Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook - Hardcover

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ALICE WATERS is the executive chef, founder, and owner of Chez Panisse Restaurant and Café in Berkely, California.  She founded the Edible Schoolyard and has received the French Legion of Honor, WSJ Magazine Humanitarian Innovator Award, and three James Beard Awards.  Alice is Vice President of Slow Food International and the author of thirteen books. Her most recent books are My Pantry, The Art of Simple Food II, 40 Years of Chez Panisse, and In the Green Kitchen.  She lives in Berkeley, California.

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chapter 1

Natural History

When I was little, I always wanted to go to the Museum of Natural History and eat at the Automat for my birthday. So my family took the train from Chatham, New Jersey, to the Hoboken ferry into New York City. It was only for special events that we’d do this; we didn’t usually eat out at restaurants, and we didn’t go to Manhattan much. But I loved New York City. The dioramas in the natural history museum were magical to me. I liked seeing the animals in their homes, liked that I could get up close to them: the hummingbirds nestled in their tiny nests, the lions with their cubs on the Serengeti Plain, the little zebra foals. These were all exotic worlds that I knew nothing about.

We’d get all dressed up for our outings. My sister Ellen and I usually wore something my father’s sister Doris had made. Aunt Doris was an artist and often sewed clothes for us. My favorite was a cotton turquoise dress with a little pink flower print, pearly buttons at the neck, and a satin sash that tied in a bow at the back.

After the museum, we would take the subway to the Automat in Times Square. It was the first restaurant I remember going to; I must have been six or seven. Why was it my favorite? Because I could choose my own food. I can picture myself standing there in the middle of the restaurant, my pockets filled with quarters. Every surface of the Automat was shiny: there was a huge wall of little stainless steel doors, sort of like post office boxes, with windows displaying the food in each one. You put your money in one of the post office box slots, opened the door, and got your dish. Through the little door, you could catch a glimpse of someone cutting lemon meringue pie or assembling tuna salad sandwiches in the kitchen behind. It felt like an entirely new way to have food. I’d range around in front of the stainless steel wall and choose my dishes. Nothing was wrapped in paper, and I liked seeing the food before I picked what I wanted—-I couldn’t or didn’t read the menu, so being able to see it resonated with me. We’d each go for what we wanted, and then the whole family met back at the table to eat our various dishes together. I loved being given my own money and the fact that I could choose exactly what I wanted. At home we always had to eat what was put in front of us, but I loved putting my money into that little door—-it was my own choice. (The great irony is that Chez Panisse became known for offering just one fixed--price menu each night—-no choice at all. But more on that later.)

...

My parents had moved to our home on Passaic Avenue in Chatham just before I was born. The house was quite old, a little wooden clapboard structure from the late 1800s with a pitched roof and slanted ceilings in the two bedrooms upstairs. The family didn’t have a car until I was four, and the story I was told every year on my birthday was that when my mother went into labor with me, my father was so worried she wouldn’t get to the hospital in time that he put her on the milk train—-a local freight train that carried the milk from the dairy farms to the milkmen in town. My mother boarded the train all by herself; my father needed to borrow a car, pack up an overnight bag from home, and arrange for someone to watch my older sister Ellen, so my mother rode the milk train alone, in heavy labor. It was all men around her, and she was seriously worried that I was going to be born on the train that delivered the milk. Thank God she made it to the hospital—-just barely.

The Passaic Avenue house was what you might call a fixer--upper. It was in constant need of repairs, with holey screen doors that let the mosquitoes in and peeling wallpaper. My father was forever painting and putting the paper back up on the walls—-I can still smell the wallpaper paste. It was drafty in winter, and I was always cold. On winter mornings my parents had to stoke the furnace in the basement; it was the only place in the whole house that was warm enough, and I’d get dressed down there in front of the furnace while my father or mother shoveled coal. My fascination with fires might have first started there, but I think fire is fascinating to all kids.

When I was four, just a month after my sister Laura was born, Ellen and I came down with scarlet fever at the same time; we were quarantined to keep us from infecting the new baby. My mother was so worried about all of us. This was right before the polio vaccine was discovered, and people were paranoid about childhood diseases—-no one fully understood where they came from or how to control them, and so many children died of scarlet fever in the first half of the twentieth century. It must have been particularly frightening for my mother, because her own mother had died of influenza when she was young. Baby Laura was sequestered downstairs in the dining room, which was turned into a makeshift nursery (my parents painted it Pepto--Bismol pink), and Ellen and I were kept upstairs in the slant--roofed bedroom we shared. There was a quarantine sign posted on our front door, and my mother wore a mask around us. Fortunately, Baby Laura never caught it. Ellen and I kept getting in trouble because we were supposed to be in bed and not jumping around. But I did feel very sick, too. I don’t remember much else from our time at that house, other than the big garden out back. When I was about five, we moved to another house in Chatham, on Van Doren Avenue, which was much more of a traditional 1950s house: new and white, with green shutters and a garage.

...

When I think about my sisters, the first thing that comes to mind is that I didn’t know them very well. There were four years between my older sister Ellen and me, and between my younger sister Laura and me—-and then my youngest sister Susan was two years younger than Laura. Laura and Susan were together in one bedroom, and Ellen and I shared the other. Ellen thought I was a mess—-she never wanted to share a room with me and would get so upset about me throwing my clothes on the floor. I maintained a big rock collection for years; geodes were my obsession. It fascinated me that you could break a rock apart and discover it was filled with crystals, and I loved knowing about the layers of sandstone and quartz, being able to recognize them out on walks. I had shoeboxes full of rocks I’d bought or collected along the river.

Ellen wasn’t thrilled about having all those rocks in our room, either. She was bossy, always—-she had the upper hand, and she used it. We were so different in personality; I was emotional, my side of the bedroom was such a mess, and she was so practical, such a good student. I didn’t like her much when we were young, mostly because she didn’t want to be with me. We got into some vicious girl fights, biting and hair pulling. But in the way of so many younger siblings, I looked up to her. I always thought I’d end up like her: practical, a good student, responsible.

When you’re young, four years is a huge difference in age. Ellen was much more grown up than I was, and Laura and Susan were babies, so my sisters and I didn’t play together much. I often felt sort of lonely at home. Susan and Laura had each other to play with, they were only two years apart, and Ellen was with her older friends and was closer to my parents. She seemed to have more to talk about with them, being the oldest child. She always got to sit in the front seat of our green Plymouth, while I had to sit in the backseat with the two babies.

Susan and Ellen were...