Tag: food

Mrs. T’s by Jeanine Walker

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Mrs. T’s

Middle-of-the-night pierogies is not my norm,
but it once was. I came home late after a shift
at the AMC Theatres or Wendy’s
and started the water to boil. So many of the foods
I love are a conduit for butter, and this was no
exception: buttered sautéed onions, fresh
broccoli if we had it, and the once-frozen, now-
boiled pierogies moved to sizzle with the butter in the pan.
I could fry them to their perfect crisp, their dough
browned, ready to slice, then bite, the warm
mix of potato and cheddar replacing whatever
hunger I might’ve felt, what hunger for a missing
parent, the necessity of two teenaged jobs,
the bare loneliness of that house. Father
gone. Brother gone, brother out.
When I ate the pierogies I must’ve known someone
cared I didn’t eat only the stale popcorn
I brought home. Me at the counter those summer
Thursday nights, sautéing, slicing, savoring.

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Jeanine Walker is the author of The Two of Them Might Outlast Me (Groundhog Poetry Press, 2022) and the recipient of a 2025 microgrant for Korean poetry translation from Seattle City of Literature. She holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston, and her poems and translations have found homes in Poetry, Denver Quarterly, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Jeanine teaches poetry and publishing in Seattle, where she runs a comedy-infused poetry event called It Goes On.

Family Food by Wendy Hoffman

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Family Food

For fifty years now, I sprinkle the Hungarian sweet paprika onto the cooled sautéed onions and stir in bits of ice.

Mrs. Mathies, who helped my mother clean, had dictated this recipe. She bought her paprika at Paprika Weiss on the east side. It’s all in the spice.

The shop went out of business decades ago.

As newlyweds, my sister and I cooked this dish for our philosopher-husbands—a coincidence. Mother said they became philosophers because they couldn’t win arguments with their parents.

Sisters sharing recipes for beef, chicken, taste, divorce.

We baked from Grandma’s recipe for lemon cake. Mother called it Grandmomela cake.

Sisters sharing histories, genes.

No one else comes so close, like skin, and then it’s gone
like the only store that grinds and sells the authentic.

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Wendy Hoffman has published three memoirs, Enslaved Queen, White Witch in a Black Robe and in 2020, A Brain of My Own. A German translation of Enslaved Queen is forthcoming. Her book of poetry, Forceps, was also published along with a co-authored book of essays, From the Trenches, written with Alison Miller.