Stick with this to the finish…
Thank you Susan
Tag: dinner
I refuse to do drive-through. I am not a grazer, I am not a cow. You eat. You sit down.
“I refuse to do drive-through. I am not a grazer, I am not a cow. You eat. You sit down. You put a napkin there. And it has to have the colors. If you’re having a steak then you’ll have a little carrots because it’s really yellow, and it looks good. And maybe a little broccoli. So that the plate — first, you plate it. And my aunt, because my uncle died, and she’d been very sad. And I had to call her and say, “Ag, what’d you have for” — you know, because she didn’t have any daughters, right? And so I said, “Ag, what’d you have for dinner?” She said, “Oh, I just had a bowl of cereal.” I said, “You can’t do that. You have to plate your food.” You have to take of yourself. I’ve started to have massages because it’s like, I have to make time to have a massage. It feels great, somebody just rubbing oil in your back. Where’s the downside? You have to do things to remind yourself that it’s a really good idea to be alive.”
Nikki Giovanni, excerpt from Bill Moyers’ interview with Nikki Giovanni
Notes: Quote Source: Wait-What?. Photo of Nikki Giovanni: Jackson State University News Room
I would never scold the onion for causing tears
“It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was an
object of worship —why I haven’t been able to find out. From Egypt the onion
entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe.” — Better Living Cookbook
When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles,
crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,
pearly layers in smooth agreement,
the way the knife enters onion
and onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history revealed.
And I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
How at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma
but never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided,
or its traditionally honorable career:
For the sake of others,
disappear.
~ Naomi Shihab Nye, “The Traveling Onion” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems.
Notes: Poem – Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels. Photo: YMarchese with Bermuda Onion
Dinner
It was a table laid for men of good will. Who could be the actual expected guests who hadn’t come? But it really was for us. So that woman gave away her best to just anyone? And contentedly washed the feet of the first stranger. Embarrassed, we stared. The table had been spread with a solemn abundance. Piled on the white tablecloth were stalks of wheat. And red apples, enormous yellow carrots, plump tomatoes nearly bursting their skin, watery-green chayote, pineapples malignant in their savagery, calm and orangey oranges, gherkins spiky like porcupines, cucumbers wrapped taut round their watery flesh, hollow red peppers that stung our eyes— all entangled with strands and strands of corn silk, reddish as near a mouth. And all those grapes. They were the deepest shade of purple grape and could hardly wait for the moment they’d be crushed. And they didn’t care who crushed them. The tomatoes were plump to please no one: for the air, for the plump air. […]
We kept eating. Like a horde of living beings, we gradually covered the earth. Busy like people who plow for their existence, and plant, and harvest, and kill, and live, and die, and eat.
~ Clarice Lispector, “The Sharing of Loaves.” The Complete Stories (New Directions. 2015)
Notes:
- Photo: C’est Cheese – (away)with Tomatos
- Related Posts: Clarice Lispector
