OWC Publications

Seasoned With Words: Stories, Memoirs & Poems About Food

Seasoned with Words The Colonyhouse Cookbook Seasoned With Words: Stories, Memoirs & Poems About Food, was published Christmas, 1998, and sold in bookstores throughout the Northwest, with wide appeal. The stories (all about food) run from beautiful to bizarre. We had great fun publishing it, and you’ll have even greater fun reading it. The book is available directly from us if your favorite bookstore doesn’t have it. 

Seasoned With Words, the Colonyhouse cookbook that has been so popular is now selling at the closeout price of $10 while they last. These make marvelous holiday gifts. To order, send check for $10.00 per book plus 2.50 for postage for one book, $4.00 for 2-4 books and $6.00 postage for 5-8 books. Send your Name, Mailing address, and telephone number (in case we have questions) to Marlene Howard, 4140 SE 37th #10, Portland, OR 97202.

SEASONED WITH WORDS: STORIES, MEMOIRS & POEMS ABOUT FOOD

Hardback, 191 pp. $10.00. ISBN #1891535013. Oregon Writers Colony

Proceeds from this book go to reduce Colonyhouse Mortgage.

Available by mail order from OWC. Contact Marlene Howard by email.

In Our Own Voices

In Our Own Voices
An Oregon Writers Colony Anthology, Sixth Edition 

Here’s an except from one of the pieces in the anthology:

Chicken Scratch

By Andrine de la Rocha

     A while back, my daughter announced that she was interested in hatching baby chicks from eggs for a science project. Typically, she failed to tell us this until it was too late to acquire fertile eggs and incubate them. Instead we bought half a dozen day-old chicks at the feed store with which she intended to perform complex and mysterious experiments.

     Around that same time, my girlfriend and I had begun reading the Babylonian Talmud, the body of Jewish writings by ancient Rabbis, and were delighted to discover how many of the stories refer to chickens and experiments. The moment of God’s wrath: when the rooster stands on one leg and his comb pales. How to tell if there are demons about: sprinkle a fine ash on the floor at night and when you wake there will be chicken tracks in the ash, which proves there are demons, as everyone knows that demons have chicken feet.

     In the first few days one of the yellow chicks became ill and, despite moving it to a box under a heat lamp in my daughter’s bedroom, it died in the middle of the night. The wailing woke me as she cried, “I’ve never prayed for anything so hard in my life and it still died! God does not exist!” I was poorly prepared to handle a spiritual crisis at three a.m. The science project would take on a decidedly different tone. I wrapped the chick in tissue and put it in a Ziploc bag in the basement freezer to bury when we could say Kaddish and give it a proper funeral.

To order In Our Own Voices, fill out the order form here, and send it with your check for $12.00, plus $2.50 S/H to:

Rae Richen
Oregon Writers Colony Anthology
3034 NE 32nd Ave.
Portland OR 97212-3618