Belated/Bereaved Poetry Tuesday: For "Cookie" S.

I'll follow you
Like food follows funerals:
With relief and to forget...

There's more to this poem, but that's what I remember off the top of my head.  Of course, we don't forget, do we?





Chocolate cake with sunflower seeds.  Grandpa was a Kansan through-and-through.




My cousin Angie said, "Remember how we all used to put black olives on the ends of our fingers?"

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Poetry Tuesday: Bastille Day And...

Happy Bastille Day, everyone! And happy anniversary to me and to Dan, if I may self-celebrate for a moment.

As of today, I've been married for 8 enormous years to someone pretty great, whom I've known for a gigantic 17 years. This year, we celebrated with sausages, wine, braised cabbage, crusty bread, and homemade strawberry shortcake (above). I used Nigella Lawson's recipe in How to Be a Domestic Goddess, but added coconut because my mouth wanted coconut. Love that woman.

Then, at some point, because it is Poetry Tuesday, after all, I thought of the poem I wrote the summer Dan and I started dating (1994. eeeeeee). The occasion was his getting his braces off, which is perhaps less of a special day than an 8-year wedding anniversary, but it sure has improved his snacking. Here, wait. Let me share.


ODE TO ORTHODONTICS

Flitter-flutter through the night...
What's that?! A bright and numbing light.
Announcing a bar or a mud-wrestling fight?
No, sir: 'tis the tooth-glow of young Daniel's bite.

Whither wanders he in the gloom?
Why, thither - hear: he sings a tune
and whistles lovely songs of doom
with sparkling teeth (at a jealous moon).

Behold the boy with teeth aglow.
He wanders hither, to and fro,
bedazzling dentists like a pro,
exhaling toothpaste with each blow.

But hasn't he a mouth of tin?
Oh, nay - no more! But once his grin
could metal-shiny contests win.
A new day dawns above his chin.

So sing the song of our brave lad
who battled monsters myriad
to make his friends and loved ones glad
to view what great clean teeth he had.


--------------------


Food-related memories with Dan over the past 17 years include:

• The time I drank straight pickle juice out of the jar just to gross him out. It worked.
  
• When Matt and Dan and I played some sort of game involving piling couch cushions on top of each other and then sitting on the person at the bottom -- and both of them called me "couch taco" for a few months.
• Trips to Mr. Bulky's in the Manhattan Town Center (mall), where I would usually get chocolate "bridge mix" and Dan would get something gummi.
  
• Purchasing 64-oz slushies in refillable cups at the ShopQwik, covering the cups with grip tape, and keeping them in my car to use for dirt-cheap, enormous refills for at least a year. I think we were a large part of the reason this size was discontinued.
  
• The morning we made pancakes at my parents' house and Dan thought it would be interesting to add instant pink lemonade powder to the batter. It might have been interesting, but it wasn't delicious.
• Grilling pizzas with Dan's dad in their backyard. Now those were delicious.
  
• All the double-Thanksgiving and -Christmas meals I got during the years our parents lived in the same town (miss that!)
• Raiding my scholarship hall's "24 hour open kitchen" together when Dan would come to visit me on my side of campus (mmm...frozen cookie dough hockey pucks!). Eating extra bagged lunches (from his cafeteria) in his dorm room in front of the TV (Tekken on the Playstation) other nights.
• Midnight-or-later doughnut runs in Lawrence, KS -- to Joe's or that other place. What was that other place called? Anyway, Dan likes apple fritters. La-di-da. I like actual, working-class doughnuts. Okay, I like the froofy ones with cream inside, too.
• Sun tea, sun tea, sun tea! And grilled cheese. And carrot cakes.
  
• Holding our annual "Welcome Summer; Goodbye School" BBQ (now on hiatus) and Holiday Cookie Party (still going strong) for almost as long as we've been together. No one cleans a bathroom while you (meaning "I") freak out about when the guests are going to arrive like Dan.
  
• Making 5 gallons of gazpacho together the night before our wedding in 2001. Plus a small batch without cilantro for Vincent.
  
• Enjoying turkey reubens and kettle chips from Hana Foods late-night on our current living room floor.

Thanks for all the years of finishing the food when I'm not hungry anymore, Dan! Over the next eight years, I plan to tackle the problem of you not liking hardboiled eggs.

p.s. I wanted to post the photo of us (taken in 1995 or 1996 at Laura Z's party) in which we are sitting on a couch and I'm eating cheese out of a spray can (by spraying it on my finger, which I guess seemed more sanitary), but in deference to Dan's potential embarrassment (at changing hair/jewelry styles) I've refrained. Still, anyone who comes over to our house should take a look at it on our fridge. It's pretty amusing. And boy, do we look young.


(photo by Dan)

The Accidental Patriot

My grandfather's birthday is July 4th (Happy Birthday, Grandpa!), so those holiday three-day-weekends during my childhood were often spent happily at his house (and especially, in his little above-ground pool), celebrating his birthday and the Fourth with sparklers and fireworks, grilled hot dogs or burgers, birthday cake, ice cream, and the festive wearing of red, white, and blue items of clothing. I took my fashion choices very seriously and tried to incorporate all three colors on the big day.

In high school, as I was stretching my coltish-yet-sarcastic-and-cynical legs, I still enjoyed Grandpa K's birthday and the relatives (and the pool, the summers before we totally outgrew it), but I began a tradition of making sure I was not wearing red, white, and blue on The Fourth of July. I continued to take my outfits seriously, but in a different sort of way. Clearly, I would have been the lamest of all lames if I coordinated my colors with a national holiday, you guys! Jeez.

Now look at me: a softened-and-aging adult, and I've almost come full circle. Here I am on July 4th, wearing blue, white, and green (I'm almost to Quacker Factory land, aren't I?!) and baking a fruit tart in the colors of the flag.

It's not my fault, cynical teenage Self! I have had a handful of blueberries languishing in the fridge for more than a week. Then I impulsively bought 2 pints of sour cherries at the farmer's market on Monday but have not had the time to use them in my cooking up to this point.

This morning I knew the fruit had to be used or I'd risk it rotting in the refrigerator. I found this recipe, which was originally written for pears but which Chowhounds said worked as well with sour cherries and other fruits. I threw caution to the winds and tossed the blueberries on top, realizing I was now creating (and planning to eat) a red, white, and blue dessert on Independence Day, of all days.

I used 1/2 tsp of vanilla and 1/2 tsp of almond extract in the batter and sprinkled brown sugar over the top before baking, but otherwise followed the recipe as given.



OMG, y'all. Moist, moist, moist. Yum, yum, yum. More, more, more!! Happy freakin' Fourth of July! I'm feeling kind of patriotic about this.

Memories like crumbs in the purse of my mind.

(photo credit: unknown fellow camper/counselor at Dayton Oaks)

I spent a good part of today reminiscing on Facebook and Flickr, uploading pictures from 10, 20 and more years ago, like this one (from 1990 or 1991) of my first youth group leader and favorite camp counselor eating a disgusting sandwich we made for him out of everything in the camp kitchen. I appreciate that he would even smell it, let alone take a bite. In this respect, I have to consider him a snacking mentor.

A fitting mid-afternoon snack for a day of such nostalgia? A leftover cherry Pop Tart, broken into pieces by a day spent in my purse waiting to be eaten (said purse got a little knocked around by a baby who was playing with it in the meantime, hence the eaten-in-pieces business).



(This photo was taken yesterday, before I ate the first of the two PopTarts.)

I guess I technically prefer a hot and icing-ed Toaster Strudel, but I've always had a soft spot for raw, fruit-flavored Pop Tarts (and this is an item that is not so good in the generic). A favorite cold breakfast in college (we didn't have them in the house when I was a kid), they taste both bland and like candy at the same time. I find them comforting. If only I could pull these memories up over me like a blanket and crawl into a bed of photo albums and boxes of Pop Tarts, the approaching weekend would be a rather cozy one.

p.s. The homepage of the Pop Tarts website, which I had originally linked to in this post, invited me to click on "Moms" or "Kids." That there were no other options (as I am neither -- what about "Dads?" "Caregivers?" "Childless People Who Like Pop Tarts?") struck me as obnoxious. I refuse to link to them anymore.

Poetry Tuesday: Scent Memory

In my skin I am a small grey box
of scented gum. I say OPEN HERE
and still you hesitate to open me

and I do not open there. I open
elsewhere.

Along one careful, high-strung edge
I open. Inside I am old incense,
a shop selling velvet dresses, the
cinnamon sticks we chewed. I am in college.
I held your hand and felt protected.

We sat in movies and did not speak;
I borrowed your shirt and you could not wash it
because the smell of me was fine.

So, I'm a little square. I taste perfumed.
The color of me waits patiently.
I can be hard to take.
And then there's softening, and sighs to chew,
and you and I just do not last. We almost never were.
Our time is up. Or things are stickier, at least.

How do I resist rewarding you while becoming everything you wish?

Poetry Tuesday: Wendu Brought Halloween cookies and icing to work!

Photo Credit: Jeremy!

On Halloween I like to dress up and go trick-or-treating.
I get lots of candy.
My sister wants to be Raggedy Anne or a witch.
I want to be Princess Leia from Star Wars.
I can't wait for Halloween.
I also might be a clown.

(Written for a first grade extra-credit assignment in 1982)