My name is Podrigo Tumor and whenever I write a recipe out for a friend I normally put

some little extra delicious details in there about when you should do a little dance or

what kind of music should be on because I feel like a recipe is an opportunity in writing

to give some tools for survival as well as maybe a couple of quantities but normally

I'm fairly vague on quantities and recipes I write out.

But recipes are an old form of poetry and I think recipe and poem each have a measure

at the heart of them and measure about pain and measure about love and measure about

pleasure or about survival.

They're giving a certain form of instruction that can turn you either towards the deliciousness

of food or the deliciousness of language that can help you look at your own life and

feel like you're finding something from it in the engagement with the writing.

Ordinary Sugar by Amanda Gunn.

At Mary made graham cracker cake without measuring cups, divided one pound light brown sugar

with a knife, half for the cake, and half for the pearlescent hand beaten double boiled

icing.

And Erleene made yellow cake with frosting of real fudge, 234 degrees in all, slow-cooled,

poured just before the rapid and irrevocable hardening.

Ordinary Sugar coaxed to its epiphany.

An heir to their confectionery slight of hand, I keep their notes pressed in a book and

safe.

Sugar is poison to my arthritic knees but their recipes will rest nonetheless pristine,

not spoiled with things that just seem sweet.

...