The Hungry Ear (5 page)

Abundant fishes, excepting salmon, which ws. found distasteful.

Meat of all sorts, especially pig, which roamed free and was fatty.

Also shellfish: quahogs and foot-long oysters; lobsters, though considered wasteful.

Wild fruit: huckle and rasp, blue being known as “skycolored” berries.

Parsnips, turnips, carrots, onions: these sown loosely and rooted out;

while these were cultivated in orchards: apples, peaches, apricots, cherries.

Cabbage—favored by the Dutch as
koolslaa
, by the Germans as sauerkraut—

was boiled with herbs brought from England; thyme, hyssop, marjoram, parsley.

Pumpkin, dried, or mashed with butter, where yams grew sparsely.

Corn, with beans as
succotash;
called
samp
when milled to grist;

in the South, hulled and broken, as
hominy;
or fried with bacon as grits.

Maple ws. not favored; loaves of white sugar worth considerable money

were kept under lock, cut with special sugar shears. For honey,

bees were imported, called “English flies” by the Narragansett.

RICK MORANIS

The average American home now has more television sets than people … according to Nielsen Media Research. There are 2.73 TV sets in the typical home and 2:55 people, the researchers said
.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, SEPT. 21.

I have two kids. Both are away at college.

I have five television sets. (I like to think of them as a set of five
televisions.) I have two DVR boxes, three DVD players, two
VHS machines and four stereos.

I have nineteen remote controls, mostly in one drawer.

I have three computers, four printers and two non-working faxes.

I have three phone lines, three cell phones and two answering machines.

I have no messages.

I have forty-six cookbooks.

I have sixty-eight takeout menus from four restaurants.

I have one hundred and sixteen soy sauce packets.

I have three hundred and eighty-two dishes, bowls, cups, saucers, mugs and glasses.

I eat over the sink.

I have five sinks, two with a view.

I try to keep a positive view.

I have two refrigerators.

It's very hard to count ice cubes.

I have thirty-nine pairs of golf, tennis, squash, running, walking,
hiking, casual and formal shoes, ice skates and rollerblades.

I'm wearing slippers.

I have forty-one 37-cent stamps.

I have no 2-cent stamps.

I read three dailies, four weeklies, five monthlies and no annual reports.

I have five hundred and six CD, cassette, vinyl and eight-track recordings.

I listen to the same radio station all day.

I have twenty-six sets of linen for four regular, three foldout and two inflatable beds.

I don't like having houseguests.

I have one hundred and eighty-four thousand frequent flier miles on
six airlines, three of which no longer exist.

I have “101 Dalmatians” on tape.

I have fourteen digital clocks flashing relatively similar times.

I have twenty-two minutes to listen to the news.

I have nine armchairs from which I can be critical.

I have a laundry list of things that need cleaning.

I have lost more than one thousand golf balls.

I am missing thirty-seven umbrellas.

I have over four hundred yards of dental floss.

I have a lot of time on my hands.

I have two kids coming home for Thanksgiving.

SHARON OLDS

When she comes back, from college, I will see
the skin of her upper arms, cool,
matte, glossy. She will hug me, my old
soupy chest against her breasts,
I will smell her hair! She will sleep in this apartment,
her sleep like an untamed, good object, like a
soul in a body. She came into my life the
second great arrival, fresh
from the other world—which lay, from within him,
within me. Those nights, I fed her to sleep,
week after week, the moon rising,
and setting, and waxing—whirling, over the months,
in a steady blur, around our planet.
Now she doesn't need love like that, she has
had it. She will walk in glowing, we will talk,
and then, when she's fast asleep, I'll exult
to have her in that room again,
behind that door! As a child, I caught
bees, by the wings, and held them, some seconds,
looked into their wild faces,
listened to them sing, then tossed them back
into the air—I remember the moment the
arc of my toss swerved, and they entered
the corrected curve of their departure.

If you're afraid of butter, use cream
.

—JULIA CHILD

ELIZABETH ALEXANDER

My mother loves butter more than I do,
more than anyone. She pulls chunks off
the stick and eats it plain, explaining
cream spun around into butter! Growing up
we ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon
and butter, butter and cheese on green noodles,
butter melting in small pools in the hearts
of Yorkshire puddings, butter better
than gravy staining white rice yellow,
butter glazing corn in slipping squares,
butter the lava in white volcanoes
of hominy grits, butter softening
in a white bowl to be creamed with white
sugar, butter disappearing into
whipped potatoes, with pineapple,
butter melted and curdy to pour
over pancakes, butter licked off the plate
with warm Alaga syrup. When I picture
the good old days I am grinning greasy
with my brother, having watched the tiger
chase his tail and turn to butter. We are
Mumbo and Jumbo's children despite
historical revision, despite
our parent's efforts, glowing from the inside
out, one hundred megawatts of butter.

LINTON HOPKINS

Thou still unravished bride of promises
a child of art and craft
fixed with many suitors eyes
born of Thracia from capra and aries
reaching perfection with the taurus

Vollon, still life's master
conjured you in 1875
Escoffier's contemporary, he knew who you were:
a foundation.

In ancient India you were clarified into one of their most elemental of foods.

GHEE, Sanskrit for “bright”

you are an ancient offering to the gods and burned in holy lamps and funeral pyres

eternal

beaten out of cream
kneaded and shaped
salted to preserve
fresh, room temp—there is no need to refrigerate you
as the poet Seamus said
you are “coagulated sunlight”

sunlight transformed by the cow
from the seasonal hue
cool and spreadable I taste your season,
bright, fat and herbal in spring and summer when
fed on clover and fresh grass
in the winter you taste of hay and grain

Julia became Julia when met with your aroma
commingling in a pan with shallots
many people don't know that you actually lighten a dish
small knobs stirred into reduced stock
mouthfeel, richness
the dish which is missing something
is quickly set right

Would French cuisine exist without you?
Chef Point in '37, manned the stoves at La Pyramide writing
“Butter! Give me Butter! Always Butter!”

So versatile are you
clarified to remove the milk
you saute at high heat
whole at low flame you perform a feat of magic:
you emulsify with yourself
the water, milk solids and fat,
a whisk, some coaxing
a smooth warm sauce is born, beurre monte
a little wine vinegar and shallot … beurre blanc

toasted till hazelnut brown; noisette
darkened to almost burnt dark black; noir
worked into eggs: hollandaise and bernaise

asparagus, broccoli, and legumes
they all cry out for you
Pastry without you is unimaginable
your melting between the million layers is the puff
pate brisee, pate sucree,
cookies and cakes all begin with creaming
you and sugar

the South?
fresh churned from cream with a second gift; buttermilk

whose quality is determined by how many of your children float across the surface

spread on warm biscuits with sorghum
a small knob in a bowl of grits
steaming hot sweet potatoes with you on top
bread & butter pickles tell us how they should be eaten
sweet, sour and unctuous
butterbeans are named in your honor
creamy like you when cooked right
glazed with you and black pepper
memories.

Who has not thought of you when you are not around?
hungry and romantic
blamed for a multitude of sins
doctors who decry you are often found at your back door
new science has shown;
you ain't all that bad.
in fact, your very nature may be good for the fabric of our brain
I knew that already

Think not of others.
Margarine, unworthy imitation, it has no song
Lard, Schmaltz Oil.
they are not so universal
nor so simple and complex
an infinite story

I place you in an ancestral black iron pan
watch you glaze across the black surface
when the bubbles foam and begin to subside
it is an invitation

add the minced onions and sweat
the beginning of so many journeys
from gumbo to perloo
I always begin with you

RUTH STONE

Then the butter we put on our white bread
was colored with butter yellow, a cancerous dye,
and all the fourth grades were taken by streetcar
to the Dunky Company to see milk processed; milk bottles
riding on narrow metal cogs through little doors that flapped.
The sour damp smell of milky-wet cement floors:
we looked through great glass windows at the milk.
Before we were herded back to the streetcar line,
we were each given a half pint of milk in tiny
milk bottles with straws to suck it up. In this way
we gradually learned about our country.

LIZ WALDNER

Veldt? Sounds good to me.
Like melt. Back when you could eat Velveeta
and call it cheese. My grandfather's macaroni and cheese
featured a whole brick of Velveeta. I liked peeling away
its beautiful silver wrapper,
Velveeta Velveeta
all over in blue.

The expanses of time in which there was this grandfather
appeared endless when I was in them. Who
could see to the ends of the plains and so see her end
beyond them? Who could think to look? You
(like Ohio and its vowels) went on forever,
just ate your macaroni and cheese, relishing
the brown bubbles on top, then did the next thing,
were the next moment surrounded and held in it
by all the things you didn't know would end.
Nothing ceded. No portend.
Only geranium and melamine
and thank you,
everywhere preceded by some please.

LES MURRAY

It was built of things that must not mix:
paint, cream and water, fire and dusty oil.
You heard the water dreaming in its large
kneed pipes, up from the weir. And the cordwood
our fathers cut for the furnace stood in walls
like the sleeper-stacks of a continental railway.

The cream arrived in lorried tides; its procession
crossed a platform of workers' stagecraft:
Come here
Friday-Legs! Or I'll feel your hernia
—
Overalled in milk's colour, men moved the heart of milk,
separated into thousands, along a roller track—
Trucks?
That one of mine, son, it pulls like a sixteen-year-old
—
to the tester who broached the can lids, causing fat tears,
who tasted, dipped and did his thin stoppered chemistry
on our labour, as the empties chattered downstage and fumed.

Under the high roof, black-crusted and stainless steels
were walled apart: black romped with leather belts
but paddlewheels sailed the silvery vats where muscles
of the one deep cream were exercised to a bullion
to be blocked in paper. And between waves of delivery
the men trod on water, hosing the rainbows of a shift.

It was damp April even at Christmas round every
margin of the factory. Also it opened the mouth
to see tackles on glibbed gravel, and the mossed char louvres
of the ice-plant's timber tower streaming with
heavy rain all day, above the droughty paddocks
of the totem cows round whom our lives were dancing.

DONALD HALL

In the pantry the dear dense cheeses, Cheddars and harsh
Lancashires; Gorgonzola with its magnanimous manner;
the clipped speech of Roquefort; and a head of Stilton
that speaks in a sensuous riddling tongue like Druids.

O cheeses of gravity, cheeses of wistfulness, cheeses
that weep continually because they know they will die.
O cheeses of victory, cheeses wise in defeat, cheeses
fat as a cushion, lolling in bed until noon.

Liederkranz ebullient, jumping like a small dog, noisy;
Pont l'Évêque intellectual, and quite well informed; Emmentaler
decent and loyal, a little deaf in the right ear;
and Brie the revealing experience, instantaneous and profound.