food poems

friday feast: cracking open a few more nuts

~ jama ~ 54 Comments

You know what they say. It takes one to know one. And I know you’re nuts nuts nuts!

Nuts about peanut butter, that is. You look hungry. Please help yourself to one of these beautiful Buckeyes, courtesy of Smitten Kitchen.

(click for SK Buckeyes recipe)

That’s it, wrap your lips around that perfect little ball of cream cheese, butter, smoother than smooth peanut butter, graham cracker crumbs and deep, dark chocolate. *swoons*

Now, where was I?

Feel free to slather yourself all over with reckless abandon.

Oh, yes, back to the party! We’ve got four more Peanut Butter Poets on today’s menu: Douglas Florian, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater, Irene Latham and Charles Waters.  Nothing finer than having grown men go gaga for goobers with such purty poems of praise! And leave it to the ladies to serve up a giggle and a growl! Never know what you’ll get when you crack these nuts wide open.

Spread it again, Sam!

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friday feast: two smooth talkers, a chunky hunk, and a hot salsa mama

~ jama ~ 47 Comments

Welcome to our Peanut Butter Poets Party!

Every Poetry Friday in November, we’re serving up creamy crunchy chewy peanut butter poems written by some of our favorite nut cases children’s poets and friends.

Today’s menu features four good-looking but sticky poets: Charles Ghigna, Matt Forrest Esenwine, David L. Harrison and Marilyn Singer.

The guys all love peanut butter but Marilyn doesn’t (gasp!). Don’t worry — what she doesn’t eat, she makes up for with fancy footwork and sassy swaying to that crazy Latin beat.

I call Charles and Matt the Peter Pan twins; they’re both into creamy and are oh-so-smooth with their rhythm and rhyme (get a grip; they may slide off your screen). David calls himself a “Jiffy chunky man.” See what happens when you have a choosy mom? You grow up to be a chunky hunk who knows how to cowboy up. I wonder if he’s found his elusive jelly yet?

Enjoy Our Daily Spread. Okay to read aloud with your mouth full.

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friday feast: peanut butter poems wanted!

~ jama ~ 80 Comments

 

Happy November!

It’s Peanut Butter Lover’s Month!

 

 

Not that I need an excuse to spread it on extra thick or anything. Why, just this morning I had a nice slice of lightly toasted multi-grain bread slathered with 365 All Natural Creamy Peanut Butter and Hawaiian Sun Guava Jelly. Don’t  you love the way peanut butter melts on warm toast, making you lick the corners of your mouth after biting into it? Mmmmmmm!

If I’m feeling extra naughty, I’ll forego the jelly and spread on some Nutella. Then there’s my peanut butter and apple mid-morning snack, the late afternoon Reese’s PB Cup or PB on celery pick-me-up. Sigh. I blame my addiction on my dad, who always seemed to be snacking on cocktail peanuts while I was growing up. Sound familiar?

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friday feast: “your grandmother’s whisk” by penny harter

~ jama ~ 60 Comments
(click for recipe)

Some of you may remember when I featured Penny Harter’s beautifully crafted haibun, “Moon-Seeking Soup,” last October. It was written in response to her husband William J. Higginson’s passing in 2008, and included in her chapbook, Recycling Starlight (Mountains and Rivers Press, 2010).

She and Bill liked to make a special root vegetable soup together. In the poem, she’s making the soup alone, needing the light of the moon but getting the earth, as she sees her sole reflection in the ladle. This healing soup of love and memory marked a step toward accepting her loss.

In today’s poem, Penny captures another poignant moment — she thinks again of Bill as she prepares breakfast with his grandmother’s whisk. Hold memory in your hand, whip new beginnings as grace transforms sorrow.

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friday feast: chocolate mustache party!

~ jama ~ 46 Comments
Help yourself to any of the refreshments in this post. Tips welcome.

 

If you were a chocolate mustache,
And I were a peanut-butter purse,
Then we would be living somewhere
Else in the universe.

~ J. Patrick Lewis (“Elsewhere in the Universe”)

I’ve always said the best poems are the ones that feel like they were written just for you.

Well, the one and only J. Patrick Lewis, our much beloved Children’s Poet Laureate, has written an entire book of poems just for me! Look:

He actually had me at the title — I’ve made no secret about my obsession with mad love for chocolate and mustaches. But when I opened this bountiful feast of 125 funny, cuckoo, clever, punderful, endearing, burp-inducing, useful, snorty, short, twisty, wacky, vigorously vivacious verse, I totally flipped out of town. My tines tingled, my spoons swooned, my knives knocked.

“Dang, he’s good!”

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