Showing posts with label recipe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recipe. Show all posts

Monday, April 27, 2015

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.