• Home
  • about
    • blog
      • Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer
      • #DinnerwithDragonwagon
      • Deep Feast
      • #WidowhoodWednesday
    • media: interviews / profiles / articles
    • radio / video
    • cookbooks
    • publications list
  • books
    • children’s books
    • novels / fiction
    • poetry
    • reviews of CD’s books
  • Mentoring
    • testimonials
  • contact
  • “Is that your real name?”
    • Subscribe
  • FEARLESS WRITING™ 2023

Crescent Dragonwagon

How we feed our hungers and what we feed them with, is rooted in every part of human life.

History, agriculture, environment; ethnicity, class; community and family, celebration and famine, health and disease, religion and ritual, ethics and economics, migration and science: look to food and you’ll find these and countless other connections between what we eat and who we are.

Look to Deep Feast, and you’ll find provocative discussion about this.  Almost anything could be on the table we’ll share here.

Does Deep Feast contain recipes? Sure, you’ll find some here. What about ooh-and-ahh photographs of, say, pear-cherry upside-down cake, or illustrated pictorials of step-by-step how-tos, like, say, how to make, and put up, green tomato mincemeat? Sure, you’ll find some of that here, too.

But there are good recipes and gorgeous photographs on many, many other food and cooking blogs (indeed, we explore, and link to, some of them here).

Deep Feast, though, is “writing the world through food.”

Deep Feast’s food writing includes, but transcends, the recipe.

In every bite we eat — whether it’s a wedge of skillet-sizzled buttermilk cornbread with beans and a green onion on the side, a Big Mac, or local artisanal sheep’s milk cheese on a homemade oatmeal cracker with a crisp Northern Spy apple from your own orchard — we take in not just (hopefully) nourishment and pleasure, but connection with our world.

In every bite we eat, we sign, over and over, a usually unrecognized  contract. That contract inheres in inhabiting a body on earth: you eat, and are, eventually, eaten. Ashes or flesh and bones return to that same earth, to become sustenance for other creatures who will also, in their turn, eat and be eaten.

In every bite we eat, we confirm the story of life: both an individual life and life itself. This story is told over and over again. Meal by meal, bite by bite, plate by plate. This story is always particular and universal. This story is many stories — some of which we explore in Deep Feast.

For this is where the narrative of humanity begins: food, shelter, and story. Our forbears killed the mammoths (food), dragged them back to the cave (shelter), and then painted what they had done on the ceiling (story).

It’s this last act that makes us human. All other animals, after all, also seek food and shelter. But we Homo sapiens also feel that third component, and  with deep urgency:  to narrate, whether through art, oral storytelling, or writing, what happened to us. To explore why; to discover who we are. In this exploration, though we may serve food, food serves us, and serves us generously.

We need the arc of beginning, middle, and end, because, as human beings, we are aware that we had a beginning, live (and eat) somewhere in the middle, and will meet an end. Because we are aware of our mortality, we are, as anthropologist Roy A. Rappaport wrote, “meaning-making animals.”

Let’s make meaning together.

Let’s make dinner. Let's talk, as we gather around a table as big as the world.

Let’s celebrate, together, the Deep Feast: life itself, the whole world, bite by bite.

MY FAVORITE “IMPOSSIBLY GOOD” VEGGIE BURGERS

MY FAVORITE “IMPOSSIBLY GOOD” VEGGIE BURGERS

By Crescent Dragonwagon

IMPOSSIBLE BURGERS? BEYOND BURGERS? I SAY, NOT FOR ME. I SAY, IMPOSSIBLY BAD. BEYOND UNPLEASANT. BUT THEN, I AM NOT THE INTENDED MARKET FOR THEM (see below) ARE YOU READY FOR A MUCH, MUCH BETTER VEGETARIAN BURGER? ONE YOU MAKE AT HOME? ONE THAT’S ACTUALLY TASTY, HEALTHY AND NOT PSEUDO-ANYTHING? IF SO, READ ON, COOK ON, AND GET YOUR BURGER-GROOVE… Read More

Filed Under: Deep Feast Tagged With: best veggie burger, Beyond Meat burgers, burgers, grill, Impossible Burger, kofte, Maurice Zolotow, stuffed vegetables, vegan, vegetarian, veggie burger

THE *** BEST *** BLACK-EYED PEAS FOR NEW YEAR’S DAY

THE *** BEST *** BLACK-EYED PEAS FOR NEW YEAR’S DAY

By Crescent Dragonwagon

HAVE YOU PURCHASED YOUR BLACK-EYED PEAS YET? DO YOU, PERHAPS, EVEN HAVE ‘EM SOAKING? (EITHER BECAUSE YOU LIKE TO DO THINGS A LITTLE AHEAD, OR BECAUSE YOU KNOW THAT THE LONGER INGREDIENTS IN ALMOST ANY KIND OF STEW-Y DISH CO-MINGLE, THE BETTER THE FLAVOR?) HOWEVER… HERE IS A CROCKPOT VERSION OF AN EXCELLENT BLACK-EYED PEA RECIPE, WHICH YOU CAN EVEN… Read More

Filed Under: #DinnerwithDragonwagon, Deep Feast Tagged With: beans, black-eyed peas, black-eyes, delicious, foods for New Years, New Years, New Years recipes, Recipes

OKRA: LOVE IT, RIGHT NOW

OKRA: LOVE IT, RIGHT NOW

By Crescent Dragonwagon

OKRA-HATERS! STOP MALIGNING A VEGETABLE YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND OR HAVEN’T HAD COOKED RIGHT! OKRA-LOVERS! LEARN A NEW WAY TO ADORE THOSE GREEN PODS! EITHER WAY, DO IT QUICKLY, RIGHT NOW, BEFORE SUMMER DEFINITIVELY ENDS. (PLUS, TWO DON’T-MISS BOOKS, AN EXAMPLE OF YANKEE WTF-NESS, RACISM IN THE KITCHEN, AND THE QUESTION OF SLIMINESS, DEALT WITH ONCE AND FOR ALL) People who… Read More

Filed Under: #DinnerwithDragonwagon, Deep Feast Tagged With: Arkansas, best okra recipe, best way to cook okra, Crescent Dragonwagons Greek-Style Smothered Okra, CSA, farmers market, Fayetteville, foods the slaves brought to America, okra, racism, summer food, The Cooking Gene, The Jemima Code, vegan, vegetarian, Vermont, Walker Farm, what makes okra slimy, white privilege in the kitchen

MY MIXED-BERRY UPSIDE-DOWN CAKE: FROM SCRATCH, OH-SO-EASY & SIMPLY DELICIOUS

MY MIXED-BERRY UPSIDE-DOWN CAKE: FROM SCRATCH, OH-SO-EASY & SIMPLY DELICIOUS

By Crescent Dragonwagon

To dessert-lovers, a good cake has no down side. Unless, of course, it happens to be an upside-down cake. (Go directly to recipe here.) To those of us who love making dessert — who find baking from scratch as much or more fun than eating it — the upside-down cake is a high-scorer. If short on time needed for your… Read More

Filed Under: #DinnerwithDragonwagon, Deep Feast, recipes Tagged With: baking from scratch, berries, Crescent Dragonwagon recipes, quick desserts, upside-down cake

“PAROXYSMS OF JOY”: EASTER BRUNCHING ON FEATHERBED EGGS

“PAROXYSMS OF JOY”: EASTER BRUNCHING ON FEATHERBED EGGS

By Crescent Dragonwagon

FEATHERBED EGGS, A SWOONINGLY DELISH, DO-AHEAD CASSEROLE — AN EGG MIXTURE IS POURED OVER CRUMBLED, SLIGHTLY STALE CORNBREAD, AND THE WHOLE SHEBANG IS BAKED TO A FARE-THEE-WELL — IS PROBABLY THE PERFECT MAIN DISH FOR AN EASTER BRUNCH WHERE YOU DON’T WANT TO SPEND THE WHOLE TIME FUTZING IN THE KITCHEN. IN HONOR OF THAT, THE RECIPE, WITH THIS STORY… Read More

Filed Under: #DinnerwithDragonwagon, Deep Feast, recipes Tagged With: breakfast, cornbread, Dairy Hollow House, Featherbed Eggs, The Spiced Life

PUCKER UP, BUTTERNUT: SOULFUL WINTER SQUASH SOUP WITH GINGER-APPLE SALSA

PUCKER UP, BUTTERNUT: SOULFUL WINTER SQUASH SOUP WITH GINGER-APPLE SALSA

By Crescent Dragonwagon

The circle turns. The green world again goes gold, yellow, red. Instead of the zucchinis, the excess of which we may have complained about only six weeks ago, we now coo over adorable gourds and mini-squashes, admire big honkin’ pumpkins and sweet, bright creased or crook-necked winter squashes.  So pleasing aesthetically, sculptural, decorative, signal of the season. And then! Beneath those… Read More

Filed Under: #DinnerwithDragonwagon, Deep Feast Tagged With: Butternut Squash, Soulful soups

TOMATO MEDITATION, AT SUMMER’S END

TOMATO MEDITATION, AT SUMMER’S END

By Crescent Dragonwagon

OH those first tomatoes; the kind, we eat out of hand (from our own garden, if we are lucky, a tomato eaten as one would a piece of fruit, parting that hairy aromatic foliage to find that first globe, still-sunwarmed). These are the tomatoes we wait all year for; even after we tire of them plain, mostly of us still wouldn’t… Read More

Filed Under: Deep Feast Tagged With: banadora, cilantro, Crescent dragonwagon, Gil Marks, green chile, Olive Trees and Honey, quinoa, recipe, summer food, tomato, tomato salad

COOL HAND CUKE: CUCUMBER-YOGURT SOUP WITH MINT, & GRAPES,  WITH A VEGAN VARIATION.

COOL HAND CUKE: CUCUMBER-YOGURT SOUP WITH MINT, & GRAPES, WITH A VEGAN VARIATION.

By Crescent Dragonwagon

THE ONLY SUMMER SOUP RECIPE YOU WILL EVER NEED. SO SAVE YOUR GORGEOUS SUMMER-RIPE TOMATOES FOR SOMETHING ELSE. BECAUSE, FRANKLY, THIS LEAVES TRADITIONAL GAZPACHO IN THE SHADE. It got up to to 96 degrees yesterday. In Vermont! And it wasn’t even quite July yet! This struck me as cruel and unusual punishment, because part of the reason I adore Vermont… Read More

Filed Under: #DinnerwithDragonwagon, Deep Feast Tagged With: chilled soup, cold soup, Crescent dragonwagon, Cucumber-Yogurt Soup, green grapes, mint, recipe, summer food

STILL BEANING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

STILL BEANING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

By Crescent Dragonwagon

There’s no doubt of this: New Orleans is a city which knows its beans. So when Camellia Beans, a well-respected and well-loved brand of dry beans based in that municipality approached me about using some of the lima bean recipes from my book Bean by Bean,  of course I gladly said yes. They have just put up the post featuring  three… Read More

Filed Under: #DinnerwithDragonwagon, Deep Feast Tagged With: Bean by Bean, beans, Brunswick Stew, Camellia, Crescent dragonwagon, Ragout of Shiitake Mushrooms Butter Beans & Southern Greens with Potatoes, Southern Country-Style Butter-Bean & Green Bean Soup

A TIMELESS BLUEBERRY COFFEE CAKE, RIGHT NOW. AND, INTRODUCING MONK-FRUIT, BEST-EVER ALTERNATIVE TO SUGAR.

A TIMELESS BLUEBERRY COFFEE CAKE, RIGHT NOW. AND, INTRODUCING MONK-FRUIT, BEST-EVER ALTERNATIVE TO SUGAR.

By Crescent Dragonwagon

“I had a farm in Africa,” begins Meryl Streep, portraying Isak Dinesen, in the movie Out of Africa. Well, I had an inn, in Arkansas. It is elegiac for me, because I loved it deeply, and because I loved my time there, and because both are gone — as vanished as Dinesen’s farm, about which she wrote so many years… Read More

Filed Under: Deep Feast Tagged With: baking, blueberries, Blueberry Coffee Cake, monk-fruit, monkfruit

YET ANOTHER  SECRET REVEALED IN MY FAMOUS “RAISIN-PUMPERNICKEL BREAD WITH A SECRET”

YET ANOTHER SECRET REVEALED IN MY FAMOUS “RAISIN-PUMPERNICKEL BREAD WITH A SECRET”

By Crescent Dragonwagon

I am in the waiting room of the Springfield, Vermont office of Dr. Richard Lane, absent-mindedly, slightly anxiously, working on a jigsaw puzzle (blue Victorian house, hanging flower baskets, edges almost complete). This is my first visit. I was referred by my regular eye doctor, because I needed minor outpatient surgery.  I know it’s minor but jeez, it’s my eye, plus there… Read More

Filed Under: Deep Feast Tagged With: bread recipes, cooking, Crescent dragonwagon, culinary writing, fame, polenta, Raisin-Pumpernickel Bread with a Secret, Vermont

ALMOND ICED TEA: OF SPOONS WITH ELONGATED HANDLES, TO SWEETEN OR NOT TO SWEETEN, MY MOTHER’S BEST FRIEND, AND HOW WHAT WE EAT AND DRINK CHANGES AS WE DO

ALMOND ICED TEA: OF SPOONS WITH ELONGATED HANDLES, TO SWEETEN OR NOT TO SWEETEN, MY MOTHER’S BEST FRIEND, AND HOW WHAT WE EAT AND DRINK CHANGES AS WE DO

By Crescent Dragonwagon

Note: the recipe for my lovely, nourishing, satisfying (if not too photogenic) Almond Iced Tea is told, italicized, in the photo captions, while the text tells a story. It is loosely part of  my #DinnerwithDragonwagon series. Though I usually drink tea not at dinner but in late morning/early afternoon… too caffeinated for later in the day, for me.  My mother’s great friend,… Read More

Filed Under: Deep Feast Tagged With: almond milk, Crescent dragonwagon, Iced tea, Recipes, vegan, vegan beverages, vegan recipes

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next Page »

Read Aloud with Crescent and Mark

NOT A LITTLE MONKEY, by Charlotte Zolotow, illustrted by Michelle Chessaree

"So, the little girl climbed into the big waste-basket and waited." ' Oh no,' said her mother, ' we don't want to throw you away.'"There are many ways to express love and the need for attention. Here, a busy mother and her just-a-bit naughty little girl tease each other affectionately — the little girl making her point without even uttering a word.That's today's story time — read aloud by the author's daughter at Crescent Dragonwagon's Writing, Cooking, & Workshops, with Mark Graff's "text support" and discussion."Just right for two-to-fours, the humor of this true-to-life story of a mischievous little girl who blocks her mother's attempts to clean house will elicit giggles from the lollipop set." Kirkus Reviews

Posted by Crescent Dragonwagon's Writing, Cooking, & Workshops on Thursday, June 4, 2020

Read Aloud with Crescent

Read Aloud with Crescent

The Washington Post on Crescent’s Lentil Soup Recipe

The Washington Post on Crescent’s Lentil Soup Recipe

Greek Lentil Soup with Spinach and Lemon, photograph by Tom McCorkle, Washington Post

Bean By Bean Cookbooks

#DeepFeast Recipes

More Posts from this Category

Dinner with Dragonwagon

More Posts from this Category

 for children:

A NAPPA Gold Winner
NAPPA


"... like a warm luminescent blanket at bedtime... softly lulling." -- New York Times


"(With) weary animals, Dragonwagon offers an “alphabet of ways to sleep,” smoothly working in some alliteration..."
- Publishers Weekly (starred review)


Available at:

Crescent Dragonwagon page style=

read aloud with Crescent Dragonwagon

Until Just Moistened

Until Just Moistened

Available for Purchase

Copyright © 2023 · Darling theme by Restored 316