Category Archives: Food

Thanks Be to Sara Lee

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I just couldn’t get going using today’s WordPress Daily Prompt—someone else’s first line—so I elected to follow another prompt, now that we have this option. In response to The Daily Post’s earlier writing prompt: “Thank You,” I am reposting a parody of “Pied Beauty” (better known by its first line, “Thanks be to God for dappled things.”)

“Thanks Be to Sara Lee for Appled Things” was the irreverent first line that I wrote for its parody for NaPoWriMo in April of last year. I think this was before most of my followers knew who I was, so I’m hoping you won’t be too put out by it.

By way of explanation, I will tell you part of a story—that story being that I actually read a poem to one of my favorite authors of all time today. I won’t interfere with her privacy by naming her or revealing how I happened to meet her, but it was scary and thrilling at the same time. This is how I have come to be sitting here at 4 PM, still not having posted a blog entry for today. This time I can’t blame it on the lack of a computer or the presence of a computer that speaks a different language. It is just me, still a bit dazzled from meeting this very nice, down-to-earth friendly lady who possesses one of the finest minds of our century. So fine that for today, at least, I feel unable to write. All I am thinking is that yes, she liked my poem. (I read “The Ways I Do Not Love You” which was also posted earlier as a NaPoWriMo poem.) I just couldn’t bring myself to read one of my silly ditties in front of someone whose writing I respect so much, fearful that she would think this was all there was to me! How can it be that at this age I still care what people think of me? At least it is to my credit that it was my words I was worried about, not my hair or my weight or what I was wearing. I guess I’ve made some advancements with age. “What are you, sixteen?” my super-critical alter-ego is whispering in my ear right now. “Exactly!” the real me shouts, and wishes it could fit a swim in before dinner.

Okay, here is the NaPoWriMo prompt: Our prompt today was to write a curtal sonnet in the style of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ famous poem “Pied Beauty”. This form consists of a first stanza of six lines followed by a second stanza of five, closing with a half-line. The rhyme scheme is abcabc defdf. I chose to make it a parody of “Pied Beauty” as well.

Here is the original:

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins

And now, my version:

Pied Beauty II

Thanks be to Sara Lee for appled things—
For pies, for apple fritters and for thin-rolled strudel crust;
For pastries of the fruit of Eve and sauce it swims within;
Fresh-cooked in ovens, how their sweet juice sings;
The sugar clotted and pierced—place it on plate we must;
And all taste, for how can tackling it be such a sin?

All things made of flour and Crisco and of apples sweet;
(How can they by nutritionists be so sorely cussed
With words professing they won’t make us thin?)
With their tart flavor are sure our lips to meet;
And meet again.

—Judy Dykstra-Brown

Not to Taste

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I took this picture in the river mentioned in the poem, but just noticed something. Doesn’t that look like a winged gnomish sprite looking down on the croc? (Center of photo, above the croc.)

 

Not to Taste

I have no taste for seafood—neither sea bass nor crustacean.
My friends’ attempts to feed them to me end in their frustration.
I cannot stand the taste of them—their odor nor their texture.
I’ve heard that they are good for me, so please spare me the lecture!

When I was in New Orleans, they tried to feed me gator.
I politely turned it down and had a burger later.
For though a gator’s not a fish, and that’s something I know,
they must be kin somehow, ‘cause both live in H2O!

Sometimes I go out birding up a river by the sea.
The grandson of the captain comes along to talk to me.
The river’s full of crocodiles, and birds overhead
fly in by the thousands to seek their evening bed.

They rest so gently in the trees that I forget the threat
of all those crocs there down below, lurking in the wet.
Most of the year the estuary’s cut off from the sea,
but this year there was one big rain that set the river free.

When I was swimming Saturday, beyond the surf, just me,
I saw some people looking at—whatever could it be?
I just went on exercising in the surf and sand.
The sun went down but I stayed out. The water was just grand.

But when I finally came to land, folks there on the beach
told me that a croc passed by, well beyond my reach.
And since I, too, was out there as handy as could be,
I sure am glad that crocodile had no taste for me!!!!

Chocolate-covered Potato Chips and 90210

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The Prompt: Grateful and Guilty—write a thank-you note to your guiltiest pleasure

Okay, I challenge you to find a better excuse than I have for not getting posted until 7:10 at night.  I’m told by the owner of the little palapa restaurant I’ve come to after not being able to get online all day that it is probably because of yesterday’s eruption of Colima Volcano about 80 miles northeast of me.  Frustrating but exotic, no?  At any rate, here is my “real” post for the day…Judy

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Chocolate-covered Potato Chips and 90210

Thanks be to God for TV that’s evolved beyond Godzilla.
And thanks to him for frozen cream—both praline and vanilla.
Another pleasure is writing in bed. It’s how I start my day.
With no spouse or kids to feed, it’s where I get to stay.
I know that grandkids would be nice, but still I’m rather grateful
that being childless cuts to nil the chances they’ll be hateful.

Chocolate and potato chips, together or alone
are two more guilty pleasures for which I must atone.
I try to limit quantities that pass between my lips,
for if I eat too many, they’re displayed upon my hips.
Another guilty pleasure that’s high upon my list
is a stupid TV show that somehow I just missed

the first time that it came around and which I must admit
is really superficial, although it was once a hit.
Still, I can’t stop watching it when I am all alone—
a guilty pleasure for which I’ve found ways I can atone.
I only watch it from the pool as I do exercise—
computer balanced within view while I aerobicize.

The show I watch is Beverly Hills Nine-Zero-Two-One-Oh.
And that’s about as far as this confession’s gonna go!
I’m sure I’m shrinking brain cells, but I grow them back again
by reading hours of Marcel Proust, and then Anais Nin!
My ending comment must be this sincere beatitude:
for friends who like me as I am, I have great gratitude.

Guilty for my sins and the excesses that are mine—
grateful for the friends who still insist that I am fine
if I never turn out perfect both in looks and my behavior,
I guess the fact that they’re not perfect either is my savior.
Guiltily and gratefully, we all pass through this life,
pudgy from our excesses and battered by our strife.

But that’s how life is patterned, and we all are lucky still
that of our guilty pleasures we’re allowed to have our fill.
Thanks be to our compulsions and life’s excesses of pleasure,
for all our peccadillos end up as life’s greatest treasure.
So, thanks be again for naughty things. We both love and revile them.
With some of them we stuff our mouths. With others, We just dial them.

Pieromaniac

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Pieromaniac

At any time of day or night,
I’m always open to a bite
of pastry stuffed with something nice,
in fact, pie is my favorite vice!

I am very very very
fond of all things flavored cherry,
and of all this cherry pleasure,
pie’s the one that I most treasure.

Good for breakfast, good for lunch,
on pumpkin pie, I love to munch.
Coconut or chocolate cream?
They are my fantasy and dream.

Banana, apple—oh, and peach!
Put one of them within my reach,
and I’ll purloin a piece or two.
No pie is safe within my view.

On the window ledge or table,
I’ll grab a piece if I am able.
In a coffee shop or grandma’s kitchen,
pie’s delicious. Pie is bitchin’

At picnics, parties, celebrations,
with coffee or with small libations,
at any occasion or event,
pie is the best accompaniment.

Yet there is one aspect of pie
that I hope never meets my eye.
I don’t like pie in just one place.
Please don’t shove it in my face!

Today, I’m using the weekly challenge: Pie—The scent of pastry baking, the sound of a fork clinking on a plate… This week, make our mouths water with stories about pie.

The Indigestibles

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The Prompt: Mouths Wide Shut—Are you a picky eater? Share some of your favorite food quirks with us (the more exotic, the better!). Omnivores: what’s the one thing you won’t eat?

The Indigestibles

No room for mushrooms, can’t live with liver.
The thought of brains just makes me shiver.
Though I like pizza, my other law
is I don’t eat tomatoes raw!

Drinking milk’s against my wishes.
Fish is simply for the fishes.
I eat no veal or other baby,
and steak for me is simply “maybe.”

So if it’s your plan to invest
in things that I like to ingest,
I won’t make it any harder
for you to come and stock my larder.

All else you want to bring to feed me—
what edibles you wish to cede me:
Injera, curries, Thai, Chinese—
all are sure to tempt and please.

Except for one thing I just thought of
that in the past I’ve had a lot of.
There’s one more mouthful I won’t try.
I have no taste for humble pie!

“One Word Photo Challenge: Mustard”

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“One Word Photo Challenge: Mustard”
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If a picture is worth a thousand words, credit me with six thousand in my six- photo depiction of the word, “Mustard.”  Before his early demise, Sponge Bob was a fifteen foot (or more) high hot air balloon made from Tyvec, constructed in Mexico as one of hundreds launched in a yearly Independencia celebration in Ajijic.  These balloons take months to design and construct, then up to a half hour to launch, as a crowd of a thousand or more mills around on the ground or sits patiently in the stands of the soccer field, waiting for their ascent.  Usually three or four are being launched at any given time throughout the long afternoon and evening.  First a fire is lit in braziers to create the hot air to fill the balloon.  Then a ring in the center of the bottom of the balloon wrapped in kerosene or gasoline is set fire to keep the balloon inflated and the balloon rises above the heads of the crowds, sometimes floating away to nearby towns, at other times meeting within minutes or even seconds with the fate of Sponge Bob Hotpants.  The spectacle of the remains of the burning balloon falling into the crowd or trees or rooftops or highline wires is taken with a fatalism endemic to Mexico.  Small boys rush to stomp out the remains of the fire.  No mothers scold.  No fathers forbid.  The crowd pays more attention to food purchased from local vendors than they do with the possibility of being set on fire.  This is Mexico.  Such things just work out one way or another.  A nearby firetruck was never called upon in the time I witnessed the event.  Sponge Bob, the most mustard of balloons launched and an annual crowd favorite, was soon history and the only mustard to be seen was on the amazing spiral-cut hot dogs-on-a-stick served in one of the food stands that rimmed the road leading into the soccer field.

Green Brownies

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(This poem evolved from notes that I scribbled into the margin
of our Mexican Train score sheet while visiting my friend Gloria.)

Green Brownies

The brownie that she serves me
crumbles when I try to break it into two.
Her sense of humor allows it and so I tease her.
“Gloria, this looks like the kind of food
my grandmother tried to pawn off on us—
weeks old and crusty from the refrigerator.”

“Those chocolate chips were like that when I bought them!”
she insists, even before I question their green tinge.
I think that this is even worse than the alternative,
and say so and we both laugh as she eats her brownie
and I reduce mine to dust. Not a hard task, as it turns out.

She’s had a bad infection for a week or more.
“I’m not contagious,” she insists each time she coughs
a long low rasping rumble that threatens to avalanche.
“Now stop!” she tells the sounds that explode
without permission from her chest.

“Perhaps,” I say, “These brownies are a godsend
and that’s penicillin growing on the chocolate chips.”
Then her deep coughs transform into
gasps of laughter that echo mine.

The young man there to rake the garden
looks up at us and shakes his head
at two old ladies drinking rum and
eating something chocolate,
and it occurs to me that perhaps
what the world sees as senility
is simply evolution
out of adulthood
to a higher
stage.

The Prompt: Locked and Sealed.  Can you keep a secret? Have you ever — intentionally or not — spilled the beans (when you should’ve stayed quiet)?  Yes, I must admit that I regularly mine my life with friends and family for topics for my writing.  As a matter of fact, that’s pretty much all I write.  My friend Gloria, however, has no qualms about my writing about this occasion.  In fact,  she insisted I send it off immediately to a local magazine/newspaper whose editor may or may not find it as funny as she did.  With one exception, I’ve had just one friend object to this practice of writing about friends and family.  She has always refused to read anything I’ve written about her.  “You haven’t spilled any of my dirty little secrets, have you?” she says (no small amount of dread in her voice)  every time I tell her I’ve written about her. No, I never would.  The only dirty little secrets I ever reveal are my own!!!

Note:  So amusing that today’s prompt, “Locked and Sealed” takes its title seriously!!!  Its link does not work. For this reason, I’m posting today’s blog in yesterday’s topic and counting down the hours until they discover this.

“How good are you at keeping secrets? Today’s @postaday prompt is Locked and Sealed: wp.me/p23sd-njA 2 hours ago“—This is a quote from the WordPress site.  And yes, the prompt truly is locked and sealed.  9:08 and still, none of us can post on the site.  At least this time they posted the topic.  I imagine by now there are at least 80 bloggers straining at the prompt, ready to spring into action to post as soon as the link works.  To the starting gate, bloggers!

10:58  133 bloggers standing in line to post…still, no link. Locked and Sealed?  Is it April 1 by any chance?

Crunchy, Soft and Piquant

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The Prompt: Is there an unorthodox food pairing you really enjoy? Share with us the weirdest combo you’re willing to admit that you like — and how you discovered it.

Crunchy, Soft and Piquant

Potato chips, ketchup and cottage cheese! I imagine this pairing came about by accident one day at a school or church picnic on a too-small plate, and some flavor memory insists there were baked beans and a hamburger on the same plate; but somehow the vital ingredients came to be the salty-crunchy chips, the creamy-soft cheese and the piquant perfection of Hunts Ketchup. (For the uninitiated, the process is to dip the chip in the ketchup and then scoop up the cheese.)

I don’t usually keep potato chips in the house anymore because I can’t be trusted with them, and cottage cheese is so expensive in Mexico that I don’t usually buy it; but when I make a trip to Costco in Guadalajara, invariably I’ll come home with one of their huge containers of cottage cheese and somehow, magically, potato chips appear (If you buy it, they will come) and the house echoes with the strains of some culinary Indian Love Call coming from the heart of my fridge, “When I’m calling you u u u u u u.” And so it is that the unlikely trio are reunited once again, probably late at night when even the dogs are fast asleep and no one is looking.

Sayonara Umami

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Sayonara Umami

Every day my word prompt takes time away from me.
I lie in bed and write and write sometimes till two or three.
But today they’ve found another part of me to waste,
for now they’re going to take away one aspect of my taste.
Salt or bitter, sweet or sour, are tastes I must maintain.
Umami is the obvious choice that causes the least pain.
They say monosodium glutamate is what creates its savor.
Seaweed, cured fish, aged cheese and meats are what contain its flavor.
(All foods I hate and so at last, I’ll never have to worry
about detecting those weird tastes in saté or in curry.)
No more lurking fish paste. No more furry tongue.
No more adult flavors found revolting by the young.
So for once, dear “Word Prompt,” I shall to you relate
my thanks for taking from my life something I really hate!

The Prompt: Picky Tongues—You have to choose one flavor that your sense of taste will no longer be able to distinguish. Sweet, sour, bitter, salty, umami, spicy (not a taste per se, but we’re generous): which one do you choose to lose?

Lick for Lick

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Lick for Lick

Ice cream is my weakness—my favorite sort of sweet.
A flavor that I don’t adore is one I’ve yet to meet.

Mandarin orange or licorice, tequila or dill pickle?
I am not true to any of them, for I fear I’m fickle.

When choosing ice cream flavors, it’s impossible to pick.
I simply am incapable of choosing which to lick.

And so I’d like a flavor that has a bit of each:
chocolate and vanilla and a little touch of peach,

strawberry and mango and lime and toffee crunch—
why choose just one flavor when you can have a bunch?

Throw some tangerine in and some pineapple sorbet.
Licorice and banana? Who am I to say nay?

This flavor would be popular with those who cannot choose
whether they prefer the flavor of pickles, fruit or booze.

Though some of you may scoff at it and laugh in your derision,
the name of my new flavor? I call it “Indecision.”

The Prompt: Flavor # 32—A local ice cream parlor invites you to create a new wacky flavor. It needs to channel the very essence of your personality. What’s in it?