An Onion in My Pocket

by Deborah Madison

  Dan didn’t hear about his mother’s not eating until she was three weeks into her fast. Her heartbeat was faint, her blood pressure nearly undetectable, and she spoke only in a faint whisper. He flew to Washington State to join her and his two sisters.

  Dan has always been an exuberant cook. You couldn’t keep him out of the kitchen and it was truly his joy to cook for others. So while he was there, it was only natural that he cooked for his sisters—soups for those cool and cloudy days on the northwest coast, a comforting roast chicken for dinner. After listening to the chopping and searing, and smelling his kitchen endeavors from her nearby bedroom, Mary called Dan to her and whispered to him in her faint voice, “This dying stuff is overrated and your food smells so good! What I’d really like most of all is some of your soup.”

  Dan used the chicken carcass from the previous night’s dinner to make a little broth. Mary sipped a few spoonfuls. It agreed with her body. She took more. It infiltrated her blood and muscles and made her heart beat more strongly. It raised her blood pressure to a detectable level, and raised her spirits, too. The strength that had left her voice started to come back and bit by bit she returned to the world of the living, to the pleasure of food and the enjoyment she had in being with her children. She died not long after that, but in a much more robust and happier state.

  THE NEXT GENERATION COOKS DINNER

  Patrick and I were invited to a dinner party given by Kate, aged seventeen, who was leaving for college the next day. Of course we would come. After all, we had known Kate since she was born and her two brothers since they were little kids. Aside from her brothers, her boyfriend, and a brother’s girlfriend, we and the other guests were her parents’ friends. And neither Kate’s mom nor her dad was going to be there—a sick parent needed attending for one and a truck had broken down for the other—which gave us the improbable giddy feeling that there weren’t any adults around. Besides, Kate had it all under control. Here is the menu she made:

  Margaritas from scratch

  Homemade guacamole

  Grilled asparagus and grilled steak with a (homemade) tomatillo salsa

  Polenta with fried onions

  A big Caesar salad

  A plum galette and lime mousse tarts for dessert

  Nothing was out of a package and our offers to help were met with a cheerful “No thanks! Got it!” So we adults sat around the kitchen table with our margaritas and basked in the situation: watching the kids cook dinner. It was a terrifically fun party.

  I had no idea Kate liked to cook or knew how. When I asked her older brothers about this, they replied that kids in Santa Fe generally know how to cook. They acted as if it wasn’t a big deal, just a natural consequence of growing up here, which I found odd and surprising. Why would that be?

  One reason, her older brother Andrew said, was the program called Cooking with Kids, which, for the past twenty years, had worked in Santa Fe schools to give children a hands-on experience of cooking and eating foods they might not be familiar with. (I actually taught Kate’s brother Will through this program when he was in the third grade. After that class, I went home and had a big belt of whiskey for lunch. I was not a drinker, nor was I a born third-grade teacher.) Then both brothers added that when, years later, they finally realized how much it costs to eat out all the time, they figured that they had to learn how to cook. That seemed like a more realistic reason to me.

  But they didn’t mention something that had been going on right under their noses, and it had to do with their parents. Their dad, a furniture designer, was a good baker, which meant that there was always fresh bread around or the smell of bread baking. When it was pizza night at their house, it wasn’t delivered but made at home. Kate’s parents weren’t foodies, but baking bread and cooking from scratch were just things they did. As a naturally social person, Kate’s mom often entertained, and both parents made time for friends and included their kids (and those of their friends) at their parties. They also gave parties in honor of their children—one graduating high school, another getting that master’s degree, a third visiting home from college—and they did so with natural ease and graciousness. So was it surprising that Kate would be able to pull off a dinner for fourteen with the grace and skill of a practiced hostess—and all this the night before heading east for college? Not really.

  Not to take one single thing away from this young woman whom we love and admire, but perhaps it’s true that what your parents do makes a difference and does count for something. In Kate’s case, a natural ease in the kitchen and equal ease with guests, plus a certain tolerance for chaos, were already fully functioning qualities in her young life, and these skills will only deepen as she gets older.

  It’s been many years now, but I still bask in the joy of that evening as the guest of a seventeen-year-old whose parents weren’t there, who proved herself a competent cook, a gracious host, and a lovely person. It’s good to think that the next generation can cook dinner.

  * * *

  —

  Nourishment and sustenance come in many forms. For many they’re found in their homes and expressed in homespun memories of, say, spouse or child cooking dinner, but they can also be found in the most dreadful of industrial meats, as it was with Ernie and later, Kate, or in a humble stew with homemade bread, as with Ann and Arnold. Nourishment can lie in the food itself—a corn tortilla fresh from a comal in Mexico or New Mexico, for that matter (I have experienced both)—the shock of the goodness of that first meal at Chez Panisse, or the surprising pleasure of good food eaten in a place as humble as a Motel 6. Nourishment might come from the person—again I think of Ann and her simple, thoughtful cooking and her calm table, or Dan cooking for his sisters and his mother. An extra- large table and friends attending a family event might well make a meal memorable, diffusing the usual family tensions. Or nourishment might come from the way food is offered. I think of the way utensils and napkins were set down on the wooden tables at Camino restaurant in Oakland, or the oryoki meals in the Tassajara zendo. It might come from the contrast of taking food that isn’t given, like that stolen sesshin cookie, but then, maybe not. Nourishment might also issue from when and where you eat—being cold and hungry and finding that café and that hot soup in foggy Carrara. It always comes from the kindness of strangers, like the cook in Scotland who paused in her day to feed two very hungry women, or the generosity of the family at the pueblo’s feast day dinner. There’s the potluck, that American meal for harried folks, often short of cash, and how it has the power to express the vibrancy of community. All kinds of circumstances surround nourishment and it exists on so many levels, almost none of them dependent on the food itself. Even sounds in the kitchen can become nourishment—the tap of a wooden spoon on the edge of a pot, the sounds of chopping or of onions sizzling in a pan.

  For me, beauty is also a kind of sustenance. The colors of vegetables are most vibrant when they’re first being transformed by heat. And the dishes I use are important too—their colors, their stories, the impressions of the working hand when they’re there, and the way their shapes set off food. Some are white, a-buck-apiece plates and others are very old French, handmade, kiln-stacked ocher plates, and there are many in between, including many hand-painted folk art dishes from countries I’ve visited, and that means that they are always part of a story. But I was also once startled by the pristine beauty of a taco loosely wrapped in white paper and set in a red plastic basket at the Jalisco Café in Coachella. You never know where the sustenance of beauty—or its lack—might come from. I distinctly recall the ugliest meal I ate, ever, in a Mexican bus stop in Pueblo, Colorado, where all the food on the plate was the same feral animal shade of gray-brown.

  Food as nourishment is often food that is healing. Many people have told me their stories about foods that healed them or their friends after some trauma because of their familiarity or personal meaning
, not because the food was replete with various compounds, or vegetarian, or gluten free. It was subtler, more personal than that.

  I have a story, too.

  A lovely man, a Tibetan scholar, the friend who had married Patrick and me, a man who was a beautiful light in our community, was tragically killed. The service for him was enormous. Hundreds of people felt a similar closeness and deep affection for this man, and because he had played a part in the world of Buddhism and in the life of the Dalai Lama, there were many Tibetan Buddhists present who had traveled far to be there, all of whom spoke, lengthily. A phalanx of monks played those long horns with their droning, funereal tones.

  As I sat through this long service, my throat grew increasingly tight, my face dry and hot. I was exhausted and sad. I was about to get up for some water when I noticed some Tibetan women walking down each row of mourners with large baskets of strawberries.

  The strawberries were not the little lumpy but stellar kind that I found in New York under the pines. Nor were they the intensely aromatic ones I’d carried home on my lap from California so that Patrick could finally taste a real strawberry. They were, in fact, the big, hollow commercial fruits that people like me love to hate. Still, as I learned shortly, even these fruits had managed to retain some of their divinity and magic despite all the devilish breeding programs they had been subjected to.

  One of the Tibetan women came to our row and paused in front of me with her offering. I took a strawberry from the basket and she moved on to the next person. When I bit into it, the juice was sweet; it flooded my throat, which softened. My flushed face became cool. Now I could take a deep breath. I could also cry. And I could also smile. Sweetness prevailed over sadness, but the sadness didn’t diminish. The two existed side by side. The nourishment was complete.

  Acknowledgments

  When writing about your life, even just a slice of it, there are a great many people to thank—for their help, inspiration, and their very being. I’m sure I’ve missed at least a few, but if you don’t see your name here, please know that I thank you, too.

  To begin with, I am especially grateful to my editor, Lexy Bloom, for her belief in this book, support, wisdom, and excellent and helpful suggestions. Thank you so much, Lexy, for taking me on. And my thanks to the entire team at Knopf, including Tom Pold, and John Gall, Kathleen Fridella, and Anna Knighton, for making a handsome book.

  Over time, I’ve had editors and agents who have been enormously helpful: Fran McCullough, Harriet Bell, Doe Coover, and Jenny Wapner. Thank you for all you have taught me. And a big thank-you to Sharon Bowers, for taking that rainy drive through Ireland and so, so much more. Designer Toni Tajima and photographers Laurie Smith, Erin Scott, Christopher Hirscheimer, and Laurie Smith have been invaluable in book making. And thanks also to Barbara Haber, formerly of the Schlesinger Library at Harvard, for making me welcome there.

  I wish to thank everyone I knew, worked, cooked, and studied with at the San Francisco Zen Center and Greens, especially Elaine Maisner, Richard Jaffe, Jane Hirschfield, Ulysses Lowry, Jim Phalen, Edward Espe Brown, Renee des Tombes, Dana Velden, David Chadwick, and those from so long ago. Thank you so much. And thank you, Richard Jaffe, for reminding me that it was you who left the William Carlos Williams poem on the reach-in door. You rascal!

  Elissa Altman, your encouragement over these many years has meant so much. You have been a good friend. And Susan Turner, you’re one special and swell person and I thank you for those boxes of books that I might not otherwise have read. To Gary Paul Nabhan, thank you for your wisdom and long friendship.

  In the food world, there are many I’d like to thank for their inspiration and generosity, among them Lindsey Shere, Alice Waters, Amaryl Schwertner, Peggy Knickerbocker, Paula Wolfert, Yotam Ottolenghi, Renee Erickson, Cathy Whims, Marcus Samuelson, Anya Fernald, Russell Moore and Alison Hopelain, Sylvia Thompson, Steve Sando, Edna Lewis, Scott Peacock, Charlene Badman, and Chris Bianco. You have all been important to me.

  In Santa Fe, I wish to thank my fellow grainiacs—Christine Salem, Alessandra Haines, Jody Pugh, Ron Boyd, and Diane Pratt for working so hard to grow the heirloom grains we want to mill and bake with—and the seed team for our fledgling seed library, including many of the same plus so many more.

  Many people have touched my life in different ways—ranchers Nancy Ranney, Tim Willms and Jim Bill and Deborah Anderson; New Mexican writers Courtney White, Stanley Crawford, William deBuys and Jack Loeffler; Don Bixby of the ALBC (Amercian Livestock Breeds Conservancy); Jannine Cabossel (the Tomato Lady); Richard McCarthy of Slow Food USA; Robert and Ellen Brittan of Brittan Vineyards; David Millman of Domaine Drouhin; California farmer Rich Collins; Celia Sack of Omnivore Books; excellent farmers and writers, Anthony and Carol Boutard of Ayers’ Creek Farm in Oregon; amazing balsamic vinegar makers Steve and Jane Darland; Diane Karp for her many meals and constant love; Patrick and Andy Lannan for holding political standards so high and for so generously sharing their “Irish wine”; miller David Kaisel; farmers everywhere; our family historian (on my mother’s side), Bob Golden; and many, many more. My gratitude to you all.

  I also wish to thank those who are my readers, who have taken the time to follow this journey with me.

  And lastly, my heartfelt gratitude to Patrick McFarlin and Dan Welch for your very different points of view in the kitchen and for your longtime friendship and support. You are both my teachers and dear friends.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The founding chef of Greens restaurant in San Francisco and a student at the San Francisco Zen Center for twenty years, Deborah Madison is also the author of fourteen cookbooks. Her books have won many awards, among them the IACP Julia Child Cookbook of the Year award for The Savory Way and Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, as well as other awards from the IACP, including a Trailblazer award in 2019. She has also been the recipient of the Les Dames d’Escoffier award, and five James Beard awards.

  Deborah has served on several boards, among them the Seed Savers Exchange, the Southwest Grassfed Livestock Alliance (SWGLA), and the Friends of the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market. She also started a Slow Food chapter in Santa Fe and has worn many hats in the national and international organization for several years.

  Today Deborah is most interested in grain production in the Southwest and in regenerative agriculture. She has grown and milled ancient wheats at her home in Galisteo, New Mexico, where she lives with her husband, artist Patrick McFarlin, and their little dog, Dante.

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