By: Annna
[2002-02-20]
Bagels
The Past Gets Blasted
Pop here, this time submitting a poem Anna wrote long before she acquired her third "N." The yellowed scrap of parchment is dated "7-9-1991 AD," making the author eleven years old. Original orthography retained.
BAGELS
by Anna
Oh, Gee how I like Bagels
Tough and chewy and delicious
So popular to get them you must haggle
They're boiled in salt water like fishes.
When slathered in butter and nuked
You just can't stop saying Yum yum!
No one eating them has ever puked
They've a soothing effect on your tum.
You find the best Bagels at Fred Meyer's
If you freeze them then they don't get stale
Shaped like a frisbee but they fly higher,
They bounce back from being squashed in the mail.
All Bagels have holes in their middles
Why they are there no one does know,
Bakers use the missing dough to patch fiddles,
One man plays Ring Toss with his toe.
Now Bagels are very perfect food
Just 1 will fill up your whole belly,
You can season them to your every mood
When they rot they don't hardly get smelly.
When Mom eats a Bagel she stuffs it
With chicken and mustard galore
When I get a Bagel I butter it,
Unless it's been down on the floor.
This ends the Saga of The Bagel,
It should really fill a big book
But about cleaning rooms Mom did naggle,
So I quit and stuck this in a nook.
Excellent
I feel the second last verse is carrying artistic license a bit far in its utter disregard for the Fifteen Second Rule. (In case youse don't have it there, the fifteen second rule states that it's safe to eat anything that falls on the floor provided you rescue it within fifteen seconds).
Hygieny... it's a chick thing anyway.
I mean, if you can't see dirt sticking to the food, it's nothing to be bothered about, and if you can see it, you can pick it out, now can't you?
I don't like Oatmeal Bagels, but I like Just Plain Bagels and Onion Bagels best. Also, Rye Bagels and Pumpernickel Bagels are good. Bagel chips are nice on salad, or just to munch, because they are as hard as wood and have a big loud crunch.
I do not fear dirt. In fact, I will speculate that it's only in the last 75 years that people have worried so much about dirt causing disease; the human race somehow managed to survive prior to that without washing their dishes in anti-bacterial soap. Granted, pig-like conditions are not good for human beings, but I submit that if you can't see a layer of schmutz on the bagel, you've got nothing to worry about.
Feh, when did we turn into a compulsively-hand-washing nation? It's like Gallant from Highlights magazine took control of the orbital mind control lasers.
Um, anyway. Bagels. Yes. Nice poem, pre "n". Did she have a baby letter that had just fallen out, and this was written before the adult "n" grew in?
Live, unpasteurized beer is good. I recently read that a healthy normal level of bioflora, there are more cells than the total number of cells in the human organism. This seems incredible to me, so I will try to search it more. Live yoghurt is good, and I seem to get along with acidophilus. If you haven't read "The Santaroga Barrier" by Frank Herbert, I recommend it; it reminds me of Tillamook, Oregon. "Cheese, Trees, and Ocean Breeze"
The previous related to bagels because of yeast. One neighbor used to bring me homemade wine, usually because he didn't want it because "it didn't turn out right." I tried to communicate to him that there are different kinds of yeast for different kinds of wine, but I don't think that it sunk in. Sourdough is good, it's a special culture. They sell cultures of San Francisco sourdough culture, but if it's taken away from SF, it mutates. One time I was baking bread in Portland and drinking Hawaiian Punch. When I was mixing the yeast, I licked my finger and pretty soon I was staggering drunk! The yeast fermented the punch in my belly. I've made pretzels, but not bagels. The boiling part is tricky. Bread baking, the second rising is critical. After the Pirate Radio Convention in Washington, they gave me a big bag of bagels, maybe 35lbs of bagels. I put them in the freezer and had bagels for months. Not as good as fresh, but they heat-up OK. But I guess that you really got to like bagels to write poems about them!
From Rhoda Penmark's secret diary:
Oh how I love my bagels
They are my favorite bread
All bumpy like Claude Daigle's
Be-dented, shoe-marked head
Okay, mostly I was pleased to observe that "bagel" rhymes with "Claude Daigle".
Scroll down for "Send Me a Bagel"
Bagels
damn i havent thought about that store for like 15 years... i lived in eugene for a few years as a kid, and i used to blow my $3/wk allowance on a g.i. joe there every week...
I got my bagel recipe from a cookbook called "Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking." This year when my Christian Student Fellowship does their fish breakfast, I think I'll offer to make bagels if the club pays for lox and cream cheese. I'd have to get up at about 4 a. m. to make them, but fresh new bagels are so good, they make me weep for joy.
I also used to work at a bagel shop. I have a long history with this form of baked goods.
I think about Fred Meyer from time to time. At the end of SE 21st where I lived in Portland, there was a corporate office of "Fred Meyer's Market Time Roundup" Wahoo, buckaroos! One of my housemates was a math nut who'd gone to Reed and burned down the math dept. in two years; after two years they said that they couldn't teach him any more. My uncle in Eugene did that at Berkeley in the metalurgy dept.. My math housemate did some of the development stuff on bar codes for inventory for Fred Meyer, so that they know what's in the store at all times minus shrinkage (theft). Another store that I think of is the Plaid Pantry which we called the Plaid Panty. And Artic Circle, and Wiz Burger that had a neon sign that was great art; a monster hamburger with an olive eyeball. I had a buddy who's pop owned the 88 cent stores, which I think later changed to the 99 cent stores. I still think that Portland is the best place in the world. There aren't any banana slugs here.
I believe you mean "boiled goods".
What kind of yeast do you use? Jesuit bagels? I'm boggled! I always thought that they were crypto-Zionists.
That song is truly remarkable, I added it to my collection. You know, the GOOD thing about being senile is that now I can hide my own Easter eggs.
Yum.
