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# Marooned
- URL: https://dianaludwick.com/marooned/
- Published: 2026-04-04T19:06:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T20:09:57.000Z
- Description: Poem, “Marooned,” written Saturday, April 04, 2026, a reflection on surrendering to life's circumstances and making peace with overly ambitious culinary plans. Poem 094 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: "Denuded raw pistachios: four hours of labor in a bowl." Photo: D
- Author: Diana Ludwick
- Tags: 2026 Poetry Challenge, Dry Humor, Humor, Long form musings, Poems, Snarky, Unserious, Chat GPT, Easter, Elder Millennial, Fail, GBBO, Giving In, Giving Over To, Hallucinate, Homage, Human v Machine, Ingredients, Jaws, Le Cordon Bleu, Marooned, Math, Matt Damon, meditation, NGL, Patience, Pistachios, Post-Its, Printers, Prompt Engineering, Puns, recipe, Sacred, Show-stopper, Tart, The Martian, Touch Paper, #Migrated-1792872215677, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-24 20:03

It's two days before   
a sacred holiday  
and I think to myself,   
"Show-stopper!"  
  
I find a gorgeous recipe;   
plot my day  
to prep   
the dessert of a decade.  
  
My husband deploys;   
hunts through three shops  
to find raw **and** unsalted pistachios.  
  
Finally he comes home   
with 230 grams   
of the good green stuff.  
Barely enough for the recipe.  
  
Alas, my recipe dictates  
a nine-inch round tart.  
And my sole tin  
is a 10-inch large heart.   
So now I need to do math.   
Like Matt Damon in *The Martian*.  
On a Saturday.  
  
I blow through five Post-Its,  
scribbling sums and figures  
and scratching many out,  
before I realize:  
*I'm gonna need a bigger bot.*  
  
I take some photos of   
the recipe ingredients   
from the four sections   
of the hefty cookbook  
I need to reference.  
  
I feed a prompt to Chat GPT:  
"Referencing attached photos;   
create a 1.25x scaled recipe.  
Credit the original recipe author."  
  
Obviously, I can't just trust AI  
I need to verify before I proceed.  
So I sample a few measurements  
and back-of-note confirm them.  
  
Success!  
The math is *mathing*.  
Now I'm feeling...  
pretty freaking smart, NGL.  
  
I get lulled into my print-outs.  
(As an Elder Millennial I need to   
Touch Paper to get through a task).  
Chad-ing it up, I am flowing along   
with increasing confidence. Nailed It!  
  
Except, no not at all.   
My prompt was a dud.  
I had said "scaled recipe," didn't I?  
A fatal flaw. My bad.  
I'd really needed an *ingredient list.*  
  
Now I realize   
— with growing woe —  
that I'm half-way through  
a fully hallucinated recipe.  
  
Directives that, I must add,  
a crew of computers,  
sans Le Cordon Bleu credentials   
(or taste buds for that matter)  
concocted from zeros and ones.  
Fail sauce.  
  
**GAHHHHH!!!!**   
I scream with passion,   
and without whimsy   
or ladylike demeanor,  
at full force in my lonely kitchen.  
  
My spouse's shadow   
darkens the threshold  
while his earthly form   
wisely hides behind the door.  
  
"MmmBabe—do you...  
Do you...possibly...need help?"  
He ventures.  
  
Gallantly risking his flesh,  
he pursues chivalry   
over self-preservation.  
  
I am,   
however,  
not speaking English   
at this time.   
  
*GREWAHSGHHH!!!!*  
I sputter,  
with full emphasis  
and negatory clarity.  
  
I am,   
as it stands,  
not accepting questions   
at this time.  
  
He recedes backwards  
without further prompting.  
I hear him fleeing to the safety   
of his home office.  
  
I return to the travesty at hand.  
I can recover.   
I resurrect the robot voice  
of my 2000s GPS device:  
*"Re-cal-cu-lati-ng!* 
*Re-cal-cu-lat-ing!"*  
  
I manage to salvage   
my shortbread dough.  
I roll it into a tight ball,  
wrap it in cling and send it  
to the blast chiller (fridge).  
  
Time to tackle the pistachio paste.  
I weigh the green nuts and   
recall, *oh no*!   
I need one point two five times  
what he had carefully procured!  
  
I turn to the pantry,  
where I find roasted, salted,   
still-in-shell pistach-a-lashes.   
Great.  
  
I put an empty ramekin   
on my scale.  
I tare it.  
  
Then I shell nuts  
one at a time,   
into the bowl on the scale.  
  
I discard shells,   
gently removing, as able,   
loose papery husks.  
  
This feels pleasant   
for about four minutes.  
  
I even have time for a   
quick daydream about   
becoming a TradWife.  
  
Maybe I, too, could   
make chocolate   
from raw cacao pods.  
Or manufacture   
my own Froot Loops.  
  
By minute 4:01, however,  
I am already  
tiring of shelling.   
  
And little do I know  
how many more minutes,  
hours, actually,   
are in front of me,   
to remove every single  
ripped piece of pistachio skin   
from a hefty mound of nuts.  
  
I am already doomed.  
Marooned, in fact.   
Stuck on the Isle of  
Reckless Ambition.  
  
Next time I look up  
at the microwave clock  
it is blinking 7:49 p.m.  
  
I've spent the day   
deep in minutiae  
lost in the land   
of the macro lens of my eyes  
a mere four-inch focal length  
from tiny green things.  
  
By the time I finished   
prepping the bowl  
I felt I could hear colors.   
  
Tipping the denuded nuts  
that took so long to uncover  
into the Cuisinart Processor  
felt like a felony.  
  
But I trusted the process  
I made a fifteen-minute paste  
and it tasted glorious;   
my family said it was the best.   
  
And that paste became   
pistachio pastry cream.  
And that cream became   
the base of the tart.  
And the tart had to chill  
o v e r n i g h t.  
(At least this was inactive time).  
  
I blink, and now my guests are here.   
It's Sunday, and I'm whirling  
and dashing about the kitchen.  
I retrieve scalloped potatoes   
from oven racks.  
  
I whiz homemade breadcrumbs.  
I precision-split broccoli florets.  
I start in on a garlic butter glaze  
when I realize:  
I must foist off the sauce   
to my other half.  
  
I can't avoid it any longer.  
I must return to   
the Tart of All Time.  
(TOAT).  
  
And I carefully sculpt   
ripe strawberry halves  
into heart-shaped nubbins  
and line them down the middle,  
of the chilled verdant tart.  
  
Throughout this   
three-day-long  
unintended check-in  
to a Silent Retreat, I realize:  
  
I succumbed   
to the circumstances.  
I let the waves of frustration  
become gentle laps.  
  
I embraced the challenges.  
I leaned into the hurdles.  
I endeavored and persevered.  
And I triumphed. Truly. I made it!  
  
They say it's about the   
journey, not the destination.  
And perhaps so.  
All the same, let's hope   
that tomorrow, we all get   
to fully enjoy this precision-crafted  
tart of consequence and humility.  
  
All that said, my loves:  
Next time, I'll solicit help   
in the kitchen trenches.  
Because as I now know:  
those pistachios aren't   
going to de-paper themselves.