This goes beyond a mere 'dinner and a movie'. This is about getting so immersed in a TV show/series that food becomes a part of it.
Watching 'A Year in Provence' became a weekly ritual. The day it came on, I would hie myself off to the local gourmet grocery. I'd buy bread, of course, a good Luberon wine, dry sausage, runny brie and whatever other concoctions seemed French enough.
I never went so far as to buy truffles (nary a truffle-slicer to be seen in central Florida in those days), but on Saturday or Sunday night, I would clean off the coffee table, put a colorful cloth over it, and lay out the feast.
The same thing happened when watching 'The Jewel in the Crown', about the British Empire's loss of India/India gaining its independence. There were very few Indian restaurants in Orlando in those days, but I had a Madhur Jaffrey cookbook and a good Indo-Pak grocery about three miles away. Sundays found me cooking frantically, with an exotic spread ready to be consumed by the time Masterpiece Theater came on.
The same goes with books. From time to time, I'll want to re-read Rumer Godden's wonderful autobiography (A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep), but I just don't have the time to cook. She was born and raised in India and her books were full of luscious descriptions of food.
Reading Frances Mayes's books on Tuscany didn't affect me quite so badly, mostly because I was so burningly jealous of her.
I had a brain storm at one point that there should be some kind of package to accompany certain books or movies - a picnic basket with the medicine bottle of sherry for the Midsummer Rites in 'I Capture the Castle', a little chest of herbs and spices to open when Luc is showing off the kit he made about wine tasting when he was a child in 'French Kiss'. Then the world turns, I wake up, and go back about my business.
I would invite you to my house to watch 'Babette's Feast' and make Christmas dinner, but I hate reruns.
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