And.... I haven't read either. So, now I know that I don't know that but need to know that.

Haven't read Bread and Jam but Farmer Boy was over the top with the food. It's been a lot of years since I read it to the kids and the food is all I remember of it.

100% agree about Farmer Boy. When I was teaching K-1-2 we read the series, and at the end of the year, the kids wanted to make a "Farmer Boy breakfast." So we did and it was awesome. The Bird's Nest Pudding was memorable. LAter I read a history of Laura Ingalls Wilder that talks about how she made so much of the food Almanzo had because her own childhood was so deprived, it was like the stuff of fantasy for her.

But for #2, I kinda want to go with Hemingway's Nick Adams stories. There's one sequence where he catches a trout and cooks it in cornmeal and bacon grease where by the end I was salivating.