Growing up in California, I have long heard about Alice Waters’ seasonally inspired restaurant Chez Panisse and have considered The Art of Simple Food a culinary bible. So upon hearing that this cultural icon’s long-awaited memoir Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook was being released, we decided to offer it as a giveaway to our farm family. Below is a little bit of information about the author and a snippet from the publisher about the book. We haven't read it yet, but we are hoping you will read along with us and let us know your thoughts. For a chance to win a copy of the book, simply answer the question below:
(Giveaway is now closed)
What/Who Inspires You To Cook and Why?
We've chosen a winner! Thank you to everyone who participated. Congratulations to Susan who commented:
"I have recently rediscovered my kitchen with the advent of my weekly boxes from Farm Fresh to You. My juicers and blender now live back on the counter, not in the back of the cupboard. I have discovered new foods I hadn't met yet and am in love with fennel! Baby Bok Choy is another favorite. These are 2 foods I would have never picked up at the market, even the farmers market, because I didn't know what they were. Farm Fresh to You is my inspiration!!"
No purchase required. Limit one entry per person, please. Entries will close at noon on Tuesday, June 19, 2018. Winners are chosen by Random Number Generator and will be announced on our blog, Wednesday June 20th.
Photos Reprinted from Coming to My Senses. Copyright © 2017 by Alice Waters. Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC.
Alice Waters was born on April, 28, 1944, in Chatham, New Jersey. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1967 with a degree in French cultural studies before training at the International Montessori School in London. Her daughter, Fanny, was born in 1983.Chez Panisse Restaurant opened in 1971, serving a single fixed-price menu that changed daily. The set menu format remains at the heart of Alice’s philosophy of serving the most delicious organic products only when they are in season. Over the course of three decades, Chez Panisse has developed a network of local farmers and ranchers whose dedication to sustainable agriculture assures Chez Panisse a steady supply of pure and fresh ingredients. In 1996, in celebration of the restaurant’s twenty-fifth anniversary, Alice created the Chez Panisse Foundation. The Edible Schoolyard at Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr Middle School is the foundation’s primary beneficiary.
Provided by Publisher:
The long-awaited memoir from cultural icon and culinary standard bearer Alice Waters recalls the circuitous road and tumultuous times leading to the opening of what is arguably America’s most influential restaurant.When Alice Waters opened the doors of her “little French restaurant” in Berkeley, California in 1971 at the age of 27, no one ever anticipated the indelible mark it would leave on the culinary landscape—Alice least of all. Fueled in equal parts by naiveté and a relentless pursuit of beauty and pure flavor, she turned her passion project into an iconic institution that redefined American cuisine for generations of chefs and food lovers. In Coming to My Senses Alice retraces the events that led her to 1517 Shattuck Avenue and the tumultuous times that emboldened her to find her own voice as a cook when the prevailing food culture was embracing convenience and uniformity. Moving from a repressive suburban upbringing to Berkeley in 1964 at the height of the Free Speech Movement and campus unrest, she was drawn into a bohemian circle of charismatic figures whose views on design, politics, film, and food would ultimately inform the unique culture on which Chez Panisse was founded. Dotted with stories, recipes, photographs, and letters, Coming to My Senses is at once deeply personal and modestly understated, a quietly revealing look at one woman’s evolution from a rebellious yet impressionable follower to a respected activist who effects social and political change on a global level through the common bond of food.
