In 1979, Deborah Madison helped to found Greens, the now-iconic vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco. Almost 30 years later, Madison remains at the forefront of the sustainable food movement and is the author of several watershed cookbooks including Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (one of my food bibles!) The Greens Cookbook, and the farmers’ market inspired, Local Flavors. She also writes regularly for Culinate, which is my favorite food website – aside from The Jew & The Carrot of course!

Last week, I spoke with Deborah about the changing nature of farmers’ markets, why she decided to include meat recipes in her most recent cookbook, and her favorite place to get a sustainable meal in Santa Fe.

Below the jump: Win a copy of Deborah Madison’s cookbook, Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets, which was recently released in paperback.

WIN A COPY of Local Flavors, which is brimming with gorgeous food photos and mouth-watering seasonal recipes. To enter, tell us: If you were writing a cookbook, what would you write about? Leave your comment below by Thursday, July 17 and be entered in a raffle to win! (One comment per reader will be counted in the raffle).

Good luck & enjoy the interview!

I read that you first began baking bread as a teenager, enticed by the smell of challah coming from next door. Who was doing that baking?

We had neighbors who had moved next door to us in California from New York. [My neighbor] June baked every Friday for Sabbath. I come from a half Jewish family, so it was something we related to. Besides that, the smell of her bread was so wonderful, so I said, “Teach me!” I made challah every weekend for years – it is just the most wonderful bread to make.

It partly became our family’s bread but I also had some friends who were potters and artisans at the nearby University [U.C. Davis], so I used to trade it to them for their sculptures. I haven’t made challah in years, but now that we’re talking I’m thinking it might be fun to do again!

Do you bake other breads?

I don’t, but I’m starting to think that I should. Bread is getting so expensive, and it seems ridiculous to pay almost $4 for just a standard loaf of bread, not even a loaf from a good bakery. But, I’m involved in finishing tqo books right now, so I’m doing a lot of cooking for those. I honestly haven’t had the time for much else!

I heard one of those books is on Dessert. What is the other one?

The other one is one my husband and I are writing together. It’s called, What We Eat When We Eat Alone. It stared out when we were traveling with a lot of chefs and writers and food people. My husband would sometimes get bored, so he would ask people, “What do you eat when you eat alone?” Some of the answers were so funny – like mopping up tequila mix with bread, or dunking oyster crackers in coffee! I’ve been saying for 10 years that we should make a book out of it and finally we are. My husband is an artist and he’s doing some drawings for it.

There’s a wonderful poem in there by Daniel Halpern called “How to Eat Alone.” He sent it to me at some point, and it was just perfect. It talks about your company being the best you’ll ever have. I don’t know if I necessarily agree with that, but your own company better be pretty good because sometimes that’s all you have!

Your wonderful farmers’ market-inspired book, Local Flavors, just came out in paperback on May 15th, but you originally wrote it 6 years ago. It seems that farmers market culture has changed so much during those years. Could you reflect on that?

Yes, I think it is shifting. For one, there are another thousand markets that developed in that time. I’ve gotten so many emails from food writers in the Midwest. When the book first came out nobody called me from the Midwest! The Midwest has terrific markets that have been there for a long time, but now there are all these editors who are saying, “Talk to me about farmers’ markets” as if it was just happening for the first time. I also hear from people who say, “Oh we’re just starting a market in rural Louisiana.” This is amazing to me that people have the vision and the courage in a place that is really rural. And that seems to be happening all over the country.

“Nobody [used to] call me from the Midwest!”

I also see markets are losing a little bit of that wonderful “just popped up over night” feeling. Sometimes I feel like the older markets are starting to feel a little too official. I know a lot of markets are starting to get permanent homes. In some ways that’s good because it shows the community cares about the market, but I’m really holding my breath to see if it is going to work. I’m curious to see what is going to be driving what – I’m just kind of watching.

So when you say permanent home you actually mean a building?

Yes, I mean an actual building which is a huge investment for a community. That’s how we’re doing it here. We’re going to suddenly find ourselves in a market hall – but part of the charm of a farmers market is being outside!

Another thing I’m seeing is a different form of CSA – where someone puts together food from a group of farmers. Instead of a person getting chard and endless bunches of kale, they get a box that has a dozen eggs, a chicken or cheese, an array of vegetables and maybe a baked good. So it’s somewhere between a store and a farmers’ market. It’s still all local, but it’s kind of like a shopping service. I think it’s very interesting that people are thinking in these innovative ways.

You are known for being an innovator of vegetarian cuisine – but Local Flavors includes recipes for chicken and beef. How did you make the decision to include meat recipes?

You’re one of the only people who has asked this question – I thought a lot of people would! The book isn’t about me, it’s about the market. Meat is a big part of the farmers market, so I felt I had to have it there. But my interest in food is not about vegetarianism, it’s about good quality, ethical food. The farmers market is probably the best place to get meat and chicken that you can feel good about.

How often these days do you personally eat meat?

It depends. I’m kind of going through a phase where I’d be happy to never eat it again! But ideally for me it is just once and a while. Maybe once a week.

That sounds about right – in the Jewish tradition there is a (not necessarily followed) idea that meat should only be eaten on Shabbat and festivals – for special occasions.

I think that’s great. I love Shabbat personally and always try to observe it – and I think something like that just makes so much sense. What’s happened to meat is that it has become a sort of a fast food. People want chops and things that will cook really fast. We’ve lost any culture around the cooking of meat – young people especially have no idea how to work with a tough cut and how to do things that involve tenderness and braising and use every part of the animal and not just the things that use the choice, fast cooking parts.

That’s another reason I get involved. People need to learn all over again that meat was once a living creature, and it is not just about getting dinner on the table in a hurry, it’s something special. So having it on Shabbat is wonderful.

How do food and spirituality come together for you?

That’s a really hard question for me to think about. I don’t know quite how to answer it. As a person who writes cookbooks, I often feel like I don’t have my own life around food and spirituality! Sometimes I’m just on a treadmill trying to get a book done. I don’t get to choose what I want to eat like other people – I eat what I have to test. It’s very stressful because you cannot get a sense of yourself with food.

Still, I’ve always felt the need to have a strong connection with food and not have it be this completely abstract experience. I see people running through Trader Joe’s and just throwing things in their baskets! And I sit in my kitchen cooking at night and I think, “This is just too weird!” I make a point of knowing where my food comes from, but there’s still a lot that I don’t know. Spirituality and food for me is about a relationship to whatever I eat.

Can you remember a meal where the experience transcended just eating?

Oh sure! I’m writing a memoir, so I have a list of meals that made me feel like that. I’ll tell you about two. The first meal was from Scotland, and I was in a restaurant in the middle of nowhere on a freezing cold November day. My friend and I sat there and we looked out the window at the owner’s garden. We saw these cabbages and there was a little pond further on. After a while, the woman who owned the restaurant brought out this meal that was fish from the pond and potatoes from the garden and everything we ate was in our view. Talk about eating your landscape! This was in about 1976 – before people were talking about that sort of thing! It just took my breath away, and I think that was a moment that became my north star.

The other experience was a meal I had recently. I live in New Mexico, and we have a lot of traditional [Native American] feast days and dances. I was invited to one in December. Typically, you don’t know when these things are going to start or end, and it’s freezing cold so you stand there freezing for hours. But they can kind of get you into a tranquil mood. After the dances were over, I was invited for the governor’s house for a feast.

So I went to his house with my friend, and we sat in the living room chatting with other people in quiet voices. And there were tables set up in the kitchen where people were eating. And every now and again the governor would come out and say “two” or “three,” or however many seats he had available. And we’d sort of figure out who was next and we’d get up and sit down.

“[The dinner] felt like Friday night services.”

So you’d join a table where people were already eating, and then food was brought out. They served food like red and green enchiladas and bison stew and other very familiar native and New Mexican food. We were given these very tiny bowls and everything was very subdued and very happy. Nobody told you that you had to get up or that other people were waiting. It was kind of up to you to notice that you’d been there for a while and say thank you and to leave. There was no check – no transaction involved. There were just these woman in the kitchen cooking this beautiful food.

When I left I said to my friend, “I feel like I just came from Friday night services!” It was so transformative. It wasn’t like anything else – it wasn’t like a meal in a restaurant or a holiday dinner or eating with your friends. But it was the most incredible, soulful, filling, completing kind of experience. I felt very fortunate to have it.

Speaking of dining experiences, you helped to start the famous Greens restaurant in San Francisco. Would you ever open another restaurant?

Oh no – I’m way too old for that! I can’t walk past a site in a little funky town without saying, “Ooh, that would make just the type of café I’d want to have.” But I don’t really relish those 14 hour days on my feet.

There are some young women in Santa Fe who opened up a restaurant and a nursery last summer called The Tree House Cafe. They buy everything at the farmers market and it its vegetarian, so it always makes me think of Greens when it first opened. There’s something about the food that is so clean and simple – it does not try to impress you or create a headline, but its so good and pretty and it sparkles with this freshness! I don’t have to open a restaurant because these girls did it!