Tag Archives: Anacortes

A pleasant surprise!

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photo of Mrs. DeWitt C. Owen
My great grandmother, author of cookbooks “Nellie.”

I had a welcome surprise the other day. I received an email from a stranger who was cataloguing a huge collection of antique cookbooks. He read my blog posts about my great grandmother’s cook booklets and said he ran into copies. We exchanged a few emails. He said he was impressed and they were a good representation from that era. We’re talking late 1890s to early 1900s.

I mentioned there was one booklet that I didn’t have. “16 Studies in White and Gold,” which are egg recipes. He scanned and emailed it to me. A week later he said he found an extra copy, asked for my address and mailed it to me! I was thrilled. Since he doesn’t have “Sick Room Necessities,” I scanned it for him. Also, I found several letters and photos of Nellie’s as well as her husband’s obituary, scanned those and sent them to him. (FYI, Nellie went by her married name as a cook booklet publisher extraordinaire, Mrs. De Witt C. Owen. Her real name was Ella Upton Leighton Owen.)

Nellie’s husband De Witt was first a printer and then a newspaper publisher. Eventually they left Dixon, Illinois for the “far west” moving to Anacortes, Washington where he was publisher of another newspaper. They settled in Marysville, Wash. when he took over that town’s newspaper. My namesake grandmother Elizabeth Owen was their only child. When my mom Mary Ella (named after her grandmother) grew up in Marysville, Nellie lived next door. She was in my mother’s memory a loving and kind grandmother, the most nurturing person in my mom’s life. Nellie died in 1948, so I unfortunately never met her.

Nellie was a strong woman and set the type herself for her cook booklets that she sold across the nation for 10 cents each. Her market was ladies’ church auxiliaries. The booklets were used as fundraisers, much as our kids sold gift wrap to raise money for their school. My aunt told me that at times, Nellie supported her husband and daughter with her cook book sales.

If you want to read more about Nellie and her cook booklets, I wrote about her HERE.

Here’s an except from “Sick Room Necessities:”

Have a wonderful Easter weekend! Any plans to celebrate Easter, Passover or Spring?

I found a few photos of Ella Leighton Hunter (Hunter was her maiden name, Nellie was her nickname) in an old family photo album. It includes photos of Rose Hunter and A.J. Blethen. Blethen founded The Seattle Times and the family still owns the paper generations later.

I found postcards from Rose Hunter Blethen writing that she was looking forward to seeing Ella at Christmas. Ella was adopted into the Hunter family after her parents died. Dr. Hunter, Rose’s dad, thought Ella was so cute and always thought well of her. She was adopted as a young child. I’m enjoying researching our family heritage and am impressed that as a journalism major, I’ve got lots of newspaper history in my blood!

Time to get cracking!

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Dungeness crab from Costco.

Saturday morning we met friends from our old home for breakfast. I had a crab and asparagus omelette and my husband had a crab cake “benny.” We had a great visit with our friends and the food was delicious.

Since we were off our hill into Scottsdale proper, we made our way to Costco. I must have had crab on my brain because I ended up with the crab pictured above. Typical of Costco, it was more than we needed. Three crabs total.

Two hours later of sitting outside with kitchen scissors, nut crackers and a bowl for shells and a bowl for crab meat — and I was done with the cracking.

It was time consuming, tedious and my back, shoulders and hands felt it. But I loved every minute of it.

Why?

First, because Dungeness crab is my most favorite food in the world.

Not only is it delicious, it reminds me of my childhood. We had a boat we kept in Anacortes, Wash., which is the gateway to the San Juan Islands. In Anacortes, next to the Shell Oil refinery, we would catch Dungeness crabs. We’d anchor in that cove which had a slightly sloped sandy bottom where the crabs loved to live.

They aren’t the most intelligent creatures and we’d fish for them with salmon rods. They’d hang onto the line with one claw — munching on whatever we used for bait — cat food, fish heads, whatever. As we reeled them in, they wouldn’t let go until they hit the water’s surface. My dad was ready with the salmon net underneath the crabs when they’d let go. It was his job to untangle the crabs and put them in an ice chest.

My mom’s job was to steam the crabs in the boat’s tiny kitchen and serve us plates of Dungeness crab with squeezes of lemon and melted butter within minutes of catching them.

I’ve had nothing like it since — except for maybe the razor clams we dug and Mom cooked at Ocean Shores. The Costco crab didn’t quite meet my memories of our freshly caught crab, but it was delicious. A real treat for me.

My husband is under the impression that King crabs are the best. That’s because they don’t take much work and you get a big piece of meat. Any Dungeness connoisseur will turn their nose up at this. We know that the delicate flavor of Dungeness cannot be surpassed — and the work to get every morsel out is worth the effort. That’s why I sat and cracked crab for both my husband and me.

When we lived in Palm Springs, my dad would do the same for Christmas Eve dinner so we’d all have a crab cocktail.

Now this is a Dungeness crab sandwich!

Are you a King crab person or a Dungeness lover? What is your most favorite food in the world?