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Crescent Dragonwagon

COOL IT: BEST-EVER CUCUMBER & GREEN GRAPE SOUP

COOL IT: BEST-EVER CUCUMBER & GREEN GRAPE SOUP

By Crescent Dragonwagon

WHAT? A WEEK OF 90 DEGREE DAYS BEFORE WE EVEN HIT SUMMER SOLSTICE? ARRRRGGGH! OKAY, THAT DOES IT: IT’S EARLY IN THE SEASON FOR ME DO MY ANNUAL POST OF MY BLISSFULLY CHILL CUCUMBER-GREEN GRAPE SOUP RECIPE, BUT, HAVING JUST MADE THE FIRST GALLON OF WHAT WILL BE MANY GALLONS BETWEEN NOW AND FALL… I MUST. IT’S EASY TO MAKE,… Read More

Filed Under: Deep Feast, recipes Tagged With: Arkansas, chilled soups, cucumber, cukes, Fayetteville, gardening, soup

PERFECT HEIGHT-OF-SUMMER VEGETABLE RECIPES THE-TIME-IS-JUST-RIGHT-FOR: PANDEMIC PANTRY PLEASURES

PERFECT HEIGHT-OF-SUMMER VEGETABLE RECIPES THE-TIME-IS-JUST-RIGHT-FOR: PANDEMIC PANTRY PLEASURES

By Crescent Dragonwagon

— a pandemic pantry post — 8 WAYS TO DELIGHT IN SUMMER & FALL’S FRUITS AND VEGETABLES; YES, EVEN (ESPECIALLY) NOW I have been thinking a lot this year about something Annie Dillard wrote: “How we live our days is how we live our lives.” For reasons you know as well as I do, these, the days of 2020, have… Read More

Filed Under: #DinnerwithDragonwagon, #pandemicpantry, Deep Feast, recipes, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: best way to cook okra, cooking, culinary writing, eating locally, fallfood, gardening, green tomato mincemeat, okra, summerfood, upside-down cake, vegetarian, winter squash

elegy for a tomatillo … and Steve Jobs

By Crescent Dragonwagon

We planned to go for a walk at twilight tonight, David and I, but when we stepped outside the dusk was chillier than we'd anticipated. "I wonder if I should go check the forecast," he said. "Yeah, you should," I said, "because if it's going to get below freezing we probably need to do some harvesting." He went back inside,… Read More

Filed Under: Charlotte Zolotow, Crescent Dragonwagon, Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: aging parents, beans, blossoms, canning & preserving, compassion towards self and others, Crescent dragonwagon, death, first frost, gardening, gradual transformation, grief, grief & grieving, health, hope, love, narrative, natural world, Ned Shank, potentiality, preserving, resilience, salsa verde, Steve Jobs, story, tomatillos, Vermont, writing

Aunt Dot & the Splendid Sunflowers

By Crescent Dragonwagon

When I came to 410 East 57th Street that night, it was already dark, but not late. Early winter, then, it must have been, maybe about 7:30 or 8:00. A Sunday evening.  Aunt Dot, then 95 or 96, was seated facing into the living room, in one of the two 50’s-era Danish modern recliner chairs (blonde wood, cushions covered in… Read More

Filed Under: Crescent Dragonwagon, Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: aging, aging parents, appreciation, change, death, eldercare, gardening, grief & grieving, home, hope, hospice, letting go, love, natural world, saying goodbye, sunflowers, Vermont

creative discontent: lasting father-wit, & a writer/innkeeper’s ex-files

By Crescent Dragonwagon

I used to be an innkeeper. I used to be a daughter with a living father. I am neither of these things now. Yet both reside within me. Both come into my present life at unexpected times. They did today, a moist, misty day, one in which I felt slightly out-of-sorts. Perhaps this very out-of-sortness is what brought to the… Read More

Filed Under: Crescent Dragonwagon, Fearless Writing, Maurice Zolotow, self-understanding, personal growth, Writing Courses Tagged With: Ann-Margret, appreciation, cornbread, David Koff, death, Eureka Springs, Film, Food and Drink, gardening, gradual transformation, grief & grieving, Houdini, John Wayne, love, Ned Shank, Ricky Jay, Rumi, Steve Zolotow, T.S. Eliot, writer's memory, writers, writing

letting an invitation become personally seismic: how I began to grow up

By Crescent Dragonwagon

Greetings, dear blog-readers! May 1, 2009, is the one-year anniversary of "nothing is wasted on the writer", and I thank you, thank you for your generous responses.  I'm working on an anniversary post: it also happens to be the one-year anniversary of when I stopped using credit cards, as well as the general time of year I begin getting in… Read More

Filed Under: Crescent Dragonwagon, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: appreciation, asparagus, change, compassion towards self and others, Eureka Springs, friendship, gardening, gradual transformation, grief & grieving, love, Ned Shank, spring, writing

gills, guilt, garden… camera, catbox, cauliflower, cosmos

By Crescent Dragonwagon

Okay, this isn’t the promised Part 3 of my meditations on being in Unity, New Hampshire, with Hillary and Barack back at the end of June, which, God knows, is by now a yuga in the timing of political dialog today… Lord, I may never write part three at this rate, just incorporate the ideas into something else. At any… Read More

Filed Under: Crescent Dragonwagon, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: aging parents, appreciation, cauliflower, compassion towards self and others, culinary writing, David Koff, eating locally, gardening, gradual transformation, love, natural world, Ned Shank, peace, photography, Vermont, writers, writing

in pursuit of purslane; political prayer

By Crescent Dragonwagon

I know, I know… CD gets all gung-ho on blogging and then drops off the face of the earth. Why? A September book deadline, a July article deadline, and, with David, working on the most ambitious, satisfying, beautiful vegetable garden I have ever grown, but … Unity, New Hampshire & the writing process But that’s not why I’ve been so… Read More

Filed Under: Crescent Dragonwagon, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: appreciation, cooking, eating locally, environmentalism, Eureka Springs, farmer's markets, gardening, getting things done, housekeeping, Marge Piercy, natural world, Ned Shank, Vermont, writers, writing

identity gumbo

By Crescent Dragonwagon

What does it matter if we know, or tell, our personal stories? I wrote, on June 9 post, about buying a lungwort plant at the annual plant sale for the Putney Library, and the extra pleasure that small bit of history gives me each year when it blooms. I love getting plants in such ways, rather than from a nursery…. Read More

Filed Under: Charlotte Zolotow, Crescent Dragonwagon, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: Arkansas, death, Eureka Springs, gardening, gradual transformation, narrative, natural world, poetry, writers, writing

narrative flowers, garden blues (Houseman, Hopkins, on harmony)

By Crescent Dragonwagon

The moment: Saturday afternoon, May 7, 2008, 2:11 pm. The place: a house on the top of a hill, not far from the small town of Saxtons River, Vermont. The view: a southeast facing window in which a vividly green meadow, exclamation-marked with a stand of tall silver-white birches, is framed first by woods, then sinuous curve after curve of… Read More

Filed Under: Charlotte Zolotow, Crescent Dragonwagon, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: A.E. Houseman, appreciation, Arkansas, Brattleboro, compassion towards self and others, David Koff, death, eating locally, environmentalism, gardening, Gerard Manley Hopkins, gradual transformation, grief & grieving, poetry, Vermont, writers, writing

Ohhhhhhh-krahoma: eat/be eaten, “write naked” , vegetable chameleons

By Crescent Dragonwagon

Ohhhhh-krahoma! (Or, the color purple). On Thursday I found actual okra plants, starts, seedlings! (If this doesn’t seem like big news to you , please go back and read the post for May 27). So maybe I will get some honest-to-goodness non "curiosity" okra from my very own garden this year. I’m still going to plant my okra seeds, though,… Read More

Filed Under: self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: Brattleboro, children's book writing, children's books, David Koff, death, eating locally, gardening, grief & grieving, localvore, love, natural world, Ned Shank, poetry, spring, Vermont, writers, writing

Playing Scrabble with the dead, feasting at the Brattleboro Farmers Market (with the very much alive)

By Crescent Dragonwagon

The other day, Saturday, I’m driving down the unpaved road which leads from from my home at the top of the down to Westminster West Road. I’m with Traca Savadago, my "pan pal" and all-around buddy. She’s a friend in the meet and instantly feel you’ve known each other a long time category, though we’ve actually only known each other… Read More

Filed Under: Crescent Dragonwagon, self-understanding, personal growth Tagged With: appreciation, Arkansas, Brattleboro, compassion towards self and others, cooking, culinary writing, eating locally, environmentalism, Eureka Springs, farmer's markets, friendship, gardening, gradual transformation, localvore, natural world, spring, Traca Savadago, Vermont, writers, writing

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

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Dinner with Dragonwagon

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"... 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)


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Until Just Moistened

Until Just Moistened

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