"The Joy of Cooking" by Elaine Magarrell

"I have prepared my sister's tongue," Line 1

       Magarrell satirically speaks of preparing her siblings' organs as a meal. Her central theme is that she is fed up with her brother and sister, tired of their obvious flaws and short comings, and decides to write about it. She accomplishes this by describing her brother and sister through characteristics of the body part she is preparing. She implies that her sister is foul-mouthed, since she had to "scrub and skin" her tongue. Also, she calls her cheap, saying she is "economical", and that the tongue perhaps will "grow back". Her brother she describes as having a "dry" and "firm" heart, implying a meanness and cruelty in him. He is also boring, since his heart needs "apple-onion stuffing to make it interesting at all". Furthermore, she describes him as unkind, saying his heart is small, in that it "feeds only two". She is calling out her siblings, telling them to open their eyes and see the wrong of their attitudes and ways.