poetry

How to make the most of out-of-date food and leftovers

Poet and artist Frieda Hughes hates wasting food – here are her top tips on how not to...

Friday 10 January 2025 12:18 GMT

EVERYTHING SOUP

Into the pot I toss post-Christmas and New Year’s feasting,

Yellowing broccoli, courgettes, the puckered skins of which

Must be removed, and exhausted onions fried with sprouting garlic,

Blended with homemade gravy extracted from the boil of turkey bones

And the juice of a roasting, to become a soup of some importance

When it might have all been wasted; old food given new life.

Two huskies chew down on broccoli stalks as I wield a knife

To slice over-dried dates that have been soaking to soften,

And peel browning bananas, sweet beneath their papery skins,

Mashing them with out-of-date walnuts into a gluten-free cake

As good as any professional makes when buttered.

Stale bread means a motorbike ride to Bala Lake

To feed jackdaws and seagulls in the bitter spike of cold

Before the floods chase sheep to higher ground.

Snow falls. I am quilted against the flatlining temperature

For a lunch at which the most perfect mounds of caviar

Mounted on miniature blinis, and the tenderest

Boiled quails’ eggs in the thinnest of pastry cups

Devour my attention before the meal begins,

And there is no soup.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in