What better way to settle into a writing ritual than with a snack inspired by a great book? Here are ten snacks that can add some mood and flavor to your writing session.

1. Cowboy coffee

Annie Proulx’s unflinching portrayal of the hard ranching life in Wyoming in Bad Dirt is a bracing way to start your writing ritual. Set the mood with cowboy coffee, made by heating up coarse coffee grounds and water, preferably over a campfire. Let the grounds settle and pour it out. Make it thick enough to chew and serve it black.

2. Hot Chocolate

If coffee isn’t your thing, hot chocolate, a central dish and theme in Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate might be the ticket. In this novel, overflowing with culture and magic, food is a way of expressing emotion, from anger to lust. Perfect inspiration.

3. Hobbit Cake

The one thing I will never forgive the dwarves from The Hobbit for is eating Bilbo’s cake. Not just any cake, but a cake he spent all afternoon cooking, a cake he was very much looking forward too. The dwaves ate the whole thing, and not a single slice was left for Bilbo. So, for his sake, try a piece of cake.

4. plums from the icebox

William Carlos Williams’s beautiful poem about eating plums from the icebox has always been one of my favorites. Capture that fleeting, poignant moment and savor a cold plum. If there are any left, that is.

5. Carrots

I figured I better add at least one thing my mother would approve of, and that’s the favorite food of the indomitable bunnies from Watership Down. When I was little, my parents would always encourage me to eat my vegetables by reminding me that Hazel and Fiver and even Bigwig always ate theirs. (It didn’t really work.)

6. Fried Green Tomatoes

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is about strong women, about friendship and love, about aging and personal growth. But it’s also about food, so much so that the recipes are included in the book. So you can fry up your own green tomatoes, and channel some of that Southern charm.

7. Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans

When I first read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, I was fascinated with this concept of Every Flavor Beans. The beans could be anything, because they were infused with magic, and I would learn the same was true of Hogwarts. So if you want to add a little magic to your writing routine, Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans might be just the thing.

8. Everlasting Gobstoppers

If we’re talking about candy for writers, it’s impossible not to mention Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstoppers. One of these will last you a lifetime, perfect for those of us who take forever to finish a book.

9. Turkish Delight

I had to look up what this was, because I’d never heard of it before I read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. When I did figure out what it was, I couldn’t believe Edmund betrayed his siblings for a gel of starch and sugar usually containing chopped nuts or dates. Try it at your own risk, as I hear evil queens use it as bait.

10. Dandelion Wine

As the writing day winds down, relax with some dandelion wine, made with citrus and dandelion petals, a beautiful metaphor for the joys of summer, as seen through the eyes of a twelve year old boy in Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. It tastes like the poignant, fleeting happiness of youth, and the insular beauty of a small town. (I assume.)