An Onion in My Pocket: My Life with Vegetables [Paperback]

As a groundbreaking chef and beloved cookbook author, Deborah Madison—“The Queen of Greens” (The Washington Post)—has profoundly changed the way generations of Americans think about cooking with vegetables, helping to transform “vegetarian” from a dirty word into a mainstream way of eating. But before she became a household name, Madison spent almost twenty years at the Zen Center in the midst of counterculture San Francisco. In this warm, candid, and refreshingly funny memoir, she tells the story of her life in food—and with it, the story of the vegetarian movement—for the very first time. From her childhood in Northern California’s Big Ag heartland to sitting sesshin for hours on end at the Tassajara monastery; from her work in the kitchen of the then-new Chez Panisse to the birth of food TV to the age of farmers’ markets everywhere,  An Onion in My Pocket is a deeply personal look at the rise of vegetable-forward cooking and a manifesto for how to eat (and live) well today.“More than a memoir, this is a history of America’s culinary coming-of-age.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“The intersections of food and spirituality are under-explored topics in American literature. Nourishment can be about more than an inventive recipe or a dazzling meal. Madison’s reflections remind us of larger, slipperier kinds of hunger that call to be satisfied.” —Los Angeles Times

“A true delight . . . [Madison] uncovers her love for all real foods, peeling off layer by layer like an onion, recounting her own personal, culinary, and gardening experiences and adventures with family and friends.” —Lidia Bastianich
 
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