CRESCENT’S THREE BLOGS

“Live!” exclaimed actress Rosalind Russell, famously, as the character Auntie Mame. “Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!”

Crescent sets the table for life’s banquet in her three very different ways in her three occasional blogs, Deep Feast, Nothing is Wasted on the Writer, and Fearless Living / Widowhood Wednesday.

Deep Feast

Here’s the most obvious connection with Auntie Mame. What keeps us alive physically, often while giving us pleasure and connection? Eating, of course… which means cooking (or being cooked for, by others). This is an area of delight and obsession for CD, the James Beard Award-winning author of eight much-loved cookbooks which have sold in toto just under two million copies.

Crescent relishes the small, daily tasks of cooking, as well as the sometimes spectacular adventures our own kitchens can provide.She remains fascinated by and engaged with the big questions food and ingredients ask: how we provision those kitchens, and with what, and from where? How, in what we cook and eat, do we balance pleasure and health? How do we set a table as a big as the world? How do we work so that as many as possible can be seated and fed?

In Deep Feast, you’ll come with her into the kitchen, with recipes and menus, for both every-day cooking and holidays feasts, whether you are setting the table for family, friends, or just yourself. With her, you’ll visit glorious small home dinner parties (she believes that these, comprising no more than 6 to 8 carefully selected compatible guests, are among the highest forms of self-generated civilized entertainment). You’ll find inspiration for nourishment and indulgence (like the best-ever St. Patrick’s Day dessert, her Guinness Stout Chocolate Cake). You’ll adventure with her into food’s realms and rituals: shopping at the farmer’s market, hunting truffles in Emilia-Romagna or oyster mushrooms in her Ozark neighborhood. Occasionally, you’ll join her in putting up stuff for the cold time (like her extraordinary Green Tomato Mincemeat, which happens to be meatless). Traditions, eating out, travel, good cookbooks and cookbook-memoirs: all are bound together with kindness, research, memory, expertise, and humor. 

Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer

Fearless Living / Widowhood Wednesday