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This file includes food and eating, beans, bread, breakfast, condiments and spices, dairy products, gravy, groceries, hunger, jam and jelly, manners, mushrooms, pasta and rice, peanut butter, salad, and sweeteners.

Also see Main Dishes, Vegetables, Beverages, Cooking, Chocolate, Desserts and Snacks, Dieting, Fruits and Berries and Health.

Food and Eating

Page Toppers

Quotes

ABC Potluck Dinner

You can plan the dinner and pick things from the list or you can just give the guests the letter with some ideas to pick from. If you have less than 26 people, assign more than one letter per person.

Songs about Food and Eating

Page Ideas

Some foods introduced to the market in the 20th century.

Source: Bon Appetit magazine.

There's Nothing to Eat

(Erma Bombeck)

The baby manual would have you believe a child's first words are "Mama" and "Dada". Don't you wish. The first word is "No," followed in two weeks by the first complete sentence, "There's nothing to eat."
"There's nothing to eat" is an expression older than dirt. It is possibly the greatest guilt line ever written. It'll play anywhere and is guaranteed to bring mother to her knees begging for forgiveness.
Perhaps the most familiar performance is the one staged hourly in from of the refrigerator door. A child will walk into the house, mechanically pull open both the doors to the freezer and refrigerator and scream, "There's nothing to eat."
To a child, nothing is considered edible that is frozen, packaged, wrapped in foil, needs to be heated, cooked, identified, or has not danced on television. Anything edible would have walked out of the refrigerator and jumped on their plate.
"There's nothing to eat" is a great line whenever a mother appears late from an afternoon where she has taken a little time for herself. My kids always played to the house . . . especially when my mother or mother-in-law were in it. They would wait until I had assumed my Florence Henderson pose of a loving mother and wife. Then they would appear and whisper, "Grandma, there's nothing to eat around here . . . EVER!"
It never ends. The first letter you get from your child at college will have one theme: starvation. And for mothers who work outside the home, food bulletins are issued every fifteen minutes via a telephone call. There's nothing to eat for breakfast, nothing to pack for lunches and nothing in sight for dinner. As for the woman who doesn't have an assortment of snacks by the door, don't even think of calling yourself 'Mother.'
In my son's apartment the other day, I opened the door to his refrigerator. There was nothing in it but a calcified egg roll and a box of cereal hiding out from the roaches. "There's nothing to eat," I said.
He replied, "I've been trying to tell you that for years but you wouldn't listen."

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Beans

Butter Beans

(song by Little Jimmy Dickens)

Just a bowl of butter beans
Pass the corn-bread if you please
I don't want no collard greens
All I want is a bowl of butter beans.

Just a piece of country ham
Pass the butter and the jam
Pass the biscuits if you please
And some more o' them good ol' butter beans.

Red eye gravy is all right
Turnip sandwich a delight
But my children all still scream
For another bowl of butter beans.

Some folks think that corn-pones best
Some likes grits more than the rest
But if I was a man of means
I'd just want them good ol' butter beans.

See that lady over there
With the curlers in her hair
She's not pregnant as she seems
She's just full o' them good ol' butter beans.

When they lay my bones to rest
Place no roses upon my chest
Plant no blooming evergreens
All I want is' a bowl of butter beans.

Songs about Beans

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Bread

Quotes and Page Toppers

The Toaster

(William Jay Smith)

A Silver-scaled Dragon with jaws flaming red
Sits at my elbow and toasts my bread.
I hand him fat slices, and then one by one
He hands them back when he sees they're done.

Songs about Bread

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Breakfast

Quotes and Page Toppers

Egg-Thoughts

I do not like the way you slide,
I do not like your soft inside,
I do not like your many ways,
And I could do for many days,
Without a soft-boiled egg.

One Egg

It's hardly enough for breakfast.
It isn't enough when you bake.
It isn't sufficient to a make meringue,
or cookies, or even cake.
It doesn't go far in a salad,
though you devil it, slice it or chop it.
But it covers the floor from wall to wall
if ever you should drop it.

Mix a Pancake

(Christina G. Rossetti)

Mix a pancake,
Stir a pancake,
Pop it in the pan;
Fry the pancake;
Toss the pancake,
Catch it if you can.

Songs about Breakfast

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Condiments and Spices

Quotes

On Ketchup

If you do not shake the bottle,
None'll come and then a lot'll.

Songs about Condiments and Spices

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Dairy Products

Quotes

Songs about Dairy Products

See Beverages for things about milk.

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Gravy

from Bread and Gravy

(Ethel Waters)

Bread and gravy, lots of bread and gravy
Beans and bacon, lots of beans and bacon
No more frettin' since I've been gettin'
Lots of bread and gravy all the time.

Songs about Gravy

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Groceries

Songs about Groceries

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Hunger

Songs about Hunger

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Jam and Jelly

Ingredients For Jam

(Mary Cooper)

Sufficient glasses
And a good-sized kettle,
Fresh-hulled berries,
Well-shaped and crimson red.
Sugar . . . and to put you
On your mettle
A small boy waiting
With a piece of bread.

Songs about Jam and Jelly

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Manners

Table Manners

(Gelett Burgess)

The Goops they lick their fingers,
And the Goops they lick their knives;
They spill their broth on the table-cloth;
Oh, they live untidy lives.

The Goops they talk while eating,
And loud and fast they chew,
So that is why I am glad that I
Am not a Goop. Are you?

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Mushrooms

Quotes about Mushrooms

Songs about Mushrooms

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Pasta and Rice

Quotes

Oodles of Noodles

I love noodles. Give me oodles.
Make a mound up to the sun.
Noodles are my favorite foodles.
I eat noodles by the ton.

Lasagna

Lasagna, lasagna,
You're wonderful stuff.
I love you, lasagna,
I can't get enough.
You're messy like spaghetti,
and you're cheesy and hot.
Lasagna, lasagna,
You really hit the spot.

Songs about Pasta and Rice

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Peanut Butter

Quotes

Peanut Butter

(Kenn Nesbitt)

It's delicate and luscious,
both the chunky kind and creamy.
There isn't any better food--
It's positively dreamy.

It's satisfying in your mouth,
it's scrumptious in your belly,
it's perfect on a piece of toast,
it's heavenly with jelly.

I like it more than any other
food I can remember.
I'd eat it every day from
January through December.

There's just one little problem
with this appetizing stuff . . .
Without some milk to wash it down
it mmmph mmmph mmmmph mmmmph mmmmmmmpphhh!

Peanut Butter Sandwich

In the pantry in our kitchen
There is food on every shelf.
There's a snack that I enjoy
And I can get it by myself.

When I am feeling hungry
And I need to fill my belly,
I find the peanut butter,
Get some bread and lots of jelly.

Then I make a tasty sandwich,
And I gobble every bite.
A peanut butter sandwich
Is simply a delight.

You can eat your cold Bologna
Or enjoy some ham and cheese.
But for me, when I am hungry
I say, "Peanut butter, please!"

Songs about Peanut Butter

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Salad

Quotes

Songs about Salad

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Sweeteners

Quotes about Sweeteners

The Bee

(Emily Dickinson)

The pedigree of Honey does not concern the Bee--
A Clover, any time, to him, Is Aristocracy.

I Like Molasses

(Hank Penny)

Now nearly everybody likes some food the best,
Somethin' they are fonder of more than all the rest.
Mine is plain molasses and I think that they're the stuff.
I eat all night and morning but I never do get enough!
'Cause I'm just crazy 'bout molasses, good ol' country sorghum.
I sops 'em in the summer and the fall.
You just get 'em hot, and get 'em spread,
On a hunk of ol' corn bread.
That's the way I like 'em best of all.

Now both my pa and ma, they like molasses too,
And pa says they're the only friend that'll stick to you.
Well, when they eat their molasses, they sure are a stuck-up pair.
They get in my papa's mustache and in my mama's hair,
But they're just crazy 'bout molasses, good ol' country sorghum.
They eat 'em in the summer and the fall.
They just set there an' they sop an' sop.
Man, I think they'd never stop.
That's the way they like 'em best of all.

Grandpa's eyes are failing, and he can hardly see.
What's in his molasses, not a dern cares he.
Grandpa's teeth are missing, every single one,
And when he eats his molasses, he just smacks 'em with his gums
'Cause he's just crazy 'bout molasses, good ol' country sorghum.
He eats 'em in the summer and the fall.
When they get so full of flies,
That they look like raisin pies,
That's the way he likes 'em best of all!

I went to see my sweetie; it was just the other day,
And she had supper ready, and you know she asked me to stay.
She didn't have no 'taters, and I don't think they ever do eat meat,
But a jug of black strap molasses was all she had to eat,
'Cause she's just crazy 'bout molasses, good ol' country sorghum.
She sops 'em in the summer and the fall.
Now when they trickle down her chin,
Shucks, I just lick 'em off again,
'Cause that's the way I likes 'em best of all!

Songs about Sweeteners

Some of the song titles on this page came from Eric's Thematic Songlists

Some graphics on this site are from Public Domain Clip Art, Free Clip Art Library and Free Clipart Now.

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