Ham Sandwiches at The Owl Café, or Another Trip Down Memory Lane, Except It’s Really a Remote Desert Highway in the Very Early 60’s

From Cronewolf Howls — Blog by DawnHeather Simmons

June 10, 2010

My dad was always a challenging man to be around. For most of my childhood I was terrified of him although I looked up to him and desperately lived for any small sign of his approval. But when we went camping, he was another man. A camping trip was the only time I or my brother ever really felt close to him, or even able to talk to him, at all. Then my dad was approachable, and shared with us his love of Nature, and all the things he knew about the world we lived in. When we went to the mountains or out into the desert with him, we could all breathe easier. We laughed and talked and learned a lot about ourselves, our planet, survival, history, each other, and what it was like to stand in silent awe under a sky with more stars in it than you ever imagined existed.

Continue reading Ham Sandwiches at The Owl Café, or Another Trip Down Memory Lane, Except It’s Really a Remote Desert Highway in the Very Early 60’s »

Goin’ to the Dogs

From Cronewolf Howls — Blog by DawnHeather Simmons

July 7, 2009

The menu for this last weekend has me thinking about hot dogs. I must confess, I like hot dogs. And in my life, they have a somewhat odd history, since we were mostly not allowed to have them. Dad didn’t like them. And Dad had a whole list of things that we were not allowed to eat at home because he didn’t like them. Hot dogs was one of them.

Mom, on the other hand, was addicted to chili dogs. So my brother and I were treated to tastes of that delicacy… always on the sly… sometimes in places that amazed our childish eyes. For part of my life, we lived in and around Los Angeles, so I had the pleasure of eating at the original Tail o’ the Pup. It’s a hot dog icon, set in a building shaped like a hot dog. For a time, we lived within walking distance, and ate there many times. When we moved back to the Bay Area, I learned to love Doggie Diner, another icon, now adrift in history. In the East Bay, where I lived and worked for awhile, I had my dogs at Casper’s along with the guys from work. It was a stop we made at least a couple times a week.

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Nail Broth

From Cronewolf Howls — Blog by DawnHeather Simmons

April 28, 2009

There is an old children’s story about a down-on-his-luck man who comes to a family’s kitchen door and asks if he can come in and borrow a pot and some water to make broth from the nail he carries in his pocket. (This story is also told with a stone taking the place of the nail.) As he goes along, he mentions to the farm wife that if he only had a little of this or a little of that, “this could be a broth fit for a king!” And, of course, she supplies this or that, and sure enough, the resulting concoction feeds the entire family as well as if they were all kings.

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Bringing an Island Tradition Home to the Great Northwest

From Cronewolf Howls — Blog by DawnHeather Simmons

April 18, 2009

I lived in Hawai`i for six and a half years before moving to southwest Washington state. When people here ask me where I came from, I might mention California (where I was born, and mostly grew up) or Colorado (where I lived for almost 25 years before moving to Hawai`i), but when I tell them I moved here from Hawai`i, the response is always one of total shock. The most commonly-asked question is, “Why?” The answer is complicated, and not really in the scope of this website. Suffice it to say that Hawai`i is a beautiful place, and I am grateful for the opportunity I had to be there for an extended time, and that I am just as happy to be back on the mainland. But, I suspect, I am like a lot of people who have lived in the islands in this respect: Some things I learned there will never leave me. One of those things is the Hawai`ian (by way of Japan) tradition of “omiyage.”

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Eating to My Ideal

From Cronewolf Howls — Blog by DawnHeather Simmons

April 18, 2009

When I pull up this website on my browser, the tab at the top of my screen says, “Culinate – Eat to Your Ideal.” I’ve been thinking a lot about that, because I find that this website speaks to me on a lot of different levels. To be sure, the writing herein is articulate, literate, thoughtful, provocative, at times, absolutely sublime. The recipes are intriguing. The personalities are charming and fascinating. I spend a lot more time here than anywhere else; wanting to read every word, try every recipe, explore every point of view, visit every farmers’ market. But what does this mean to me: Eating to My Ideal?

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Seedy Dreams

From Cronewolf Howls — Blog by DawnHeather Simmons

March 26, 2009

I am an aging hippie. There. I’ve said it, and I sure am not going to apologize for it. It is as much a fact of my life as having red hair. Like many people in my demographic, the appeal of the ‘60’s back-to-the-land movement is just as strong now as it was back in the 60’s, notwithstanding the fact that my immediate family were never farmers, we pretty much always lived in cities and suburbs, and the closest my brother and I ever got to a plot of farmland when we were kids was a roughly 5’ x 5’ patch of barely-producing adobe clay that we managed to grow a few carrots and radishes in one year. It didn’t help any that I grew up (and still have some issues with being) almost obsessively terrified of having dirty hands, and that I’m not noted for my patience. On the other hand, there was my brother’s kindergarten project of growing chives in half an eggshell. My father worked in aerospace, which was akin to being a white-collar itinerant worker. We moved at least 35 times when we were growing up, and every time we moved, the chives got dug up from the yard at the old house and replanted at the new one – and they always thrived. The chives weren’t allowed to make my parents’ final move to Hawai`i, but they were a family institution until then.

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One of My Favorite Comfort Foods - and Making Do

From Cronewolf Howls — Blog by DawnHeather Simmons

March 18, 2009

When I was a kid, there was a restaurant in Los Angeles called Margarita’s. Although it was a good 50 miles or more each way, we drove there to eat almost every weekend. Their meals included albóndigas soup. Once, Mom and Dad asked Margarita how it was made and she very graciously told us. In those days, you couldn’t find cilantro just anywhere. It was a big celebration in our house when the super-mega-mart started carrying cilantro! (We learned you could substitute crushed coriander seeds, but it wasn’t the same.) Mom continued to make albóndigas long after we moved away from southern California, and then I began to make it, as well. It’s one of my favorite comfort foods. I usually make this soup pretty spicy, because that’s the way I like it. I’ve served this soup to several of my friends and they often ask how it’s made. It’s really easy. The hardest thing is the meatballs, themselves, which are just messy, but not hard to make. My brother, a professional chef, really loved meatballs, and this soup was also one of his favorites.

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Getting the Most from Your Share in a CSA

From Cronewolf Howls — Blog by DawnHeather Simmons

March 9, 2009

Having a share in a CSA farm isn’t like shopping at the super-mega-mart. Many of us have shopped there for so long that we’ve forgotten – or maybe never even knew – that produce has seasons, and that not every product can truly be available locally every single day of the year. Real farm produce is affected by a number of things, including (but not limited to) location, seasons, weather, soil conditions, farming methods, and the availability of people to pick produce on a given day or at a given time. Even with everything else being equal, sometimes a farm on one side of the county may have totally different results this week from another farm on the other side of the county.

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Why I Participate in Community Supported Agriculture

From Cronewolf Howls — Blog by DawnHeather Simmons

March 9, 2009

We live in a time when running a family farm is a difficult and risky venture. This is unfortunate, because there are undeniable benefits to eating locally-produced fruits and vegetables. As a confirmed “foodie,” I can attest to the fact that fresh-from-the-farm beats bought-at-the-big-chain-store hands down! Once you’ve eaten farm eggs from free-range chickens, or fresh strawberries hand-picked this morning, you’ll wonder if it what they have at the store is even the same thing! And I truly believe that supporting small, local, family farms is good for our community and for the country!

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