2018-03-30

First Woman to Win the James Beard Award  for Outstanding Chef—Alice Waters 

  Alice Louise Waters is an American chef,restaurateur, activist and author. She is the owner of Chez Panisse, aBerkeley, California restaurant famous for its organic, locally growningredients and for pioneering California cuisine,which she opened in 1971.

  In addition to her restaurant, Waters haswritten several books on food and cooking, including Chez Panisse Cooking (withPaul Bertolli), The Art of Simple Food I and II, and 40 Years of ChezPanisse.

  She founded the Chez Panisse Foundation in1996, and created the Edible Schoolyard program at the Martin Luther KingMiddle School in Berkeley, California. Waters serves as a public policyadvocate on the national level for school lunch reform and universal access tohealthy, organic foods, and the impact of her work in organic food andnutrition is typified by Michelle Obama's White House organic vegetablegarden.

Background

  Waters was born in Chatham Borough, New Jersey April 28, 1944. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley after transferring therefrom UC Santa Barbara. She received a degree in French Cultural Studies in1967. During her time at UC Berkeley, she studied abroad in France, where sheshopped for local produce and prepared fresh foods simply in order to enhance theexperience of the table. During her time in France, she says she “lived at thebottom of a market street” and “took everything in by osmosis”.She brought this style of food preparation back to Berkeley, whereshe popularized the concept of market-fresh cooking with the local productsavailable to her in Northern California. For her, food is a way of life and notjust something to eat.

Free Speech Movement

During her time at UC Berkeley, Watersbecame active in the Free Speech Movement, which was sweeping across thecampus.Waters worked on the congressional campaign of Robert Scheer, ananti-Vietnam War politician. She often cooked for and entertained her fellow campaigners.

Additional influences

  Waters eventually returned to Europe, where she first trained at aMontessori school in London, and then spent time traveling in Turkey and thenin France once again. Principles of the Montessori method, which emphasizepractical and hands-on activities for children, are evident in Waters’ idea of “edibleeducation” and her Edible Schoolyard, which engages children in the preparationof fruits and vegetables that they tend to with the supervision of theirteachers.

  After training in London, Waters next traveled to Turkey, which shecredits with influencing her approach to hospitality and deepening her respectfor local communities. In his book Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, ThomasMcNamee recounts Waters’ experience in Turkey, where a young Turkish boy sharedtea and a small bit of cheese with Waters and her traveling companions, eventhough he had very little. This small act of kindness had an effect on Waters'sapproach to hospitality and generosity in her own restaurant.

  From Turkey, Waters then returned to France, where she embarked upona year-long journey. Her travels solidified her love of all things food andFrench and inspired her to return to California and open Chez Panisse.

  Waters counts Elizabeth David, the Englishcookbook author and writer, as one of her influences. She also credits RichardOlney, an American authority on French food who spent much of his life livingin France, with influencing her simple, rustic cuisine.

  Olney introduced Waters to Lucien and Lulu Peyraud, owners of theDomaine Tempier vineyard in Provence. Lulu Peyraud’s vineyard cookingsignificantly influenced Waters’ cooking and her menus at Chez Panisse. In herforeword to Olney's book, Lulu's Provençal Table, Waters wrote: “Lucien andLulu's warmhearted enthusiasm for life, their love for the pleasures of thetable, their deep connection to the beautiful earth of the South of France –these were things I had seen at the movies. But this was for real. I feltimmediately as if I had come home to second family.”

  In addition, Waters has said that she learned Chinese cooking fromCecilia Chiang, and the two became lifelong friends.[17] Waters has said thatwhat Chiang did to popularize Chinese cuisine in America is what Julia Child didfor French Cuisine.

Dedication to organic food

  Central to the operations and philosophy of Chez Panisse is Waters'and the restaurant's dedication to using organic ingredients. Waters has becomea crusader for organic foods, believing that they are both better for theenvironment and for people's health in addition to tasting superior to commercially-grown,non-organic foods.Waters became an organic devotee almost by accident, claimingthat what she was originally after was taste. She says: “When I opened up ChezPanisse, I was only thinking about taste. And in doing that, I ended up at thedoorstep of [organic farmers].”Waters' current organic food agenda includesreforming the USDA school lunch program to include organic, local fruits andvegetables and changing the way America eats, but her passion for organics startedat her restaurant, where she discovered that organic ingredients were theessential element necessary to create delicious food

Slow Food

  Since 2002, Waters has served as a VicePresident of Slow Food International, an organization dedicated to preservinglocal food traditions, protecting biodiversity, promoting small-scale qualityproducts around the world. She was drawn to the Slow Food movement because ofits work in passing food knowledge and traditions to future generations.

Books

California Fresh Harvest: A SeasonalJourney through Northern California (California Fresh) (with Gina Gallo, theInc. Junior League of Oakland-East Bay, et al.)

Waters, Alice (1984). Chez Panisse Pasta,Pizza, Calzone. ISBN 978-0-679-75536-4.

Waters, Alice (1995). Chez Panisse MenuCookbook. ISBN 978-0-679-75818-1.

Waters, Alice (1996). Chez PanisseVegetables. ISBN 978-0-06-017147-6.

Waters, Alice (1997). Fanny at Chez Panisse: A Child's Restaurant Adventures with 46 Recipes. ISBN 978-0-06-092868-1., astorybook and cookbook for children

Waters, Alice (1999). Chez Panisse CaféCookbook. ISBN 978-0-06-017583-2.

Waters, Alice; Paul Bertolli (2001). ChezPanisse Cooking. ISBN 0-8446-7110-X.

Waters, Alice (2002). Chez Panisse Fruit.ISBN 978-0-06-019957-9.

Waters, Alice; Carlo Petrini; WilliamMcCuaig (2004). Slow Food : The Case for Taste (Arts and Traditions of theTable: Perspectives on Culinary History). ISBN 978-0-231-12845-2.

Waters, Alice (2007). The Art of SimpleFood. ISBN 978-0-307-33679-8.

Waters, Alice (2008). The EdibleSchoolyard. ISBN 978-0-8118-6280-6.

Waters, Alice (2010). In the Green Kitchen:Techniques to Learn by Heart. ISBN 978-0-307-33680-4.

Awards and honors

Gourmet magazine awarded Chez Panisserestaurant as the Best Restaurant in America in 2001.In addition, Waters haswon other honors.

National Audubon Society's 2004 RachelCarson Award Honoree

Listed as one of the ten best chefs in theworld in 1986 by Cuisine et Vins de France.[citation needed]

Best Chef in America by the James BeardFoundation in 1992. She was the first woman to win this award.

James Beard Humanitarian Award in1997[citation needed]

Bon Appetit magazine's Lifetime AchievementAward in 2000[citation needed]

Elected to the American Academy of Arts andSciences in April 2007[citation needed]

Waters won the lifetime achievement awardgiven by the S. Pellegrino 50 Best Restaurants association. She was the thirdrecipient of the annual award, and is the only female winner in the award’shistory. About Waters, the 50 Best Restaurants writes: “Described variously asa visionary, a pioneer, ‘the mother of American cooking’ and ‘the mostimportant figure in the culinary history of North America’, Alice Waters iscertainly one of the most influential figures in American cooking of the last50 years.”

Given Global Environmental Citizen Award byHarvard Medical School February 2008 together with Kofi Annan[citation needed]

California Governor Arnold Schwarzeneggerand First Lady Maria Shriver announced on May 28, 2008 that Waters would beinducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum forHistory, Women and the Arts. She was among 12 inductees in 2008.

In 2009, she was awarded an honoraryDoctorate of Humanities by Princeton University.

Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council

French Legion of Honor in 2009

Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook was named as oneof the 50 best cookbooks of all time by The Observer. Her book ranked number 1on the list.

In 2014, she was inducted into the NewJersey Hall of Fame.

Waters received a 2014 National HumanitiesMedal for her work as a champion of a holistic approach to eating and health.

Named one of Time Magazine's Top 100(2014)[citation needed]

Recipient of the Wall Street JournalInnovators' Award (2014)[citation needed]

Member of the American PhilosophicalSociety[citation needed]

Member of the American Academy of Arts andLetters (2014)[citation needed]

In 2015, she was awarded an honorary degreeby American University of Rome.

In 2017, she was inducted into the NationalWomen's Hall of Fame.

Question

1.When and where Alice Waters were  born?

2.What university did Alice Waters graduate from?

3.What have Alice Waters been attracted to since 2002?

4.How many awards and honors do Alice waters have?

5.What cookbook did Alice Waters write about children?