"The Joy of Cooking"

For the first time in my life, I feel fairly confident on a poem's meaning!

"Although beef heart serves six

my brother's heart barely feeds two" (15-16).

In "The Joy of Cooking" by Elaine Magarrell, the speaker juxtaposes the sister's tongue with the brother's heart.  Through what I believe would be metonomy (Google Chrome thinks that I meant to say Deuteronomy, but I definitely meant metonomy...), the speaker is relating the preparing of the tongue with simply having a heart.  The tongue represents speech, while the heart represents love.  The sister's tongue has been "scrubbed and skinned" (2) because of its constant use.  Meanwhile, the brother's heart is "firm and rather dry" (10) because he does not use his heart.  While the speaker has clear favorite combinations when speaking about the tongue, the speaker merely finds a stuffing for the heart lack luster.  The speaker then goes on to lines 15-16 where the speaker compares the heart of cow with that of a brother.  Of all the major players on the food chain, humans have some of the smallest hearts (somewhat because of our natural size, but this suggests deeper meanings since the speaker does not relate how a cow's tongue is longer than a human's tongue).  It almost implies that should humans use their hearts as much as we do our tongues, then the heart would be able to mature to the stage that the tongue does and maybe become a delicacy.

Lastly, the tone seems to satirical.  The speaker definitely seems to be mocking how people think that words speak so much louder than they will let their actions show.