It is not just about food

Baking the Bread by Anders Zorn

Hi there, I think we are starting to see the end of the tunnel in this month of poetry. Personally I will not make it, I started running too late. But I have a challenge for you that should be fun.

I want you to consider recipes, the ingredients and procedures we use when preparing that perfect dish. Actually I find a recipe quite poetic sometimes. There is such a promise in the list of ingredients and the procedures that give a desired result. A well written recipe is actually easy to remember by heart.

Consider for instance:

Rev. Smith's recipe for salads

(Sydney Smith 1771-1845)

To make this condiment your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard-boil'd eggs;
Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen seive,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give.
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, half-suspected, animate the whole.
Of mordant mustard add but a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites too soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault
To add a double quantity of salt;
Four times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown,
And twice with vinegar procur'd from town;
Lastly o'er the flavour'd compound toss
A magic soupçon of anchovy sauce.
Oh, green and glorious! Oh, herbaceous treat!
Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat;
Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad-bowl!
Serenely full, the epicure would say,
Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today.

So today I want you to write a poem in the form of a recipe. It can either be something we can actually using for our favorite dinners, but why not a recipe for something more abstract such as love, spring or death.