main dish recipes

friday feast: julie larios spices things up!

~ jama ~ 1 Comment

#6 in the Poetry Potluck Series, celebrating National Poetry Month 2010.


 photo by ClixYou.

Hola! Como estas?

What a treat we have today! With her highly evocative poem, Julie Larios is taking us to the colorful, bustling Market in Tepoztlan, Mexico, truly a place to stimulate the senses and get those creative juices flowing.

Mexican cuisine is characterized by such a wide variety of flavors, colors and textures. And it all begins at the market. What fresh fruits and vegetables are in season? Will you be seduced by a papaya, or fall in love with a beautiful tomato? Don’t forget the spices — stock up on chili powder, cilantro, cumin, and cinnamon. Of course you will get some chocolate! Feast on the possibilities, take something home, then create something wonderful in your own kitchen.


photo by Hermann C.

DOMINGO

Black avocados, yellow mangos,
bowls of menudo to start the day.
Tall, cold glass of fresh horchata,
green papayas, pink mamey,
pork pozole, pumpkin seeds,
chiltepines, round and red,
coconut juice and gold guayavas,
then the different names for bread:
little shell and little piglet,
little ear and little horn,
now a cup of spiced hot chocolate,
sweet tamal with cream and corn,
pineapple popsicles, sugar cane,
guava jelly, caramel flan,
herbal tisanes, magic powders:
Market Day in Tepoztlan.

© 2010 Julie Larios. All rights reserved.


photo by _flix.

Julie tells me she is working on a new poetry collection about street food. Naturally, she is partaking of some highly delectable “research” of the lip-smacking kind: “simple, traditional, inexpensive food-cart food” from all over the world. Are you in the mood for Mexican tortas (sandwiches made with chipotle sauce)?

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friday feast: alice and arlo

~ jama ~ 68 Comments

“Don’t be intimidated by foreign cookery. Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.” ~ Alice May Brock

Photo of Alice by Howell Conant, Source: NPR.org.

During the holidays, I like listening to Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.”

The “Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat” makes me happy, along with Officer Obie, the Group W bench, and of course, those “twenty-seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us.”

Dang fine example of the talkin’ blues, a classic 60’s counterculture, anti-war/anti-draft satirical ballad that still rings true 42 years after its release. I’ve been lucky enough to hear Arlo sing it in person a couple of times, and admit to having a crush on him when I was sixteen. Sigh. I wore out the A-Side of my album (some of the best 18-minute interludes I’ve ever had). When the movie came out with Arlo starring in it, I really really wanted to become a hippie, celebrate Thanksgiving with all those people, and help dump the garbage.

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friday feast: a taste of tuscany

~ jama ~ 37 Comments

“The passion of the Italian or the Italian-American population is endless for food and lore and everything about it. ” ~ Mario Batali


“Tuscany Delights” painting by Lisa Lorenz.

Buon Giorno! Come sta?

Are you in the mood for la cucina italiano? *kisses fingertips* 

Recently, I heard about a new molto delizioso book at Diane Lockward’s blog — The Poet’s Cookbook: Recipes from Tuscany by Grace Cavalieri and Sabine Pascarelli (Bordighera Press, 2009). Scrumptious food served with provocative poems (with their Italian translations no less)! What more does one need in this life?

This tasty little collection is almost as good as taking an Italian lover. Not that I would know about that sort of thing. *cough* ☺ But I do have a fertile imagination, a lust for fine poetry, and an eager palate-in-training. Cavalieri and Pascarelli contributed their favorite recipes, those “that were once purely Italian and are now Italo-American” — Appetizers, Soups, First Course, Second Course, Vegetables, Salads, Desserts –while 28 of their Italian and American friends provided the poems. Like any good feast, the fare teases the taste buds with spicy, savory, pungent, sweet, sour, and salty — all the flavors and emotions that constitute the best food for thought.

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SOUP’S ON: Melissa Sweet in the Kitchen Interview and Book Giveaway!

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Melissa with Rufus and Nellie.

Friends, I’m tickled pink and over the moon, because our very special guest at alphabet soup today is 2009 Caldecott Honor Medal winner, Melissa Sweet!

 I can’t think of a better way to top off National Poetry Month, than with the illustrator who so brilliantly rendered the story of how Willie Williams, a doctor from Rutherford, New Jersey, became one of America’s most influential twentieth century poets.


If you’ve seen Melissa’s masterful work in A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams (beautifully written by Jen Bryant), then you know the award was supremely well deserved. Her mixed media collages embody the very soul and spirit of the poet, who “walked through the high grasses and along the soft dirt paths . . . stretched out beside the Passaic River . . . watched everything,” took notes “about things he’d heard, seen, or done . . . looked at the words . . . and shaped them into poems.”

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i could eat this up: the little big book of comfort food

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Here’s a little book that’s bound to make you squeal with delight.

Seriously. I try to avoid using the word, “cute,” but this cookbook is cute and then some — let’s say, charming, adorable, cuddle-worthy, friendly, cozy, and totally yummy — everything a cookbook featuring Comfort Foods should be.

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