Today in 1987: Margaret Atwood launches a cookbook?

Wash this lunchtime link down with a bottle of MaddAddamites NooBroo, why don't you?

On this day in 1987, Margaret Atwood launched the CanLit Foodbook in Toronto, a cook book and meditation on eating in literature that compiles recipes, prose and poetry.

"Canadian literature is rolling in food, a lot of it fish," she quipped to CBC News at the time, and the proof is in the pudding, although now that we think of it, we're not entirely sure the CanLit Foodbook includes a recipe for pudding.

It does, however, feature Margaret Laurence's favourite cauliflower soup, Michael Ondaatje's preferred method for enjoying grapefruit and a recipe for Farley Mowat's creamed mice, perhaps better known as souris a la cremeto readers of Never Cry Wolf. Definitely not for the squeamish who might be best served skipping the essay on cannibalism, too.

A fundraiser for PEN International, Atwood also illustrated the collection, which is second only to Air Fare: The Entertainers Entertain as the '80s CanCon cookery manual we'd most like to find at a thrift shop.

Until the CBC Arts office secures a copy, we'll be contented with the Atwood dishes that are still available online. Bon Appetit, for instance, published the literary icon's recipe for baked lemon custard, which, we expect, pairs beautifully with anything. Even creamed mice.

Find more throwbacks like this one through the CBC Digital Archives.