Executive Chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse

Photo borrowed from Chez Panisse website

The official start of the holiday season has begun. In the weeks to come we will gather, celebrate and EAT, EAT, EAT.  Some of us will prepare meals that have been passed down through the family from one generation to the next, while others of us will daringly try that new recipe for chili rubbed turkey with the side of chipotle mashed potatoes featured in the cooking magazine that just arrived. As a nation, we will make pilgrimages to the grocery store, the farmers market, the farm, the backyard garden with lists in hand, or perhaps a shovel, to select the perfect ingredients for what just might be some of our biggest meals of the year.
It seemed only fitting with Thanksgiving just days away and thoughts of food filling our collective thoughts and conversations, that History's Heroine's honor Executive Chef and Co-founder of Chez Panisse restaurant, Alice Waters.
The restaurant, located in Berkely, CA, was founded by Chef Waters and friends in 1971 with a focus on what has now been popularly coined as "Farm to Table" cooking; a concept which centers on organic, seasonally appropriate, and sustainably grown and harvested foods. That we are familiar with the term "Farm to Table"  has much to do with Chef Waters,  who, in 1992, became the first woman to receive the James Beard Foundations "Best Chef in America" award and whose restaurant, in 2001, was rated the "Best Restaurant in America" by Gourmet magazine. With a long list of credits and accomplishments to her name, Chef Waters has become one of the most important  and well-respected people in the business of food globally.
As expected, her journey was not quick, easy or straight, but perfect for where she landed. Combining her  degree in French Cultural Studies from UC Berkley, and her time abroad in French markets and restaurants heavily influenced the course Chez Panisse would take and eventually lead her to be the gastronomic activist she is today.
In 1996, Ms. Waters founded the Edible Schoolyard, a one acre farm and classroom based on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School campus in Berkley, CA. The program allows one thousand of the schools students to be involved in all aspects of food production from growing and harvesting to preparation. The food grown by the children is then served in the schools lunch program.  That the Edible Schoolyard program takes a hands on approach to the food cycle has its roots in Chef Waters time as a Montessori teacher in London after her graduation from UC Berkley.  Since then, the program has spread to other school campuses nationwide, including to a student run program at Yale University.
Finding success with the Edible Lunch Program and her continual efforts to lobby the White House, Chef Waters not only was instrumental in encouraging the creation of First Lady Michelle Obama's organic vegetable garden, but with the passage of the School Lunch Initiative. Much as President Kennedy initiated a nationwide adoption of Physical Education curriculum, the School Lunch Initiative strives to incorporate gardening and healthy, nutritious foods to be a daily part of the public school lunch program.
With children participating in growing the foods they eat, they may be more likely to make better food  choices as adults, and in the meantime, they might even eat their brussel sprouts, or chili rubbed turkey with chipotle mashed potatoes.