Hello, Poetry Friend
When my daughter went vegan, she ignited a rediscovery of the joy of recipes. I told her I didn’t know how to cook vegan (vegetarian, yes; vegan, no), so did she have any recipes she could share? She emailed a cookbook and then — even better — she shared a couple of her own recipes.
I am a good cook. My daughter is a great cook. She cooks by instinct, and her recipes are basically poems.
We had eaten a meal of stuffed bell peppers at her apartment (which tasted far, far better than the fancy-schmancy dinner we had at a special event that night.) I asked her for the recipe, which she had to recreate because she does not use recipes for anything more than an inspiration for her creativity, as a swimmer might use a diving board. The result is two pages of food poetry.
“Hello, I tried to come up with somewhat of a recipe from the other day. I hope it turns out well!”
The instructions are written in stanzas: a bell pepper stanza, a meat-mince stanza, a Spanish rice stanza, an oven stanza. It’s her beautiful words, not mine, so, no, I’m not sharing it here.
Not too much 😊
“Go heavy handed with the salt and any umami flavors for a real “meaty” taste.”
~
“Make a paste-y sauce.”
~
“It goes fast if you do many things at once like: dicing the walnuts/garlic while the lentils are cooking.”
Too often we approach poetry-writing as if it’s a recipe that needs to be exactly right. It’s okay to go fast or make it meaty. How dense or light should it be? Go for paste-y. It’s okay to play with words, the way my daughter plays with ingredients.
Poetry Journal
· Find one of your favorite recipes — you know, the one that’s splattered with love.
· Look at it as if it were a poem. Where is the poetry in the instructions?
· Write a paragraph about why this recipe is important to you. What’s the history?
· Write your own poem. If you like, email me what you write.
Take care, Megan