Chop sentences well. Pour 3 qts. superfluous detail into lightly greased shorthand.

The economy of recipe grammar that I've been working within is really baffling. Articles must be dropped, but the most obvious steps must be pinned down with the utmost exactitude. And the continuity of labels is sacred, as if I'm writing in a programming language.

Also, what was all the fuss about numbers as words instead of numerals? The idea at first was to make these recipes as transparent as possible, though I sabotaged that supposed goal at every turn, writing "one" instead of "1" was just one way to do that. The first recipe, for lentil soup, appears to be making itself as opaque as possible by making a spectacle of its potential transparency. Really that's what I love doing anyway. The point, apparently, is not to write accessible recipes, but to make a show of it, to be dramatic, to reveal myself hiding.