#12 in the Poetry Potluck Series, celebrating National Poetry Month 2010.
Apple and chocolate-covered espresso bean smiley face by Mary Lee Hahn.
Class, did you bring an apple for the teacher today?
What, your dog ate it?
Have no fear: Mary Lee Hahn is here! It’s way cool to have an apple from the teacher today, especially from this teacher. Every time I read another one of Mary Lee’s blog posts, I wish I could be in her class. She always seems to be cooking up such fun and interesting projects for her students. Mmmmmmm! Do I smell cinnamon?
APPLE CRISP
Sour apples,
thinly sliced.
Butter, sugar,
oats.
From hot oven,
smells entice
and titillate your
nose.
Tart is sweet now,
slightly spiced,
Add heavy cream, hear
“Oh!”s.
#11 in the Poetry Potluck Series, celebrating National Poetry Month 2010
Sometimes the nicest things happen by accident.
Not too long ago, in one of my relentless searches for good food poems, I stumbled upon Susan Rich’s “A Poem for Will, Baking.” It brought me to my knees, as I remembered losing my aunt and my cousin’s grief. The poem also resonated with many of you, and later I was pleasantly surprised to hear from Susan herself.
When she asked whether we could combine forces for National Poetry Month, I knew she would be a perfect surprise guest. She’s written other food poems, some of which are included in her new book, The Alchemist’s Kitchen(White Pine Press, 2010). What I didn’t know was how succinctly her chosen “potluck poem” would define the provocative relationship between food and poetry.
Ooooo! This is the part of the Potluck where we dim the lights and tell scary stories!
Today we have not one, but two guest poets – Charles Ghigna and his lovely wife, Debra! I’ll admit that when I invited Charles, I didn’t realize Debra was also a poet. I must say, these two clearly know how to par-tay. Along with their poems and cookie recipe, they also brought their sleeping bags! I love guests who know how to make themselves at home. Now we can stay up all night and have a poetry slam. The attire of choice: silk pajamas, of course!
#9 in the Poetry Potluck Series, celebrating National Poetry Month 2010.
Kristy Dempsey’s dog, Pepper, in full-on begging mode.
“Awwwwwwwww!!”
Don’t you love her? What a face! Just look at those big, soulful eyes. Who could refuse this dog anything when she looks at you like that? Melt melt melt. Love. ♥
OUTSIDE DOG AT DINNERTIME
Perhaps
if I scrunch my nose
a bit more
against this glass door,
I’m so glad Kristy brought Pepper to the Poetry Party! We had some Fat Cats here last week, so it’s only fair dogs get equal billing. Please come in, Pepper. You don’t have to stay outside. Oh no. Look what Kristy brought — chocolate!
#8 in the Poetry Potluck Series, celebrating National Poetry Month 2010.
Note Hershey syrup can biscuit cutter. ☺
I don’t know about you, but there’s nothing that warms my heart more than the sight of boys in the kitchen.
Would you just look at these two adorable bakers? Don’t you just want to reach into the picture, give them a big hug and pinch their cheeks? I’ve been in cute overload mode ever since Sara sent me photos of her husband, Mike, and now-college-age son, Wade, making biscuits together.
The recipe comes from a cookbook Sara and Mike received as a wedding gift, called Dining with Pioneers. It seems especially fitting for this “pioneer” family, who has lived in and traveled to many states and countries. Perhaps this family biscuit tradition helped them feel at home no matter where they went. Just recently, Sara mentioned Mike was making biscuits on a Sunday morning. Sigh. Don’t you wish he’d come over to your house?
Cutest rolling pin boy ever.
BISCUITS
The book, a wedding gift
from 1984, wishes us “many hours
of pleasure” and admonishes us
“eggs should be at least three days
old before using in cakes.” It opens,
natural as pie, to Ann’s Angel Biscuits;
the paper gritty with dried flour dust;
the ochre glue of the binding visible
where the spine has cracked flat
to this page. The oven is set to 450.
Yeast — granular, fine as brown seeds — floats
on 2 Tablespoons of warmed tap water;
I think of woman and man and what begins
over and over from seed and water
while rough sugar blends into the slippery
whiteness of self-rising flour; molded
together with Crisco — gussied up lard,
silvery salve stored in lidded tubs;
then buttermilk, if we have some, exotic
in a green carton, beaming with wholesome rectitude.
Roll out immediately; orders the recipe, although
it should say: gently, with a dusting of flour
to cushion you. Nothing about how to shape it,
but we know: with the smooth halo of a juice glass,
or (if you’ve saved it all these years) by the open
cylinder mouth of a burnished Hershey syrup can
rescued, measured sweetness, from a brownie box.
Bake until risen, freckled, and puffed
by sugar and grease and heat to row upon row
of circular, layered towers; a city of biscuits on a tray.
The cookbook is called Dining with Pioneers,
and perhaps we do, we makers of biscuits,
we seekers of pleasure, we homesteading angels.
I love so many of Sara’s poetic ingredients: the exotic buttermilk with “wholesome rectitude,” the “gussied up lard,” the idea of a dusting of flour to cushion the dough, the “city of biscuits on a tray.” Swoon! I MUST have one (or two or three) of these perfectly risen, freckled beauties. Now.
Sara: My husband has made biscuits ever since we were married in 1984. He’s made them with both kids, and for guests. When the kids were little, he would let them form the dough scraps into snails and other animal shapes. He’s made them at the beach and in the mountains, and in at least three countries. He’s even made them on a houseboat on Lake Mead using a grill as an oven. We eat them with jam and/or honey; occasionally with slivers of country ham.
Thank you so much, Sara, Wade, and Mike!
———————————————————
Sara Lewis Holmes is the critically acclaimed author of the middle grade novels, Letters from Rapunzel (Winner of the Ursula Nordstrom Fiction Contest) and Operation Yes (Booklist Top 10 Arts Books for Youth). She occasionally posts some of her beautifully crafted poems at Read*Write*Believe, and is one of the seven “Poetry Princesses” who’ve graced Poetry Fridays with group projects (A Crown Sonnet, Villanelles, Rondeau Redoublé). We both love Shakespeare, cupcakes, and popcorn, but when it comes to beets, she’s strictly on her own.
Jama's Alphabet Soup 