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About Me:: I write in many genres, including cookbooks (the James Beard winning Passionate Vegetarian, Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread, and more recently, The Cornbread Gospels) and culinary memoir. I eat extremely locally (I have a terrific vegetable garden; 12 heirloom tomato varieties, 3 types of eggplant, tomatillos, ground cherries, 5 basils --- globe, Thai, spicy, lime, purple. Since I'm a Southerner who lives in Vermont, of course I have to have my okra. This is just for starters ). (And did I mention the cocoa shell mulch?)

I cook, eat, and feed others often, well, and generously.

I couldn't bring myself to check off :what makes me a Foodie?" because, frankly, "foodie" is a term I'm uncomfortable with, at least for myself. (I hasten to add "Dancing Spoons" , however, is right on target).

My relationship with cooking and eating is respectful, celebratory, sensual, and ecological: connection-based. Connection with soil, with other people, with nature and the seasons, with culture and the timeless techniques, alchemies and stories that are part of cooking for as long as human beings have hungered. "Foodie", perhaps just to my ear, trivializes this, makes it trendy and elitist.

But my spoons dance, believe me!

At 7:21pm on May 15, 2009, The Souper said…: We must connect: vegetables, herbs, local food, soups, eggplant, Vermont. :)

At 6:31pm on May 15, 2009, Janet said…: Hello Crescent,

I read about you a few years ago (or more) in Eating Well magazine. We share a passion for vegetarian eating, but not okra.

Healthy regards,
Janet

At 11:36am on November 24, 2008, Dana A. Romero said…: Welcome to Dancing Spoon, I wanted to personally invite you to join our discussions in regards to cheeses at the Cheese Group on Dancing Spoon. Every week we introduce a new cheese and invite you to find it in your area, buy it, try it and then discuss it with us. Again welcome and take a look at all the groups here on Dancing Spoon.

At 7:41am on July 31, 2008, J. Michael Wheeler said…: Yes, much ado.

Your Point three: the benign medium of contact and connection (person to person, human to nature, mother to child, etc). is a subtle and interesting idea. I've always been a Foodie (I'll still use the term) and my cooking for others was more an exploration of the foods and tastes and experience. I never had the feeling of nurturing encompassed by the phrases "EAT!" "MANGA!"

Update that: I've been raising my (now almost 6 year old) son by myself for the last 5 1/2 years and I've found myself smiling and feeling very good when he eats with gusto and asks for more. I've caught myself enjoying this and noted the feeling. "I get it now," I told myself.

Sit. Eat. Enjoy.

At 3:28pm on July 30, 2008, J. Michael Wheeler said…: Welcome to the Table, Crescent Dragonwagon.

We very much look forward to your participation.

The Foodie-as-a-Term debate is officially launched! I think this word is great for our evolving relationship with the culinary world here in the states. Gourmet is intimidating and misunderstood by most, and the word Gourmand would be more appropriate but not accessible.

A.J. Liebling is one of my favorite food writers and one of my treasured books by him is Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris. This book is based on articles he wrote for the New Yorker. (Liebling was a long time New Yorker writer.) He proposed calling the book Recollections of a Gourmet in France, but his editor protested that he really couldn't call himself a Gourmet.

It was changed to Feeder, before settling on the current title.

But if Foodie were a term in Lieblings time, I think he would have embraced it.