Hello! Nov. 10 is #PoetryFriday.
Here at Bookseedstudio, links/calendars are below, before your comments, which are moderated. Please dig in.
It’s balmy in the low 80s here, more picnic weather than picking up chestnuts time. As I promised in August when introducing the delicious
POEMS ABOUT FOOD collection, I’ve returned to kitchen topics. This week I’m fortunate that talented word chef Patricia J. Franz, from #PoetryFriday’s Reverie blog, kindly adds her seasonings over at her website.
Big Meals Season starts with the possibility of trays of homemade Halloween treats. Sweets & savories pile on thru November, December & January as celebrations call for unusually [for me, anyhoo] Big Meals.
I’m sharing one unique recipe. Then, a prose poem.
INGREDIENTS
COLLECT a load of lemons from the tree you actually did grow.
SCRUB each fruit 2-to-4x to release bug grit, bird droppings, etc. Squeeze.
It’s E-Z-er for me to squeeze 80 lemons in a row ever since our darling daughter gifted her Chef Dad & me, a lovely small sculpture otherwise known as a restaurant grade hand-press Juicer.
WEED seed parts that evaded Juicer’s trap.
FILL silicon square cube container trays.
FREEZE
KITCHEN ICE by JG ANNINO all rights reserved
Girl days. Standing at the kitchen counter with my wonderful Father, unhinging a frozen aluminum ice tray, him telling me of boy days, his hauling drinking water from my grandparents’ remote farm springs house, him gulping freezing cold water in summer.
Now that was a treat.
My Father. After-hours into dark, spring summer fall, devoted to coaxing carrots celery corn beets radishes squash tomatoes from our beautiful black N.J. woods dirt.
Later. Living on a South Florida postage stamp sand tract, he & my mother dream of plucking lemons from their own trees, maybe oranges grapefruit tangerines. In the way of Dreams that never do come true, my parents couldn’t coax even one lemon tree from sapling to branch, to flower, to produce.
Many years later. My husband & I fancy ourselves transformers of this sunbaked North Florida suburban yard. We plant, we grow, lemon fig avocado. I unfold my lemon ice cubes out of a bendable tray in our kitchen.
In the way of Dreams that do come true, I pray,
Dad, here’s a treat for you.
This is Veteran’s Day Weekend 2023. My father was a proud Veteran of WWII, who drilled raw recruits into solider material, to take on Hitler’s death plan for Jewish, Disabled, Roma, and many Precious Others. I feel fortunate to salute my Father & heroes of that time, including my amazing Mother, who wrote up beautiful final words about U.S. troops who died while advancing the cause & also wrote in newspapers about Victory Gardens,
I hope you like these links. Appreciations for reading & commenting.
REVERIE blog – Patricia J. Franz
TASTY READS August 2023 post/ Bookseedstudio
POEMS ABOUT FOOD
Our current calendar, including today’s wonderful host KAREN EDMISTEN.
November
3 Buffy at Buffy Silverman
10 Karen at Karen Edmisten*
17 Irene at Live Your Poem
24 Ruth at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town
December
1 Anastasia at Small Poems
8 Patricia at Reverie
15 Janice at Salt City Verse
22 Jone at Jone Rush MacCulloch
29 Michelle at Michelle Kogan
Bookseedstudio 
12 responses to “Big Meals Season”
I remember my father’s sprawling vegetable garden in a thrown-up-yesterday development in New Jersey fancily called Colonial Park, and the neighbors who would bring their kids over to look. “This is where vegetables come from,” they’d say. The kids would blink. “From Mr. Fogelin’s garden?” For my family, yes, that is where vegetables came from. Mr. Fogelin’s garden. I have grown many gardens, but none as grand as my dad’s. I especially miss the Jersey tomatoes (Big Boys, Rutgers, Better Boys) and the rhubarb.
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Yes, wonderful Adrian. Thank you for the “Colonial Park” memories.
BigBoy is a tomato my Mom loved & ate as a mea, from our garden outside Quakertown.
She lamented the dear BB, upon unpacking in Sarasota & finding the tomatoes tasted like paper or chemicals.
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Oh, my goodness, I remember those hinged metal ice trays from when I was little! 😀 This post is deliciously inviting, Jan — so many lovely, lemony memories.
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Appreciations for hosting this week! And TY for the visit, Karen.
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Yum! Look at those mouth watering lemon cubes, they sure look good, and wow grown and picked and prepped from your own tree–fantastic! KITCHEN ICE such a moving poem and so much lovingly packed in there. Love your line on all the vegies your dad tried coaxing out of the ground–along with your “Later, ” and contrasting “Many Years Later” thanks for all Jan!
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This is lovely, Jan. The description of unhinging the aluminum ice cube tray took me back some 60+ years to our kitchen in a duplex in uptown Harrisburg, PA. Thank you for the sweet memory.
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Those lemon juice cubes look divine–and I love reading about how you got there.
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Jan, you must have a green thumb to be able to grow lemons, figs, and avocados. I tried for several years to grow a series of indoor lemon trees (5 in total, I think), only to sadly watch them drop their leaves one at a time until they were just sticks. I think your parents would have loved this lemony tribute!
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I love how your recipe flowed right into your prose poem, how your parents’ dreams flowed right into your yard.
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As Linda writes above, I also love reading your memories, Jan, and the stalwart way your parents kept on, trying to grow the fruits of Florida. Remember that they grew you, a lovely result of their labor! Have a lovely weekend!
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Incredible where lemon dreams can take us, Jan. Your prose poem is testimony to seed planting-of the human variety Seeds of love and hope, of values we imperfectly pass along (looking at you, Juicer), and the joy of memories. Blessings, every one of them.
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Jan, you are a wonder! You take something as simple as a lemon and turn it into a feast of poetry. Beautiful memories here…you take me back to gardens and dreams and memories of the dirt of my grandmother’s vegetables.
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