Keep Out, don't Dance in the Kitchen: a Chef Apprentice's Warning
 

Accidental Post. Sorry

Erik: maximum 16 lines.

Thanks Roger; I had forgotten.

Withdrawn for recycling

Nice one, Jerome!

I'd be surprised if you haven't got a winner there.

Cajuns dance in the kitchen, and are notorious for their joie de vivre.
But I don't know if the Oldie would understand Cajuns.

Try them, Gail - there's no entry fee and they may just charm Tessa, who is a law unto herself. I'd like to see them dance, anyway.

Thanks, Jayne. Lot of spirited competition on the thread, though, and who knows what lurks outside the Sphere? Agree with Ann about Gail's Cajuns. No harm in chancing an arm, not an arm and a leg after all.

Dancing leek to leek? How can one compete with that?

“You should dance more in the kitchen.
You would find it most enrichin’,”
he declared to his dear Betty
as she stood there hot and sweaty.
“Leave that mango, let us tango,
let us trip the light fandango.
Swap the juices of the oven
for some music and some lovin’.
Oh, your dishes are delicious,
so capricious and nutritious,
but mere food is not enough, dear, to sustain us.”
But, flush-faced, she turned round suddenly
and he quickstepped somewhat woodenly
to the A & E in Tintern
to inform a giggling intern
how he’d got a wooden spoon stuck up his anus.

And here is one you can all sing:--

Le Chef de la Dance

When your guests are queueing at the kitchen door
and your soufflé's sunk and the duck's still raw
and your jus has gone the consistency of glue,
Here's what I recommend you do:--

Dance, dance and have another drink.
Dance round your island and your Belfast sink.
You may not be Nigella, but you needn't be a prude.
They'll ignore what they're eating if you're dancing nude.

So here's my advice to all terrible cooks.
You'll do much better without cookery books.
Just microwave some leftovers and, till they've gone,
keep dancing round the kitchen with a broad smile on.

Dance, dance for all that you are worth.
Whether they're appalled or collapse with mirth
dance, dance, for no matter how you look
it can't be worse than the food you cook.

My kitchenette’s become a stage,
a space in which I can engage
my skill with ceps and chicory
while honouring Terpsichore.
I don a tutu and discard
my apron, to prepare roulade
and other gastronomic fare
while entrechatting, pieds en l’air.

While rustling up a crepe suzette
I execute a pirouette
and dance pas seul, yet meals for one
don’t quell my craving; when I’m done
I cry into my sauce chasseur
while yearning for a pas de deux.
A plat du jour for two’d enhance
the kitchen where I always dance.

Sylvia,
That is truly lovely. Surely there will be none better.

A watched pot never boils
so instead of watching I
dance a jig on tippy-toes.
It helps the time go by.

And sometimes I have so much fun
the way it makes time fly
that when I go to check the pot
I find it is bone dry.

Very nice, Sylvia. I love "chicory/Terpsichore"!

I dream of whizzing in Vienna’s waltzes,
A weightless penguin-driven shuttlecock;
Of tangos intimate as peristalsis
Belly-to-belly in a languid lock
With a flat-hatted Buenos Airean.
Or booty-bobbing to a reggae beat
With an accommodating Rastafarian.
Sometimes I jive on little twinkling feet,
Whisking my knickers through my partner’s crotch
And yet the people passing in the street,
If they should look, will only get to watch
An old girl doing a flatfooted bop
Around the kitchen with a squidgy mop.

Darn you, Drysdale, I thought I stood a chance with Tessa as a flyweight and now you come roaring into the ring like a writerly reincarnation of Bruce Woodcock. Absolutely brilliant, as well as rupture-inducingly funny. An inclination, far deeper than J. Corbyn's yesterday, to Lines 3 and 9.

If you can hang on till I've perfected me fleckerl, I'll knit you a truss.

Martin and Brian - thanks for your kind words. I've not done the Oldie before, so here's hoping!