Welcome Madeleine! This is a fun place to hang out, I hope you enjoy it.

So you found equine alveoli
In your chili, and now shepherd’s pie.
Did it not give to you
A bit of a clue
That the company name is BirdsEye?

I am, Jerome, extremely glad to hear it. Perhaps Americans will give up rounders and take to the real game. Women play too. You can see them on television, bless their little pony tails.

They say that you are what you eat,
And consumers of lamb tend to bleat.
So something was fake
When two lovers of steak
Finished Cheltenham in a dead heat.

************************************

The prize-winnng chef’s keeping mum,
For the Michelin critics have come.
Though he makes no admissions,
His secret addition’s
A dollop of Pedigree Chum.

Jerome, thanks for the welcome! I wasn't consciously aware that I knew any cricketing expressions. But when you're writing a limerick and desperate for a rhyme, you never know what will pop out of the recesses of your brain.

Mary, thanks for the welcome. I'm sure I'll enjoy it here!

The chef, whose cuisine was Italian,
Would cook with both garlic and scallion
And pasta aplenty
(He'd serve it al dente),
But his secret ingredient? Stallion.

Nice one, Roger.

A dairyman watering milk
Said, "My aim's not to profit or bilk.
I avoid common tap
Full of chlorine and crap
And use Spa for a blend smooth as silk.'


A trader who lived in Dundalk
Was the subject of slanderous talk.
His cheap cheese,'For The Saver',
Had a strange gritty flavour
Which his rivals suggested was chalk.

Very neat, Roger, although not "neat".

Thanks!


One more:

The racehorse had all that it takes
To win, four strong legs and no brakes,
But after he passed
He finished dead last
So they served him as fine Belmont steaks.

Roger,
This puts you ahead of the rest of the posts here by at least half a length.

The sirloin? A great work of art.
Both the chef and the horse did his part.
But what gave it away
And made me say nay
Was the sound and the smell of my fart.

Neigh or nay?

The steakhouse’s owner said, “Dang us -
I’m so glad that customer rang us!
No wonder our venue’s
Deserted, the menu’s
Omitted the ‘g’ in ‘Prime Angus.’”

Though a good vegan-burger’s a joy,
I’ve heard that some restaurants employ
A ruse quite unnerving,
Instead they’ve been serving
Vegetarian, horse-flavoured soy.

Frank

Edmund, I vote for "nay." It's subtler, and it still makes you think "neigh."

So good to see another familiar face here!

Psst. Calling DGB. Surely there are some fishy limericks crying out to be adapted for this competition? That's if I can be sure I'm herring you clearly...

Frank, your 'prime Angus' made me laugh!

Frank,

It really made me laugh, too!

A sure winner, I'd say.

Jayne

The chef down the road’s done a bunk;
The inspectors found pieces of skunk
And of poisonous toad
In his “Boeuf a la mode” -
The last straw was an elephant’s trunk.

Can you believe it? The NS competition usually (when it's prose, which is almost always) produces somewhere between 0 and 3 posts. This time, we're already up to page 6. There must be a moral in there somewhere.

What you reap all depends how you sow it:
Competitions - and this site can show it -
Are far more attractive
(And we are more active)
When summoning the skills of a poet.

New Statesman -- food limericks -- dealine 7 March
 

The German Minister is crass;
He must be something of an ass.
His reasoning seems rather wonkey,
Hardly worthy of a donkey.
Stubborn, too - to meet him, you’ll
Believe you're talking to a mule.
But who would ever want to meet him?
Let the hungry poor just eat him.

Thanks, Mad. I love people who agree with me.

Frank, I think you left out an "a" or "some" before "Customer" in line 2 of your Angus limerick. Oh, if this was in a college town, the proprietor should have that "G" welded to his sign. This was a favorite prank whan I was in school in the early 70s. (even when the townies were the culprits, the college guys got the blame).

Maine had a Governor (now Senator) named Angus King. Anonymous wags have painted out the "G" in his campaign signs over the years.

Re King. And was he?

Re verse. Lefties don't like it up'em. I've always said it.

Doug,

Frank's L2 reads correctly as: "I’m so glad that customer rang us!" though I think, Frank, it would be easier to get the sense of that line as:

I’m so glad that customer rang us!

A road sign in Birmingham, near my college, declares "Dogpool Road" and, surprisingly, no one ever obliterated the 'L'. We were a sophisticated bunch, obviously!

Jayne

We were a sophisticated bunch, obviously!

Or couldn't afford the paint.

Sometimes Angus may have acted like one, but he is popular. I suspect any altered campaign signs strengthened his voter base. And, while he's a reverse carpetbagger from Virginia, he handily wins elections here, running as an independent candidate. Our first Governor was Wiliam King, a local boy.

Then, we have Steven King. I'd say that Steven is the king of his style of horror and suspense fiction. Financially, he has done very well, both with his books, and in dealing with the movie people. I think that most of his "The Shining" was filmed in the UK.

Plus, he's remained true to his roots. He still lives in Maine, and has supported many local charities.

Bogshole Lane and Borstal Hill are on the road to Whitstable And in Whitstable itself is Squeezegut Alley.

I had thought that some sushi would do me,
and when finished, I told Madame Fumi,
Your crab-leg sashimi
Was perfectly dreamy.
"It's surimimi," she told me, "Sosumi."

Re Frank's L2, how about:

"Thank heavens that customer rang us!"

That way you avoid meter ambiguity, without having to rely on a special font.

Yep, Madeleine's suggestion is the answer.

John, I was once sent to Borstal. But I'll tell you how and why another day. I'm off to make dinner.

Thanks, Mad - and welcome everyone.

Rob Stuart
 

My first time posting on this site, so here goes. Pick the bones out of these, if you'll pardon the pun.

No Briton I know of endorses
The Equidae as human food sources,
But in France scoffing fillies
Gives no-one the willies-
It really is horses for courses.


The horses that vanished from stables
Have now reappeared, on our tables.
I don’t care if it mooed
If it’s tasty when stewed-
After all, what are species but labels?


To the Parisian or Berliner
It is common to have horse for dinner,
But Britons don’t favour
The thought or the flavour
Of last year’s Grand National winner.

Welcome, Rob!

It's great when a new member heads straight for D & A :)

I'm having a bit of trouble scanning 'Parisian' in the first line of your last limerick. Just a suggestion:

A Parisian or a Berliner
Will often have horse for his dinner,
But Britons don’t favour
The thought or the flavour
Of last year’s Grand National winner.

Jayne

Thanks Jayne, I will ponder.

Ann,

Thanks for the suggestion. I will see what I can come up with.

There was a local festival (held to commemorate the closing of the last sardine packing plant in Maine) 3 summers ago, where I was one of the poets whose work was published in its chapbook entitled "sardine songs - herring hymns". I wrote a 9 stanza limerick poem for it, plus a limerick about "foodie" Martha Stewart eating sardines while in US Federal Prison (purely fiction ... not the prison term, but her sardine diet).

Herring rhymes are plentiful, but I will have to think a while about "adulteration" of sardines. I've had friends in various aspects of that business, but never heard of adulteration as a problem.

A friend of mine had her Jersey bull processed by a small commercial slaughterhouse 2 years ago, and about 15 pounds of the "ground beef" which came back was ground venison. She complained, and they claimed that some of her beef got "mixed up with a hunter's deer meat". She got sufficient ground beef to make up the shortage; and, no, they didn't want the deer meat back ( I suspect they didn't want to be raided by a game warden).

Anyway, since she and her husband dislike venison, she gave me the evidence. I mixed it with cheap supermarket ground beef to raise the fat content, and the result tasted very good that winter. Now, that was adulteration.

I just hoped that it was good poached deer, and not roadkill.

Come to think of it roadkill would make a good competition.

New Statesman -- Food limericks -- March 7 Deadline
 

I've got a beef with you, fellow

There once was a horse named Dan
Who was shot in Afghanistan
A man in a turban
took him to London
and labeled him Chateau Briand

Ann, I think I've got one ...

To avoid the “Barbarious!” charges
That are leveled at folks hippophagous;
Keep your conscience serene,
Eat the humble sardine
And similar creatures, pelagous.

"pelagous" is my tortured rendition of "pelagic" for the sake of a cheap laugh; not a mispelling of "Pelagius", the religious ascetic.

In my soup bowl, incredibly large,
Was a fly that resembled a barge.
"That's true, sir, I see,"
Said the head maitre d',
"But don't worry, there's no extra charge."

Ah, I wondered when the old fly joke would turn up. I tried to do the other version where the punch line is "Please keep your voice down, sir, or everybody will be wanting one", but it just didn't seem to be limerickable.

My try at the fly:

Well known to a very large group
Is the joke re the fly and the soup.
But the wait-person bloke
Not knowing the joke
Replied with this faux pas, “Oh, poop!”

As long as Roger's opened the fly, let a thousand groaners bloom.

It’s awful, this offal, what gall!
We can’t decide whether to call
A nurse or a hearse
And - what is still worse -
Our portions are terribly small.

Douglas - I knew about the festival and I've read all your limericks online. That's how I knew of your fishiness!

Not mine of course

A chap who was dining at Crewe
Found a rather large mouse in his stew.
Said the waiter, 'Don't shout
And wave it about
Or the rest will be wanting one too!'

My first line isn't the righ one but you get the gist.