Abby’s’ Kitchen
This is some of the work that our friend Paul did for Abby over in North Portland. Paul works with us frequently, and I would consider him a master craftsman of the highest degree. He is also a ceramicist, and an oriental paper maker as well. He is the best of company on any job!
Abby and Tom live in north Portland. Abby works as a musician, in a flute quartet if I recall correctly. She and Tom have a wonderful rambling house on an large lot, it is a very nice place indeed…. Her kitchen is the center of her home, and even more so now I would venture….
Gwyllm
Our friend Paul with his Ceramic Bagels…
The Bagels Mounted on Abby’s wall behind the stove…
Paul needed a snack….!
The Finished Kitchen Collage…
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Poems For Kitchens, Eating & Drinking…
Hunger, The Pang
Our mother earth gives
For one good grain sown
Hundreds of fresh grains
For our food in return.
How many sweet fruits
For a life time she gives
For one seed she takes
As one tree it grows?
Any animal on the land
Or any bird on the air
For its morrow’s food
Does it take all the care?
For the food on the ground
How a crow makes a sound
Of ‘caw’ to call crows around
Just to share what it found?
When big cooked rice balls
An elephant in its mouth takes
A part of it on the floor spills
That feeds hundreds of ants.
But when a have on this earth
For his self, the food he hoards,
Doesn’t the have-not’s mouth
Go unfed for days countless?
The food in a pompous feast
A junk of it goes as rubbish.
If this goes to the poor at least
Will that not fulfill God’s wish?
The worst pain in the world
Is what the hunger gives
But this can be solved
If all follow the crows.
-Rajaram Ramachandran
—
A Drinking Song
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at, and I sigh.
-William Butler Yeats
—
On A Slope Of Orchard
There on a slope of orchard, Francis laid
A damask napkin wrought with horse and hound,
brought out a dusky loaf that smelt of home,
And cut down, a pasty costly made,
Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret, lay
Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks
Imbedded and in jellied.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson
—
A Recipe for a Salad
To make this condiment, your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard-boiled eggs;
Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give.
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, half suspected, animate the whole.
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites so soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault,
To add a double quantity of salt.
Four times the spoon with oil from Lucca brown,
And twice with vinegar procured from town;
And, lastly, o’er the flavored compound toss
A magic soupcion of anchovy sauce.
O, green and glorious! O herbaceous treat!
‘T would tempt the dying anchorite to eat:
Back to the world he’d turn his fleeting soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl!
Serenely full, the epicure would say,
“Fate cannot harm me, I have dined to-day.”
-Sydney Smith
—
The Song Of Right And Wrong
Feast on wine or fast on water,
And your honor shall stand sure
If an angel out of heaven
Brings you something else to drink,
Thank him for his kind attentions,
Go and pour it down the sink.
G.K. Chesterton