Just a Thought

This is Just to Say
-William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold


“If it ain’t a pleasure, it ain’t a poem.” William Carlos Williams made this declaration, and I have to agree. That pleasure is shared between poetry and eating. I love poetry and food interweaving such as in WCW’s poem I put above. Through his words you can almost taste the deliciously sweet and cold plums snuck from the icebox, your own mouth watering at the description.

A good poem leaves a mark, enriches the mind, makes you think and leaves a fizzy-effervescent pleasure running across the tongue as it is read out. It is complete, round and wholesome like whole-grain bread, fresh from the oven. There’s something to chew on, grains and seeds to crunch through, soft pillows and air pockets for breath. The crust may be hard but a slice of a knife or fingers twisting-tearing at the loaf/poem releases a fragrant cloud enveloping nose and mind. It settles into hair and clothes of waft out with a brush of the hand, repercussions clinging so poetry becomes bread and life and nourishing, and most importantly, a pleasure.

The Great Tablecloth

Pablo Neruda (translated by Alastair Reid)

When they were called to the table,
the tyrants came rushing
with their temporary ladies,
it was fine to watch the women pass
like wasps with big bosoms
followed by those pale
and unfortunate public tigers.

The peasant in the field ate
his poor quota of bread,
he was alone, it was late,
he was surrounded by wheat,
but he had no more bread,
he ate it with grim teeth,
looking at it with hard eyes.

In the blue hour of eating,
the infinite hour of the roast,
the poet abandons his lyre,
take up his knife and fork,
puts his glass on the table,
and the fishermen attend
the little sea of the soup bowl.
Burning potatoes protest
among the tongues of oil.
The lamb is gold on its coals
and the onion undresses.
It is sad to eat in dinner clothes,
like eating in a coffin,
but eating in convents
is like eating underground.
Eating alone is a disappointment,
but not eating matters more,
is hollow and green, has thorns
like a chain of fish hooks
trailing from the heart,
clawing at your insides.

Hunger feels like pincers,
like the bite of crabs,
it burns, burns and has no fire.
Hunger is a cold fire.
Let us sit down soon to eat
with all those who haven't eaten;
let us spread great tablecloths,
put salt in the lakes of the world,
set up planetary bakeries,
tables with strawberries in snow,
and a plate like the moon itself
from which we can all eat.

For now I ask no more
than the justice of eating.

The Holy Trinity: Soup, Chili and Puree

It is supposedly winter, though you may not know it from the sunny California weather out here. But the nights are chilly and we are periodically pounded by bouts of rain that at least give us the vague impression that we have changed seasons.

Thus my body has taken on a love of cold-weather food. I’ve had cravings for the warming sensation of soups, perhaps a leftover from the wonderfully warming soups that my host mom would make.

So over this quarter I have hit pretty much each kind of soup that you might imagine. I was inspired by my host mother’s potato-leek soup into searching my favorite food blogs for a similar recipe. I stumbled upon that of David Lebowitz and after haphazardly cutting down the amounts (really does one person need to make 6-8 servings of soup) I had a lightly green puree to cozy up with. Ok, I will admit, with all my tinkering the recipe turned out rather bland, but with some generous shakes of the pepper shaker, a pinch of red pepper flakes and some croutons it wasn’t half bad. And as a bonus I got to use my favorite Christmas gift; my immersion blender.



My second craving was for a more standard soup. Actually, I wanted home-made chicken noodle soup, but I am still nervous around raw meat as a result of my stint as a vegetarian and thus I ended up with a vegetable soup. No recipe this time, it was a blending of my own imagination with a few ideas taken from about seven different recipes in the soup section of my Betty Crocker cookbook. This is essentially what I did: sauté up some onion, celery and carrots. Then add vegetable broth and various other cut up vegetables to the pot along with some fresh parsley, a bay leaf, some brown rice and beans; let cook for as long as you can last before hunger gets in the way. The only things I would recommend for this are to not use chickpeas as I did, some other bean would be far more interesting, and to only add things like bell peppers in the last few minutes so they don’t lose their crispness. And of course, salt and pepper to taste, lots of pepper if you are anything like me.


Last night got me to the most successful of my endeavors. I got over that horrible block I have of making things alone that I’m sued to making with my mom. I got the recipe for her vegetarian green chili, which in my family is more like a thick stew than the sauce you see in Mexican restaurants. I don’t know that I can reveal the family recipe but suffice to say that it does involve green chilies, jalapenos, diced tomatoes and fake ground beef which went unnoticed as an imposter. The spices you’ll have to work out yourself. It was quite a surprise that despite my nervousness the chili actually tasted just-like-mom-makes (sorry, Mom, I’ll try not to do so well next time! I’ll still make it with you.). It is always better with crème fraîche rather than sour cream, but after two grocery stores, there was no way that I was going to make a special trip to find it. My only regret is that there wasn’t much in the way of leftovers!

So, if the winter is getting you down, I think the best way to counter the blues (be it blue lips or just the midterm blues) it a nice warm bowl of soup.