An Onion in My Pocket

by Deborah Madison

  It ended with the words of Iowan Ervin D. Jaspersen, who was, at that time, trying to get organic farming methods taught in agricultural schools, “where,” he said, they “might start future farmers in the organic direction.” He believed that what stood in the way of schools doing this kind of teaching was that much of their funding for research came from the chemical industry. (My dad, who spent years developing thornless long-stemmed roses that would bloom on Valentine’s Day and bicolored gerbera for the UC system, would have agreed.) He also claimed to have “irrefutable proof that a farmer can run a profitable operation without the use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides.” Jaspersen was right, of course, on both counts, and today many land grant colleges finally do have small farm and organic components, and plenty of farmers have been able to make decent livings without resorting to the use of petrochemicals. Many also struggle. But this magazine cover story proved to be an encouragement. We could look back and see that in some respects, we had actually gone forward.

  Still, the photographs were dark and those chewy-looking breads must have seemed pretty scary if you were one of those who knew only fluffy white bread. Finally we have come to see that breads like these, though far better crafted, are beautiful in both their appearance and their promise of nourishment. One of the most gorgeous displays at Slow Food Nation in San Francisco in 2008 was one in which tables and walls were heaped and hung with just such robust seed-studded breads from the ovens of the nation’s foremost bakers. And a more recent issue of Food & Wine (September 2017) again depicted gorgeous deep brown breads. But when I looked at the photos from the magazine, what I saw was earnestness merged with the idea of health painted in big, broad brown strokes. I wanted to sigh. The notion that vegetarian food, or health food, was brown and ponderous came from just such images, and this very vision was what I was working against when I started to cook at the Zen Center. I caught myself asking, Wasn’t it meat that was the brown food? Why did we have this idea that vegetarian food has to be so drab? But then, I remembered: It was drab, at least at that time. Although I struggled with this image of organics and health, I saw that even this article was in fact attempting to shed a preexisting image, mainly that of bodybuilders and exotic eaters, such as fruitarians.

  HEALTH FOOD STORES

  The smell in a health food store in the 1970s was nothing like the smell in regular grocery stores with their lingering odor of floor cleaners. The closest smell I can come to is silage, the fermented vegetable matter that is stored in silage silos and fed to livestock during the winter. Silage has a green, grassy fragrance, something like freshly mown hay, but with the odd undertone of fermentation. A feed store smell came close, too, and those grassy, grainy odors mixed up with wheat germ and molasses somehow conspired to promise freedom from whatever ailed you, whether you had a special health drink, took home some vitamins, or bought a bag of dates. Java Juice could not be further away in mood, look, or concept. In the health food store of the 1970s you sat at the counter while your drink was frothed up in a blender. You quietly drank it. There was no cell phone to check. Bob Marley was not to be heard. The experience was subdued.

  Before the 1970s health food stores catered to building wellness via the big, strong bodies of weight lifters and bodybuilders. A store on Sutter Street in San Francisco was one that I popped into on occasion when I felt I needed a nutritional boost. There you could buy that wheat germ and those dried fruits, but also grains, nuts, Tiger’s Milk, Loma Linda meat analogues, honey, and of course, molasses. You could also buy vitamins and powders for gaining weight. There was a counter where you might order a health drink, made and served by women dressed in white, like nurses. The nurse image was appropriate, for these women dispensed knowledge about what was good for you along with your health food drink. They were ready with advice.

  A few years later the old health food stores of the Sutter Street variety were giving way to the new organic model described in the Life article. The new model was more about girls with long hair, big smiles, and embroidered peasant blouses than about dour women in white uniforms. The new stores had more things to eat and fewer pills to swallow. There was tamari; Swiss bircher muesli, the only “health food” cereal for a time; whole soybeans; and bulgur. There was tofu, miso, umeboshi plums, brown rice, and other staples of the macrobiotic kitchen. There were no nutrition bars, vegan cookies, instant Indian dinners, or grass- fed beef. In fact, there was no meat of any kind, for these stores were usually vegetarian. When natural food stores—the eighties incarnation of the health food store—started carrying meat, some customers were deeply offended, feeling that meat didn’t belong in that setting. But it stayed.

  As for vegetables, triple-washed bagged salad greens were not even on the horizon of the most vivid imagination. Rather, there were more solid vegetables and generally they were sad things to encounter. I still vividly recall bunches of beets in a health food store near the Zen Center that were so limp and sad your heart went out to them. They were also expensive. I wondered who would buy them. Vegetables would not entice a shopper until the new small-scale organic farmers and store owners figured out how to get produce right—not just how to grow it and sell it, but how to keep it cool, clean, firm, and fresh, too.

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  In addition to food, one could also find Indian incense, something tie-dyed, steamers, juicers, and Dr. Bronner’s all-purpose peppermint soap with that label that lists, in the tiniest print possible, its multitude of uses. As for that wholesome food store–silage smell, it lingered but was nearly buried under a layer of patchouli and sandalwood.

  We were, in the seventies, still a long way from today’s gigantic “natural food” supermarket chains that feature aisles of organic cereals; huge meat, fish, and produce counters; rows of protein powders; vitamins and homeopathic remedies; shampoos; recycled paper goods; and organic pet food. There are organic versions of almost everything you can imagine from kale to toothpaste, and as much space given over to processed and prepared foods as in any supermarket. That silage–feed bin smell has disappeared completely, buried under a complex of scents emanating from the wood-burning pizza oven, the roasting chickens, the open cheese counters, the bakery, the takeout, the espresso and juice bars, the flower shop. Other smells are kept in check by packaging; tough plastics keep all odors, should there be any, locked in. But the produce, even without packaging, doesn’t have that much smell, especially the fruit, which is scentless, picked when hard and green, and shipped from afar. Today shoppers don’t know to bring a plum or a peach to the nose to assess its promise.

  Except for some co-ops and the very occasional family-owned market where there’s an owner who cares, the big stores like Whole Foods don’t do as much as they claim to support their community’s local farmers and food producers. The words are right, but it’s not always clear that there’s much follow-through. The old hippie health food stores might have been funky, but there was a sincerity that prevailed, and there was follow-through. Workers seemed to listen when you asked a question, then considered their answers. I miss that. Yet I also appreciate that in my small town I can find good olives and olive oil, a favorite American farmstead cheese and a good chunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano, along with more than decent wines. But because most of the produce is labeled “conventional,” much of it is from far away, and organic is almost always “big organic,” I go to my farmers’ market for my vegetables when I can’t harvest something from my garden, to my local bakery for the best bread in town if I’m not baking at home, and to my local co-op.

  My repertoire of foodstuffs is narrower than in the past, especially my California past. But I don’t mind. It’s still excessive, especially compared to what native New Mexicans have known. When I’m asked questions about the sustainability of our foods, I often respond by saying it might be a good idea to stop thinking we should have everything all the time. Could we be happier with less, but
still have more variety than we have had? It’s hard with food, as it is in all realms, to find the middle path. When I first visited Santa Fe the farmers’ market offered a few carrots, some uninteresting tomatoes, chile, posole, and chokecherry jam. Now the market teems with variety, much of it heirloom, and most of it good. Of course, supermarkets continue to have even more as they draw from all the seasons of the world.

  MARRIAGE—A JALAPEÑO IN HIS POCKET

  Another thing that happened in the 1970s was that I got married. I married another Zen student, Dan Welch, just a few months before Greens opened in July 1979. Ours was a huge Zen Center wedding. My sister made the cakes at the Tassajara Bread Bakery and there were thirty-five of them, all in the shape of hearts. Some were large, some were tiny, and there were many in between. They floated over an enormous linen-cloaked table and were themselves covered with raspberry-tinted whipped-cream icing, which in turn was embroidered with scallops, dots, and swirls of white frosting so that each heart appeared to be draped in lace. They were gorgeous. We each broke off a piece of our heart, awkwardly fed each other, then toasted our mob of friends with imaginary champagne glasses because somehow we were overlooked when the glasses were passed around and the bubbles were poured.

  Before we married, Dan and I enjoyed cooking together, mostly at the home and woodsy camp of Nancy Wilson Ross, whom you’ll meet in the next chapter. We had had a few worthy cooking adventures as well. Our Zen Center palates had already been teased into a rough awakening through an invitation to come eat dinner at Chez Panisse. It was the goat cheese that did it at that dinner. Its simultaneous creaminess and tang made Dan’s eyes open wide and forced his eyebrows to shoot up. What was that? I could practically see his taste buds waking up, stretching, then doing a little dance. I’m not sure, but that first taste of goat cheese might have been what got Dan interested in eating and cooking.

  After the goat cheese discovery, there was Gorgonzola, another “What was that?” kind of taste. But it was cilantro that really launched Dan into the heady atmosphere of big funky flavors. When we went to see One from the Heart during its brief showing in San Francisco, we came away so buoyed by the film that we wanted to celebrate it. Toast it. Being Zen students, we had no money, but we did have a key to Greens and we let ourselves in. In the dark kitchen we made ourselves sandwiches, layers of bread stuffed with cilantro, Gorgonzola, and goat cheese. We ate them seated at a table with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and we toasted the movie. Why not put all your favorite flavors in one bite? And take the best seat in the house? That was Dan’s approach that night.

  Dan’s first job as a cook in his own right was at Green Gulch, where he was the tenzo, or head cook. Students loved his food at first, but they ended up complaining after a few months, saying that it was too good and could he please tone it down?

  About that time there was a big scandal with our abbot. We couldn’t stay and go through the community soul-searching, so we left Green Gulch and Zen Center and cooked at Chez Panisse, where I made desserts and Dan made pizzas with great flare and lots of chile, at least for the staff. Next we both cooked in Rome, where we spent a year at the American Academy making special meals for the director and various academy events. That year was followed, for Dan, by a stint as a mobile Santa Fe pizza man who drove his pizza oven around in the back of his red pickup truck and made extravagant pizzas for people under the moniker Spaghetti Western, a homage to Once Upon a Time in the West and other films of that genre. Returning to his Zen practice, he became the head cook at Crestone Mountain Zen Center in Colorado, where he was also the assistant abbot and ofttimes a great many other things. Today Dan is enjoying a lay life in Santa Fe, where he can cook all the things he’s dreamed of cooking and eating and then some. Pork has loomed large in these dreams but he also crafts sublime pizzas and has generally broadened his repertoire to take on a great many other foods.

  Before he had his own kitchen, Dan cooked in mine, plunging in with no second thoughts about using up my best ingredients, not to mention dusting my kitchen stove, counters, and floor with salt, flour, and olive oil. Nothing ever came out of a jar, except some very good anchovies and my brother’s olive oil. Everything began fresh and ended up big, gorgeous, and dramatic. Dan tasted everything as he cooked, slurping up big fingerfuls to make sure there was enough salt or another crucial ingredient. He held up his stained napkin after a meal and asked, each time, with an earnestly raised eyebrow, “Who had the most fun?” He has built a pizza oven during the day and cooked pizza in it that night. And he keeps a log of all the meals he’s served to his friends.

  After so many years—forty or so?—Dan is still so unbelievably enthusiastic about food that it makes me tired just to watch him cook. And now that he’s cut his monastic ties, he has become even more excited, expanding his repertoire on a daily basis. Now we’re likely to enjoy a donabe as well as a pizza, or a slow-braised pork shoulder cooked on the hottest day of the year, followed by a cake from The New York Times that he is trying to perfect. Essentially, Dan is over-the-top in the kitchen. He is enthusiastic, always energetic, and constantly paying attention to details to the point of obsessing over the tiniest ones. When he cooks, he goes for the greatest amount of color and drama possible. How do you tone that down? You don’t.

  Over the tenuous time of our breakup, now decades ago, our food tastes diverged. We were both committed to quality and doing things right, but there our similarities ended. I was drawn to Mediterranean flavors and American dishes, while Dan was increasingly ramping up the flavors and heat with chiles, garlic, tapenade, cilantro, robust blue cheeses, bacon, and anchovies. When we were living in different states, but still visiting each other in the hope of finding common ground in our fractured lives, our ability to nourish each other lessened with each visit. When Dan arrived at my house in Berkeley and I’d serve, say, an almond soup with chervil for starters, he would take a sip, then say something like “Ummm, Deb, your food is so delicate, so subtle.” There would be a pause, then the question I learned to expect: “Do you mind if I put some chile in it?”

  He’d get up and dice a jalapeño, which he just happened to have in his pocket, then doctor things up to his liking. It was hard not to take it personally. When I went to visit him in Santa Fe, he too cooked a good meal, only it was so hot I could do little more than sputter and cough. Since I was a chile wimp, that didn’t work, either.

  Eventually, when we could no longer feed each other and neither our lives nor our kitchens were mutually nourishing, the marriage ended. But the friendship continued—it was just too old to give up. After all, we first met when I was in high school and he was working for my dad after his return from Japan, and later at the Zen Center. Today we eat together frequently and feel free to add chiles or scrape them off. Or we just happily eat what’s served, or we might teasingly complain about the other’s cooking, with no hard feelings.

  14. Three Diversions Before Greens

  Before opening Greens or even knowing about the possibility, there were three side trips: the time I spent with the writer Nancy Wilson Ross, the all-important years with Alice Waters and Lindsey Shere at Chez Panisse, and my first trip to France. Each of these interludes took me away from Zen Center and each of them introduced me to new foods and ways of experiencing the table. Ultimately, their influence came with me to Greens.

  NWR

  Those were her initials and how we often referred to her. Otherwise she was known as Nancy, or Nancy Wilson Ross, an author of novels and some of the first books on Buddhism, most notably Three Ways of Asian Wisdom. Her husband, the playwright and publisher Stanley Young, had died recently, and the abbot of Zen Center, who was a friend of Nancy’s, had been sending students to help her with the cares that come with a big house, car, travel, and so forth, cares that she had never had to be involved with. She lived in Old Westbury on Long Island, and in 1975 I was sent there to be her “slave,” as she liked to
call us skinny, awkward people from San Francisco. I was thrilled to be her slave. It wasn’t that I was unhappy at Zen Center, but I was longing for a more worldly life, one that promised the inclusion of books, trips to Manhattan, even a longer journey to Europe.

  Strong, self-assured, and somewhat intimidating, Nancy was also smart and sophisticated in that East Coast way. Of course she had her own ways of doing things, her house rules as it were, which were sometimes quixotic and hard to decipher. I was in trouble when a mouse made a nest and had her babies in the vacuum cleaner. Somehow it was my fault and Nancy was furious because the karma of killing those baby mice would fall on her shoulders. At the same time she was a very loving person and generous with big hugs and words of encouragement. I actually felt her love and support even when she got cross at me for not knowing how to do things like hail a cab or keep that mouse from having her babies in the lint of the vacuum cleaner.

  When I brought coffee to her each morning, where she sat propped up in a large bed that was strewn with books and papers—“my other office” as she called it—Nancy often would say something like “I’ve been really wrestling with how to treat so-and-so.” It could be a shoddy mechanic, a publisher, a friend—anyone she was feeling a lack of compassion for, someone for whom there was a little friction or a larger anger that she wanted to turn around. She took the Buddhist meditation of loving-kindness very seriously. It was her practice, her focus.

  We sat zazen every afternoon. I was there to support this practice, as was another student who arrived shortly after I did, Dan Welch, the same Dan whom I eventually married. We met at the end of the day in her sitting room and sat not on zafus, the plump round cushions of the zendo, but in big, comfy wingback chairs. At least ten minutes passed before I heard Nancy clear her throat and say in her gravelly voice, “Make me a Manhattan, would you, dear?”