Deborah Madison is the author of eleven cookbooks and is well known for her simple, seasonal, vegetable-based cooking. She got her start in the San Francisco Bay Area at Chez Panisse before opening Greens, and has lived in New Mexico for the last twenty years. In addition to writing and teaching, she has served on the boards of Slow Food International Biodiversiy Committee, the Seed Savers Exchange, and the Southwest Grassfed Livestock Alliance, among others. She is actively involved in issues of biodiversity, gardening, and sustainable agriculture.
Q: Tell us about your background and how you became interested in vegetarian cooking.
A: I grew up in Northern California, in Davis. Meat was not very important in my mother's kitchen, but we weren't vegetarians. We just didn't have a lot of meat. When I lived in a Buddhist community in the 1970s and 1980s and we decided to be vegetarian, it wasn't really an issue for me. I just wanted to cook. I cooked in that community in different capacities for about 18 years, including starting Greens restaurant in San Francisco. But outside of that time, I've never considered myself a vegetarian – more of a 90 percent-er. I wanted to be able to work on improving conditions for animals, not just ignoring them...
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