Cook These Poems: 20 Vegetarian Recipes Disguised as Poetry

One day while researching poetry exercises for my poetry class, I came upon the idea of Recipe Poems. This exercise asked the poet to think of a food recipe and write a poem around it, about it, incorporating it – however it would work. I loved the idea, as there is nothing I love more than poetry, except for food! So I wrote my first Recipe Poem. Being a vegetarian, of course, I was not going to use a recipe for chicken cacciatore. I fell in love with writing Recipe Poems and turned to the Internet for finding recipes. I Googled “Vegetarian Recipes” and found a ton of ideas. Some of those recipes were from various countries around the world and made for even more fascinating ideas for poems. The recipes and “facts” (like the history of potatoes) fond in these poems are true, and following the directions should result in preparing the actual dish being written about. I used my imagination to make up the stories that are told in each poem. They are not necessarily “true” stories, thought some are based in true facts. But mostly, I tried to imagine emotional themes that would tie in with the food being prepared, like the tears in the “Oregano Baked Onions” and a sick old man in “Old-fashioned Vegetable Barley Soup.”