Fou.” The Disney grandchildren grew up in Fou Fou’s kitchen. “I don’t know how she did it. All of us were sprawled in her kitchen drawing pictures. She was always in a good mood. She loved us and never made us feel as if we were in her way,” remembered Walt’s granddaughter, Jenny. “Thanksgivings with her were the best. She would wrap the turkey in a towel, swaddling it like a baby in a blanket, then walk around the kitchen saying ‘Poor little turkey.’” Then just like Mary Poppins—Walt often referred to Thelma as such—snap, the job became a game! Jenny continued, “We would pluck the quills that were left on the bird, taking turns; this was before pre-cleaned supermarket turkeys, and it was so much fun.”

Always by her side was another of Walt’s granddaughters, Tamara, who described Fou Fou’s kitchen as a sanctuary, “It was all about food, but it was also a clubhouse. That’s where we stayed, that’s where we hung out. There was this huge island in the middle of the kitchen and we were always playing up there.” Despite Walt not being a huge fan of vegetables, the green beans Fou Fou made were very popular with the multigenerational Disney family. Walt’s son-in-law, Ron Miller, enthused, “Oh she made the best string beans. God it was good. She knew that we liked it because at every meal we had it.” As far as we know, Fou Fou never wrote down any of her recipes, but Tamara worked with me to recreate a similar version for Eat Like Walt.

Fou Fou’s Green Beans

Tamara remembered, “Fou Fou would say, ‘Keep that bacon fat right there!’

She used all the grease and wouldn’t dream of throwing any of it away.”

Serves 8

• 4 cups trimmed fresh green beans
• Kosher salt
• 8 strips bacon, chopped
• Mixed dried herbs to taste
• 3 tablespoons Bermuda onion, minced
• Salt and pepper to taste

Drop beans in salted boiling water and cook until crisp tender, about 5 minutes. (The fresher the green beans the faster they will cook.) Using a slotted spoon, transfer immediately to an ice bath. When they are completely cooled, drain in colander and pat dry.

In a large skillet cook bacon over medium heat until soft, about 3 – 4 minutes. Add herbs and cook until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Mix in Bermuda onions and cook until translucent, taking care not to burn the bacon.

Turn off the heat and stir in green beans. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Fou Fou worked for one of the most famous human beings on the planet, lived in a neighborhood surrounded by Hollywood movie stars, and harbored a desire to be “famous” herself. At Disneyland Paris she has been honored with a menu item at Walt’s – an American Restaurant, “Thelma-Style Potatoes.” Tamara thinks this would have thrilled her!

Flora Disney’s Deep Dish Wolf River Apple Pie

Courtesy of the Walt Disney Hometown Museum

According to Ruth Disney’s [Walt’s sister] daughter-in-law, Carol Beecher, this recipe is exactly as written by Flora; I resisted any temptation to modernize it. You can substitute your favorite apple varietal, although depending on size, you may need a few extra.

Cut up into nugget-sized pieces 7-8 Wolf River apples in a 2-quart bowl

• 2 cups of sugar
• 2-3 tablespoons of flour
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg

Mix well and let set while fixing crust.

Pastry Crust:

• 3 cups of flour
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• Cut in about 1 1/8 cup of lard

In a cup mix:

• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 7 tablespoons water

Pour over flour mixture and mix.

Dough may be a little sticky—this is OK. Pinch off a handful of dough and roll out onto a clean flour cloth into a circle large enough to over cover sides and bottom of pie dish. Place into a 9-inch pie dish. Pour apple mixture into dish. Pinch off a small ball of dough and roll out on a clean flour cloth—this only needs to be the size of the opening of pie dish. Cut bird tracks into this piece of dough.

Place this on top of the apples, then pinch ends together—squeezing/pinching dough between forefinger and thumbs. Any juice left from apple mixture in bowl—sprinkle on top of pie—makes it prettier.

Cook for 1 hour at 350 degrees F

As an adult, Walt was known to add a slice cheddar cheese to the top of his apple pie.

Marcy would like to thank The Walt Disney Archives and Kevin M. Kern. Eat Like Walt is available wherever books are sold.