Essays

What do essays & storytelling have to do
with cooking & recipes?

Food tells a story --- one story divided into three --- in a thousand different ways.

From the moment a mother puts her baby to her breast until the end of our brief spin on this green and gold and blue globe, food is meant to serve three purposes. It nourishes us, it offers us sensual pleasure, and it serves as the benign medium of human contact. We hunger in these three ways; we seek to appease those hungers. And if only one or two of the three is met, no matter how many calories we take in, we remain hungry.

How we satisfy these hungers, physical and otherwise, is both universal and deeply, particularly personal. Crescent Dragonwagon, called "one of America's most prolific and versatile writers...an earthy, yarn-spinning woman," by the Chicago Tribune, is one teller of stories about life as seen through food.

To be nourished body & soul

What we believe is healthful, and why; what we choose to eat or not to eat and why:

these are stories about nourishment. So are points of view about disease and health, body weight and shape, aging. Every story you read which begins "According to a recent study by..." , and goes on discuss scientific research on any element of diet (as if they could be isolated anywhere but in a laboratory): phyto-chemicals, micronutrients, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, fibers... these too tell the nourishment story. Lately, as we become more and more aware that we are not just residents of a nation but global neighbors, this story has been expanding. The intersection between individual and environmental health, and how we nourish the planet which nourishes us --- these, too, are stories about nourishment.

You will find some of these sorts of stories here, which offers recently breaking vegetarian-related news.

To please & celebrate the senses & the world

Sensual pleasure: that is the story that Gourmet and Bon Appetit and Food & Wine tell; the story that wafts out on the exhaust fans from the bakeries of the world, which when we

catch a whiff, we cannot help inhaling. Taste and smell; even sound (rice or fajitas sizzling as they brought to the table; the snap of a bitten-into green bean or a cookie; the squeak of cottage cheeses in the mouth) --- these combine with sight (the orange-gold of butternut squash, the fuchsia tones of beets, the mysterious mushy browns of mushrooms) and texture (smooth silken tofu; crisp stir-fried broccoli, sensuous chocolate, melting sympathetically at the precise temperature of body heat). If the nourishment stories tells us which foods are "good for us", those which focus on sensual pleasure tell us about those that "taste good." (But, with this division, have we not already set up a duality which may not serve us?)

If you're looking for these sorts of stories, go directly to Recipe Index, and click on whichever ones intrigue you. Above each recipe you'll find the shortest of short stories by Crescent Dragonwagon: each recipe's headnote, inviting you you and your senses to enter.

To care and be cared for;
to give and receive

But the third set of stories, those about food as the medium of human contact, are perhaps the most fascinating. We eat at birthdays, weddings, funerals. We eat to mourn and celebrate. We eat to mark the passage of time: at holidays, in commemoration of the

seasons or our connection with the natural world or our national identities, or because of religious or family traditions. We bake the gingerbread our grandmother handed down to us, use the lamb-shaped mold in which she once made an annual Easter cake, the lamb's wool of curled coconut shreds. When we are sick we crave saltines and ginger-ale, not for their curative properties, but because that is what our parents brought us, in a tray with a blue napkin, when we were sick. We crave the olive oil, the greens, the borscht or harira, the felafel or peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the ravioli or chiles of our homeland (or even of our great-grandparents' homeland, without our ever having been there, if we ate those foods with them). These are the stories about foods that may or may not be nutritious or sensually pleasing as such, but carry with them tradition, identity, association, and personal history.

Join Crescent Dragonwagon
for a feast of thought,
words, and food

How we feed and are fed is both universal and individual, as particular as our ethnicity, family, nationality, class, and experiences; as general as this eternal three-fold human need, to be nourished and sensually pleasured by what we take in as food, and to be cared for. Stories about food may focus on one of these skeins, sometimes two or all three, twisted together, as they are in life itself.

That's as it should be. The stories food tells are the story of life, for eating is our contract with life.

Crescent Dragonwagon is one teller of such stories. You will find many such stories in PASSIONATE VEGETARIAN, and a few here, too.

Of Moose and Men (and women, bi-coastal cornbread, and learning to live with I don't know): (Fall 2003) A fall spent in Vermont, testing recipes with a friend, lots of cornbread, an unexpected visit from a moose, and ch-ch-ch-changes (following a summer spent in Los Angeles, mostly with a new boyfriend) lead CD in a direction that includes the poetic, the pragmatic, the pensive... and the pan-cooked.You'll also find links to recipes for jonnycakes and Savory Cornbread Stuffing.

Passionate Entirety: (Spring 2003) Crescent's recent winning of the 2003 James Beard Awards inspired this reflection on winning, losing, the myth of "deserving" and why cooking for others and writing about food is, in itself, an honor.

Melting to Joy (Winter 2003) During a very long winter, making ice cream from snow leads CD to consider choosing to engage in life fully and with delight, despite (maybe even because of) grief and loss.

"What a Feast We Had" (September 2002) When was first published, the editors of Book Page asked CD to write an essay on what was behind the scenes during the book's creation. But since the issue fell on the first anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, she found her thoughts traveling in that direction: not only to those horrific events, but the role food played in returning rescue workers to life as well as allowing those who felt helpless and futile to in some way help.