Pablo Neruda, Blood Oranges, and Sour Cream Donuts

Pablo Neruda knows a little something about love. Entire volumes of his poetry are dedicated to the subject, and I have to ask, does it get any better than this?

“But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.”
― Pablo Neruda

In ancient Greece, odes were accompanied by music and dance, but the romantics utilized the form in a way its most recognizable today, as a tool to meditate on a singular event, person, or object. Odes are not explicitely love poems, but they do require the careful reflection and observation of one thing at a time. Especially the odes about food, I would say Neruda is utterly enamored with the ingredient he's writing about.

In accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, he declared that "We [writers from the vast expanse of America] are called upon to fill with words the confines of a mute continent, and we become drunk with the task of telling and naming." Neruda's odes accomplished this task of 'telling and naming' with great beauty and grace on the page. Just bite into these lines from "Ode to an Orange."

Guest Post: A Meditation on Leftovers + Pesto Polenta Breakfast Bake

Today's offering is a guest post from kindred spirit and fellow food blogger Annelies Zijderveld. You'll love the way she explores leftovers both in the kitchen and on the page. 

Leftovers. When was the last time you heard someone get excited about leftovers? By their very name, they point to past revelry and sumptuous meals like the remnant of the Petrale Sole from Friday night’s dinner or Salade Nicoise from Sunday lunch. How is it then, that a dish you could be jubilant at receiving hot out of the oven or freshly tossed can seem so diminished even the day after? I think, too, of the name given to the bag that holds restaurant leftovers and wonder if a doggie ever really did get to sup on its contents? 

Leftovers in poetry play a different role. They are the indispensible bits- a fragment of a phrase jotted down quickly in the notebook you’ve got tucked in your bag or a line that in the final analysis didn’t quite fit into another poem but couldn’t quite be deleted from the computer screen. A poet I worked with and admire talked about the importance of keeping a working document of salvaged lines as a library from which to draw when your well might be running low. 

The editing room, the chopping block- what remains after the poem is penned. What makes leftovers revelatory in a poem and on the plate is how they can be reimagined from their original intent. So how do you make a masterpiece from leftovers? This requires a bit of ingenuity or deviance, depending on your perspective. Just as poets read to waken their sensibility to listen to the world around them and see it for what it is and not just for what it might seem, so too, do home cooks contemplate cookbooks, restaurant menus or simply ingredient lists for new ideas of pairings that might work well together.  Simply ask a Thanksgiving cook about how they plan to incorporate Thursday’s turkey into Friday meals.

"For the Buyer of Breakfasts in Salem" by Colleen Michaels + Cheddar Scramble

While waiting at a stoplight last year, I witnessed something that stayed with me. A homeless man stood on the divider holding up his cardboard sign asking for food and money and help, and in the minute before my light turned green, I watched from my rear view mirror as a man extended his hand with a few bills. It was one of those gestures that likely went unnoticed to most, but the kindness of this stranger informed the rest of my morning. I couldn't help but smile, shake off my frustrations, and believe that it was going to be a good day. Reading this poem by Colleen Michaels helped me remember the experience, because her poem captures the joy of doing something for others.