Composing and Cooking

in the kitchen

Preston Danvers is both a favorite poet and pantry chef. I could not pass up an opportunity to share his joy of wearing both hats so well.

To celebrate April as (Inter) National Poetry Month I asked him to choose a dish to make for his Preston’s Poetry (https://www.instagram.com/prestonspantry) that was inspired by one of his favorite poems.

This is the Chen Chen* poem he chose:

i love you to the moon &

not back, let’s not come back, let’s go by the speed of

queer zest & stay up

there & get ourselves a little

moon cottage (so pretty), then start a moon garden

with lots of moon veggies (so healthy), i mean

i was already moonlighting

as an online moonologist

most weekends, so this is the immensely

logical next step, are you

packing your bags yet, don’t forget your

sailor moon jean jacket, let’s wear

our sailor moon jean jackets while twirling in that lighter,

queerer moon gravity, let’s love each other

(so good) on the moon, let’s love

the moon

on the moon

Then I asked him

Q: Why this poem?

A: When I first read this poem, it instantly became one of my favorites. It’s playful, it’s sweet, it’s honest, and it’s unapologetically queer. These are things I strive for in my own writing – and in my baking as well. At the risk of sounding cliché, the world is really dark right now, and poems like this feel illuminating and hopeful. I’m also generally obsessed with space and have been since I was a child, so this poem naturally claimed a spot in my heart pretty quickly.

Q: How did this poem inspire the dish you decided to make?

A: The playfulness of the piece and the tangoing of the poem’s characters made me think of one of my favorite recipes I ever developed: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich cookie. This recipe sees two cookies coming together with two different fillings, a reimagining of a childhood staple that feels decidedly more adult and nuanced. I didn’t like PB&Js as a kid, so this cookie recipe always feels like a full-circle moment for me personally. And thematically, it just struck such a chord with the poem’s journey across love and space. Sometimes, two things truly can come together to make something so much more beautiful.

Lucky me (us)! Here is his recipe:

And this is how he puts it all together (oh, so like a poem, right?)

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, cream together butter, peanut butter, and both sugars until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and beat to combine.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. Then add them to the wet mixture and stir to combine.

3. Using a 2-tbsp scoop, portion out your cookies and press them down with your fingers or the bottom of a glass, creating perfect circles. These won’t spread much at all, so the shape you create is how they’ll appear in the end.

4. Bake for 9-11 minutes.

5. While the cookies bake and cool, make the peanut butter frosting. Beat the butter and peanut butter until fully combined, and then slowly add powdered sugar until combined. Add the vanilla and salt and then beat until the frosting is very light and airy. This can take 5 minutes or more depending on your mixer, but it’s worth the wait.

6. When your cookies are cool, either pipe or spread a layer of frosting around the outer edge of the cookie. Then, dollop a spoonful of strawberry jam in the middle, and top it with a second cookie.

---

One More Question

Q: What was it like for you to bridge the gap between these two artistic expressions (poetry and pantry)? What were your challenges?

A: Baking doesn’t always say a lot on its own; the meanings we apply to certain recipes often come from specific memories or other personal attachments. Because of that, I find pairing recipes with poems can be a bit tricky. I need to find a way to express the correlation that anyone, not just me, can get. Thankfully, I had the perfect recipe for this specific poem, with the ingredients and adaptation of a childhood classic doing the talking for me. This was a much easier pairing than I expected it to be at first!

As a poet, his poems are equally tasty and feel so at ease on the page. To date his publishing credits include JOAN:ARC (Ethel Zine & Micro Press), Red Rover, Red Lover (Roaring Junior Press) and a myriad of individual poem publications, like Narcissus Buys a Waterbed to Sleep with Himself in Fairy Tale Review.

To know more this talented poet/baker: https://www.instagram.com/prestonspantry/

*Chen Chen: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/160539/i-love-you-to-the-moon-