Dietetic and Poetic

Boy, it's good to be back. How've you been? I hope you've been happy and eating well. I've been snowed under with projects but finally have all my Muscovy ducks in a row - for the next thirty seconds, anyway.

One of the most enjoyable assignments I've had this week was producing a stack of writing samples for a group critique I'll be attending soon. To warm up to write them, I played a word game.

You can play too, if you like. Grab a cookbook that you really like - go on, I'll wait. Now flip through it 'til you find a recipe that's a roaring success at your house. Now the fun part - let's see if you can turn it into a guest check haiku. Proper haiku poems have a specific structure. They're only three lines long: the first line is 5 syllables in length, the second 7 syllables, the last 5 syllables. Simple, right?

Well, it turns out, not necessarily. You may find that you can pull off the 5-7-5 routine, but I must admit that I worked better with a 7-5-7 scale. Since I reserve the right to exert editorial licence with the recipes I make, I decided that tweaking an ancient poetic form is ok too (you purists can avert your eyes) . But what to call my new creations? Pseudo-ku is too close to sudoku (which is too mathish anyway). What about quasi-haiku, or more poetically - quasiku? Good enough.

These recipes can become poems, but can these poems be used as recipes? I doubt it, but then I never really intended them to be functional. They're just for sport. Experimentation on paper is nearly as fun as kitchen experiments (but the paper tastes awful).

I'm no Basho, but here's what I came up with:

ROAST CHICKEN

chicken cut in two pieces

toss with thyme and salt

bake three two five for one hour

POUND CAKE

flour, butter and sugar

each one level cup

greased tin, hot oven, one hour

POT OF RICE

dab of butter, cup of rice

stir, two cups water 

cover, cook twenty minutes

BEEF STEW

browned beef cubes, herbs, stock in pot

celery, carrots

add potatoes, simmer, yum

BROWNIES

butter, eggs and chocolate

sugar, vanilla

stir in flour, bake and smile

QUICHE

get pie crust ready

bacon, eggs, cream and diced chives

serve hot or cold, yum

Did you get the hang of it? Are you inspired and ready to create a teensy masterpiece of your own? Me, I'm ready for a snack. I'd go for some chicken and beef rice quiche stew with a pound cake brownie for dessert right about now, but I can't for the life of me figure out why I'd want all that.........